Media Essays: Doctor Who's Awkward Predicament
- mediarocks94
- Nov 19, 2025
- 15 min read
Written by The Wandering Fox
Freddy had gotten a hammer out, ready to smash the Cynical Crown to pieces.
Freddy: Yes! He’s been doing so well! He doesn’t need it anymore!
He was about to swing it upon it, but then Teddy grabbed it and took it away, earning a frown out of Freddy.
Freddy: Oi! What are you doing?
Teddy sighed sadly at his fox friend.
Teddy: He’s gonna be needing it.
Freddy gasped and looked in shock to his cat friend.
Freddy: No way.
Teddy: Yes.
Yes indeed.
I takes the crown and sits it upon my head. Freddy and Teddy come to his side with nervous looks.
Teddy: Oh Wandering Fox you were doing so great!
Freddy: Why though? Why are you being so cynical?
Well guys, I thought I’d write this to get it off my chest and hope somebody out there sees it. Because earlier this week I felt kinda happy and sad at the same time. And that is to do with Doctor Who.
Freddy: Oh? But you’ve written something nice for its 62nd anniversary.
I have and the Media Man will release that later this month on Doctor Who's anniversary day as I do want to celebrate Doctor Who, but I’d rather get the negatives out of the way first.
Teddy: That’s better than nothing.
Freddy: I guess. Go on then.
Thanks guys. Hello everybody, it’s me, the Wandering Fox and I’m here today to talk to you about Doctor Who’s future, or at least what we do know and what we don’t. It all started earlier this week once a bit of news came out that rocked the fandom.
Disney is leaving the partnership.
Before anybody cheers and says it’s a good thing that Disney is leaving, let’s just give you a reminder. Disney agreed to stream and distribute Doctor Who and helped fund the show. They had little creative input in the series aside from requesting the Doctor appear earlier on The Church on Ruby Road to help the viewers see him before he appeared later. The deal covered a certain number of episodes to be made and there’d be £8 million spent on each episode. Disney apparently left the deal for multiple reasons, among which was how they felt they wasted their money on the show and it didn’t make the Top 10 in the Nielsen Ratings. Combine that with embarrassing viewing figures over here, with Doctor Who turned into a laughingstock, everybody mocking the tone and writing and CGI mess, then the Billie Piper “twist” that was totally not done at the last second, and Gatwa leaving because he “was getting old”, it’s no wonder Disney left, and this is coming from somebody who doesn’t like a lot of what Disney has done these last few years, but even they can see Doctor Who isn’t worth it. With them leaving after a big boast from the likes of RTD of the partnership a big shift to a brighter era with new spin offs, the entire spearhead they made has turned into a shattered egg that has splattered squarely on the faces of RTD, Bad Wolf and the BBC.
So the point is this: this time it was not Disney’s fault.
Teddy: My goodness! That’s quite a staggering thing to behold!
Freddy: Yeah, they’re quite bad these days but yeah, they weren’t that involved in Doctor Who’s creativity. RTD was left to do what he wanted, yeah?
Yes, and that was a bad thing. I think this time RTD let it get to his head that only HE could do Doctor Who, everybody yearned for Tennant, for his era of Doctor Who, that 2005 to 2010 with Christopher and David was the golden era. He was the man who brought it back in 2005 and turned Doctor Who into a success and the fact he was reached out by the BBC as far back as late 2020 tells you even the BBC believed only he could save Doctor Who. But RTD today is not the man we knew in 2005. Or at least we think. Back then he had more people restraining him from going over the top with the series as they all knew they needed to make Doctor Who work, they couldn’t go in with a Space Babies back then. But RTD came back with the belief he could do what he wanted. He had the Disney money, he had nobody stopping him this time, he could do what he wanted with Doctor Who and look where that got him.
I know people will go “B-B-B-But, the +7s!” If the +7s mattered that much then I’m sure as shit Disney wouldn’t have left. With the +7s you don’t even know how much of that was just the same people rewatching it just to get the viewing figures up as some said they were. Ironic these people celebrated the overnights of the Eurovision in Space episode after they said the overnights don’t matter 🙄
There was things in this era of Doctor Who that aggravated a lot of people, which included:
Davros losing his disfigurement and disability all for “progressiveness” while upsetting disabled fans then had a pathetic argument with them over it. Mate, you’re in your sixties, be a bloody man!
Had the Doctor lectured on his masculinity.
Ruined Donna’s ending for Catherine Tate to go full Catherine Tate.
An incredibly sexualised, millennial version of the Doctor that hardly seemed anything like his predecessors.
Introduced Bi-Generation with no build up.
Gave us a terrible episode in Dot and Bubble that annoyed many.
Had the Doctor be a selfish horny jerk in Rogue.
Retconned a big chunk of Classic Doctor Who with Sutehk on the TARDIS since Pyramids of Mars.
Made gamers and YouTubers big baddie villains, including the word “Incels” in Doctor Who which is just something that shouldn’t be in there.
Has the nerve to be proud to be gay but set a story in Nigeria where being gay will get you thrown in jail.
Retconned Omega’s backstory and relied on the Time War to make an excuse when the Time War has not been relevant for at least ten years.
Before anybody comes at me and says I hate the show being progressive or political, I don’t. The show has done progressiveness throughout its sixty plus year history, a black astronaut in 1966 on tv, a deaf actor getting a big role in Destiny of the Daleks in 1979, the Brigadier’s successor was a black woman in 1989, there had been a few trans actors getting big roles in the show, tackling certain issues. Midnight, which was written by RTD, was good in how it explored the social collapse in a small group of humans who’s fear overtook them and the Doctor losing control because of his ego and certainty of being in control, that was great. They were good...but they didn’t do it all the time. What was the politics of the TV Movie? Or Spearhead from Space? Or Survival? Or even The Chase?
The many issues that Doctor Who has is that one of them is the fact it’s gotten TOO political. Starting from little “comedy” jabs in the Moffat era to a female Doctor being an “upgrade” over the last Doctors, to vilifying religion while also saying faith is great, to racial issues that makes the Doctor seem racist himself, tarring a ordinary family life when Indian culture which RTD tried to represent has strong values of family life, to having gamers and YouTubers being baddies and a lot of them just happen to be regular white men, while trying to make a terrorist sympathetic in killing billions of people who unknowingly were profiting from his ravaged conquered planet.
It’s alright tell political undertones or do a story about a certain issue, but doing it all the time or bone-headedly ends up annoying a lot of people and even end up annoying those you’re appealing to. It’s like with Davros, RTD did that because he thought Davros was offensive to disabled people which just annoyed disabled Doctor Who fans that loved Davros, or how he tried to be proud of having an Indian companion but had her hate family life when Indian culture values family life, or how he tries to have the show be proud it has a gay Doctor but sets an episode in Nigeria where gays are oppressed and had the Doctor love that place.
The other issue with Doctor Who is that it’s not exactly going forward anymore, it’s reaching back into its past by regurgitating it into a twisted form of what it was. RTD promised that we didn’t need to know anything about the series before Gatwa, but straight away he’s relying on the Giggle that he set up in the 60th with the Toymaker, or going back to Sutehk, the Rani, the Midnight monster and Omega. Then he brought Susan back and he was going to reveal that Susan wasn’t born yet and that her mum was a half human woman called Poppy who the Doctor had with Belinda. Then the last season ended with Billie Piper returning. The show has not truly moved on.
With Piper here and RTD being given the greenlight to write a Christmas special for next year, you have to ask: what is it gonna be about and what goes on from there?
I’m betting you now, the special will be about Tennant and Piper, it will be revealed the 14th Doctor is in fact the clone from the other Earth Rose is on, he experimented with regeneration and was brought back to our universe, lost his memories, then Rose experimented with regeneration to come back to our universe to find him. It’s gonna be her bringing him home for Christmas, we find out they’ve had a few children, their oldest has a girl called Susan, then that’s it. RTD had to cut out doing it with Poppy with Gatwa leaving, but he will try and redo it with Rose because EVERYTHING HAS TO DO WITH ROSE! If it’s not Clara, it’s Rose!
They will bring Tennant back to team with Piper to get the viewing figures back up and call it a success! I told you they’d be going back to Tennant if things didn’t work! But I’m fed up with him in Doctor Who, move on from him.
Ugh gosh. Talk about an ego.
The Future?
The future for Doctor Who is mostly unknown. The spin off nobody wanted is coming out this December, then it’s the Christmas special. Then there’s that CBeebies preschool cartoon. But that’s it. We don’t know if there will be a series. We don’t know if RTD will be in charge or not. If you ask me, the next year could be their LAST CHANCE. If RTD doesn’t write that special well enough, he’s out. If he fails, then Doctor Who will be gone.
It’s annoying because next year is the 30th anniversary the Eighth Doctor debuted in the series. Ever since he returned in 2013 in The Night of the Doctor lots of fans have begged for a spin off, McGann has voiced him in the audios since 2000, has costumed as him at conventions and stage plays, returned in The Power of the Doctor, and proved helpful in getting Eccleston to open up to the fan base. But would I trust RTD with him? No. I don’t trust Moffat with him, oddly enough I had no issue with Chibnall writing him XD but what I’m getting at is that Davies had the money off Disney. He had the chance to give Doctor Who fans the spin-off they wanted. He could’ve given us this.
But instead he’s giving us a spin off about Salt the Sea Devil (oh sorry, I mean "Homo Aqua") with his favourite actor Russel Tovey.
But yeah, if I had to go back to the past for anything, it’d be the Eighth Doctor, do a series with him, then move on.
Because as I mentioned further above, Doctor Who isn’t moving forward. It’s nice to look back with an anniversary but with such reliance on Piper, Tennant, Susan, and nostalgia Doctor Who isn’t renewing itself, it’s folding in on itself. The solution isn’t to go back and get Moffat to replace RTD as he’d be way more annoying than he was before, that and the show just isn’t moving forward. You need somebody who will come in with a healthier head on their shoulders, they can leave the politics back in their head or out of the job, and focus on telling a story about a traveller who takes on a companion to travel, fight baddies, but you need to cut out the romance and stop having the companion from the modern day. Moffat the supposed best showrunner said he couldn’t do it because it was too hard for him to write that kind of character. RTD thinks the companion should be from the modern day to be relatable. Those awards you won? Give them back.
The other issue is who is the next Doctor gonna be? Will they cast another younger actor in the role simply for his looks to bait fan girls? Or will they cast an older actor who has the experience to not only play the Doctor but stand up to the writers on what they feel isn’t working? If it’s the former then it’s much of the same, if RTD is there, nothing is to change.
It’s said Doctor Who’s budget will be drastically cut back to about £3 million per episode which could force whoever is the writer to try and be creative with the bigger cutbacks, like focus on good scrips, a couple of set pieces that can be filmed in repeatedly, and good makeup. I know there is thought that there has to be big CGI s*** in there but these days people are exhausted from it, it’d be nice to see things made by hand again gracing the screen.
But most of all? You need to start fresh. You need to start with a new Doctor, new companion, and this time no call-backs to the previous eras, or at least Modern Doctor Who. The reason why I say you should not reference Modern Doctor Who is that has become a big baggage that opens up much too many questions that, if you were to bring the show back and reference the modern series, you’d end up being asked:
Is the Timeless Children still canon?
Is the Fourteenth Doctor still out there?
Was Sutekh on the TARDIS?
Where’s the bloody Rani?
It’s why at the most you could do, in tiny doses, reference Classic Doctor Who with the Daleks or the Master in regards to Genesis or the TV movie. With Hartnell to McGann, while that era did have its inconsistencies, it didn’t get anywhere as big or frustrating as Modern Doctor Who. It’s why these days the fandom’s division has only gotten fractured. Before RTD came back, many said it ended with Capaldi, in The Doctor Falls to avoid the First Doctor being made fun of, but now it’s divided more to other fans saying it ended with McGann and his Doctor is still out there, while everything with the Time War in the Doctor’s life is a dark alternate timeline. The boring revolving door of modern companions, the taints on Classic Who, the meta humour, the tasteless sex jokes, many would cut that out from 63-96. That and it hasn’t helped that some are looking back and realising Moffat had been the man who started these problems that we’ve got. He:
Did big retcons to the past like inventing a mystery Doctor or changing the outcome of the Time War. The War Doctor led to the Fugitive Doctor, the Timeless Children and the Shalka Doctor. Him changing the Time War’s outcome led to the Timeless Children, Sutekh on the TARDIS, Omega being a god instead of an ordinary Galifreyean, Susan not being born yet.
Abandoned story arcs like him returning Gallifrey just so he could have the Doctor get rid of Rassilon and save Clara, which wasted the 50th anniversary and the story he ran away with that was setup in 2005. That led to Chibnall destroying Gallifrey, invented the Timeless Children, had the Doctor try to find the answers but then she literally drops it and doesn’t want to know. RTD would not bother with the 14th Doctor.
Set up a baddie who has sexual tension with the Doctor, like how he had Missy be his typical “femme fatale who forces herself on the Doctor” that he tended to invent, tease there was a romance between them in the past. RTD would do this with the Rani by teasing she and the Doctor “danced” among dead bodies.
Try and complicate the Doctor’s past which as we know Chibnall took with the Timeless Children. Then RTD trying to say Susan wasn’t born yet.
These issues started with Moffat. You can argue he didn’t think these would’ve happened, but I’d then say this “If you were in an old building, and there was a box in there that had a hammer in it, what would you do? Take it out and smash a hole in the wall because you can? Or leave it in the box out of fear that doing so will bring the building collapsing upon you?” If it was Moffat he’d happily take the hammer, smash a hole, then pass it it Chibnall and RTD. Moffat was after all the guy who broke the rules and it was a staple in his works: if he can do that then why couldn’t Chibnall and RTD do it?
This? It lead to this...
...then it lead to this...
...and then lead to this...
But to us, the simplest thing is this: leave the hammer in there.
McGann’s Doctor might’ve kissed Grace but he walked away to continue his travels and the audios made the effort to move McGann away from the romance. If it was Ten or Eleven they’d be trying to make Grace come with them. The tv movie might’ve grabbed the hammer and dented the wall but at least the audios tried to fill the dent in. RTD and Moffat though? Took the hammer and smashed holes in it.
Classic Doctor Who: Timeless Old building that stands the test of time. It may have some weak effects, but it’s handled well by the acting and writing.
Modern Doctor Who: Extension that was being built upon the old building that fell after somebody took out a hammer.
Future Doctor Who: Build it separate from the old building and extension but try and honour the original work while avoiding the gluttonous egotistical mistakes of the extension.
But to me? The best thing to do now is let the show rest; I wouldn’t want the Christmas special, I’d call RTD in, tell him he’s sacked and he’s to walk out with an apology to the fans. I’d let the show rest for a few years then bring it back with a new Doctor, new companion and make tiny references to the past, I’d focus more on the adventure, the friendship, the aliens but cut out the romance and modern day companion and long story arcs.
Classic Who
Yeah, you’d have noticed I’m quite fond of Classic Who. Tbh, I’m quite protective of it not just because of the fact Moffat, Chibnall and RTD butchered it, but I think now Classic Doctor Who is far more stronger and relevant than it used to be. Yes, there’s definitely bits of Modern Who I like, from season 1 to 4, I thought Matt and Capaldi were good as the Doctor and I thought Jodie had these tiny little perks of light where she was the Doctor, but Modern Who is sadly overinflated and run by egotistical men who just can’t stop themselves. Not saying Classic Who is perfect, but it is standing far greater than what Modern Who is.
That and the surviving Classic Doctors have stepped up to really try and keep the series alive, whether it’s Tom Baker appearing on a screen wearing his scarf and giving out prizes while staying in character, or McGann wearing a fan made costume to stage plays and conventions. While Tennant himself is a big icon of the show, and Whittaker has firmly kept herself tied to the show, it’s Eccleston who’s the big story when it comes to the Modern Doctors with him returning to the franchise (yes for the money but he’s really gotten absorbed in the character), but he’s been embraced by the Classic side of the series. It reminds me of how in the Wilderness Years the Doctors of 3-8 were doing what they could to keep the series alive. With Classic Who remaining well popular and sought after I think it’s only right that if the show returns it takes more inspirations from Classic Who to keep going. Inspirations, don’t take certain characters or stories and bastardise them.
With there also being hints that another missing episode has been found, fans are excited. Could it be The Tenth Planet’s final episode in full? Is it another Troughton story found in full? Whenever a missing episode is found, fans old and young flock to get it. That tells you just how strong Classic Who is. Or how the last Classic Doctor is the Doctor lots of fans have been begging to finally get a spin off? They want that last bit of Classic Who given justice, and I don’t mean a mini episode to turn him into a plot device who’s impact had negative consequences on the show, I mean a proper series where he is the Doctor, he’s the hero, he saves people, unlike the broken defeatist Moffat gave us.
In laymen’s terms?
Disney leaving should be a big wake up call to the BBC Studios of what is going on with Doctor Who. If the collapsing viewing figures, the joke the show has become, and its star leaving with a reshoot not enough to tell them, this should be it. It’s Disney. If they can see a bad investment then BBC Studios should as well. But would they? I don’t think so. Their ego is big. They have a final chance with the Christmas special to make things right but beyond that, they should stop themselves from doing anything with the series. They need to give it a good rest before bringing it back. But if they do, they have to make some big cuts to not just the budget, but to the egotistical minds that have been in charge of this show. It needs new blood with maturity. It needs to look back to its roots and see what truly made it work. It needs to feel truly Doctor Who.
Teddy: Hmmmm, I don’t know, he wasn’t that bad was he?
Freddy: Maybe not, but still I’d like to take that crown and smash it!
Oh Freddy bless you (takes it). I only just realised how you with your hammer ties into my metaphor.
Freddy: Oh? You don’t want me to smash it?
No. You see Freddy, while I hate having the Cynical Crown, it is something I need. You see, if I can’t talk about certain things I don’t like then I’ll make others think I’m way too positive. But I also know I cannot be too cynical.
Freddy: So you want a balance. Hmmm, alright. But you have to promise you won’t post anything negative in December!
Teddy: Yeah, it’s your birthday!
That it will be. I’ll try to keep my promise. Come on guys, let’s stick this somewhere and have some fun!
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