Is Doctor Who’s Future On Disney+ At Risk?
Back in 2022, Disney announced it was going to partner with the BBC to bring the classic British sci-fi show, “Doctor Who”, to Disney+ around the world as an effort to try to turn it into a global franchise for UK audiences and the rest of the world.
As part of the new deal, showrunner Russell T Davies was brought back to create the new series, following his success in bringing the show back in 2005, and it was also announced that Ncuti Gatwa would be taking over the role of “The Doctor”.
Since that initial announcement, we’ve seen three 60th Anniversary specials, which reunited David Tennant with Catherine Tate, along with a Christmas special and a brand-new eight-episode series released on the BBC in the UK and on Disney+ everywhere else.
The new show was being billed as a soft reboot of the 60-year-old show, with a nod to the past, but also a fresh new cast to bring the character to a new audience.
The influx of additional investment by Disney has helped push the budget on the show to compete with other major franchises. While Disney has some creative control over the new show, it still belongs to the BBC, which is responsible for creating the series.
However, while the BBC has said that the show has been a huge hit with younger audiences, it hasn’t been able to take it to another level on Disney+. The traditional linear viewership in the UK has failed to pull in audiences, with just 2.6 million overnight viewers on BBC One, though the iPlayer views were much higher since more people watch online nowadays. However, the viewership of the new series in the UK was down almost 1.5 million per episode compared to the last season in 2021, when Jodie Whitaker played the Doctor.
A BBC spokesperson has said that overnight viewing numbers “no longer provide an accurate picture of all those who watch drama in an on demand world,” and that “this season of Doctor Who premiered on iPlayer nearly 24 hours before broadcast,” which impacted the overnight figures.
The official UK data has shown that the audience continued to drop off each week, and while the BBC tried to defend the lower viewership numbers, Disney has not released any information on how the viewership has been, which is a huge red flag. Whenever a new show or film does well, we usually hear within days about how it’s broken some viewership record or how big a success it’s been. But for “Doctor Who”, we’ve heard nothing.
External data companies like Nielsen and Samba also haven’t released any information about how many people have watched the show or specials in the US, indicating that not enough people have watched it to register enough data.
“Doctor Who” has suffered from lots of negative feedback from audiences, with the show pushing the boundaries of what audiences want to see. Over the course of the reboot, the BBC introduced the first black and gay Doctor, in addition to characters and storylines involving transgender, racism, drag queens and much more. These have all contributed to the show being labelled “woke”, which has likely turned off many fans of this 60-year-old franchise and also failed to connect with the mainstream audience.
While the BBC has generally promoted the show constantly, with casting news, previews, and other updates throughout the series’ creation, Disney’s promotion of the show has been lacklustre.
Just prior to the launch of the new show, there was a screening event in Los Angeles, along with a photo event at Disneyland to promote the show, but that was about it. Even at the upcoming D23: Ultimate Fan Event, there has been little to no mention of the show, and the BBC seems to be organising all of the panels for next week’s San Diego Comic-Con, even teaming up with “Star Trek” for one panel.
There are rumours that a new spin-off series, “The War Between the Land and the Sea“, which is about UNIT is due to begin filming in September, but will Disney be involved in that project?
Recently, Deadline has shared some information that puts the partnership between Disney and the BBC in jeopardy.
Tony Jordan, Society Co-ordinator of the 30,000-strong Doctor Who Appreciation Society revealed:
“I thought it was a mixed bag. When Russell’s return was announced I thought, ‘That’s fantastic’ but maybe I remembered the good stuff and chose to forget the not so good stuff. His track record of ending seasons with two parters has been widely varying in success, for example.”
Jason Quinn, the Editor of Doctor Who magazine, was more positive about the show, but also addressed the complaints of the show becoming “woke”.
“If people have a problem with gay people or trans people then, yes, they are not going to like the show, but in the scripts it didn’t feel like a big deal,”
An industry insider, however, had some thoughts about how bad the ratings have been:
“The ratings are a problem,. They can talk all they like about young viewers but they’re still down from the specials and down from the Jodie [Whittaker] series. I imagine serious conversations are happening. Disney will want to see results.”
Disney also hasn’t managed or has been unwilling to secure a licensing deal to bring the previous seasons of “Doctor Who” to Disney+, highlighting a major problem for a long-standing franchise. While the new season is supposed to be brand new and a good jumping-on point for new viewers, it does reference events in the show’s history on many occasions.
Filming has recently wrapped up the second season, and a Christmas Special is coming later this year featuring “Bridgerton’s” Nicola Coughlan, so Disney and the BBC are still going to be working together on this project for a while, but will it continue past that?
Even if Disney pulled its funding for further seasons, it wouldn’t likely mean the end of “Doctor Who”, as it has existed for many decades without their involvement, but the show would likely continue with a much smaller budget.
Roger’s Take: Personally, I think once the second season is released next year, we’ll see the partnership between Disney and the BBC come to a close, with the show continuing in the future with either another partner or just by the BBC. I also think that this is one of the many projects that was signed during former Disney CEO Bob Chapek’s short reign and didn’t fit in with Bob Iger’s leaner content strategy, which is why I’ve thought for a long time that this partnership will be short-lived as Disney seem to be doing the bare minimum to promote it, because they just don’t seem that interested in it and don’t want to invest any more money into a project that won’t connect with a large audience. The radio silence by Disney about how the show has performed is never a good sign!
Do you think Disney will continue to work with the BBC on more “Doctor Who”?
Roger Palmer
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