It’s been an odd few years for Doctor Who, from riding on the high of its 60th anniversary heralding a splashy new partnership with Disney to bring the series around the world (and with a much bigger budget) to this week’s news that said deal had undramatically fizzled out after just two seasons, with the show not making a return until a 2026 Christmas special. But a new report suggests that the BBC’s deal with the House of Mouse may have been doomed to fail from almost the beginning.
An extensive new report from Deadline alleges that the BBC/Disney partnership on Doctor Who was never expected to last long-term. It claims that Disney’s plans for its streaming platform, Disney+, were never an ideal fit to sustain a show as expensive as Doctor Who had become with the new partnership—and especially with the loftier expectations being put on the show’s declining viewership.
According to Deadline, under the Disney deal, Doctor Who‘s per-episode budget had increased to anywhere between $8 million and $10 million. This, combined with significantly lower ratings for both the 2024 and 2025 seasons—in the U.S., the 2025 season failed to chart on Nielsen at all, while in the U.K., the per-episode average ratings were just 3.8 million, down by almost a million from the 2024 season, which itself was already coming in lower than the ratings for Jodie Whittaker’s final season as the Doctor, an era itself that had seen Doctor Who‘s viewership in a state of decline.
But the report further claims that while the combination of the show’s ballooning budget and its diminished ratings were primary factors behind the decision to terminate the deal, there was another lingering issue: that Disney perceived a potential growing backlash against Doctor Who‘s so-called “woke” storytelling. Disney has increasingly moved towards downplaying diverse casting or storytelling in recent years as part of the company’s broader capitulation to the second Trump administration, including cutting back on diversity initiatives and regularly pressuring its own studios to cut storylines that focus on LGBTQ+ topics, especially ones putting transgender characters in the spotlight.
Doctor Who has consistently faced accusations of a supposed liberal agenda for years before such criticisms became culturally de rigueur, although the show has consistently centered values around diversity in the face of oppression over its entire 60-plus-year history. But while the latest era of the show has put those values forward on a surface level in recent years—beyond Gatwa’s casting as the first Black, openly queer man to play the Doctor, the BBC has consistently defended the series’ casting of trans actors such as Heartstopper‘s Yasmin Finney and drag queen Jinx Monsoon, and storylines which included queer elements such as a kiss between Gatwa and guest star Jonathan Groff—the broader storytelling of recent seasons has faced persistent criticism of its failure to consistently back those values up in meaningful ways, with stories questionably handling of allegories to topics such as Israel’s genocidal invasion of Gaza and white supremacy, as well as further criticism of how the series treated the arcs of its primary female protagonists in the Doctor’s companions.
Publicly, Disney has stayed quiet over this week’s official disintegration of the deal, only pivoting towards the BBC’s own statement about Doctor Who‘s future rather than providing their own. But sources speaking to Deadline suggest that, although it was clear the deal would not continue, Disney planned to wait to make a public announcement until after the broadcast of what is now the final piece of that 26-episode deal: the five-episode miniseries The War Between the Land and the Sea. Originally, the spinoff, focusing on a conflict between humanity and the return of an ancient precursor race of underwater creatures called the Sea Devils, was planned to broadcast in 2026; however, the BBC decided to announce the termination early, with this week’s statement on the deal’s end also confirming that that release schedule had moved up, and the series will now air on the BBC (and presumably Disney+) some time during the remainder of 2025.
It’s been widely rumored since the climax of the 2025 season of Doctor Who—which saw Ncuti Gatwa make a shock exit as the 15th Doctor, regenerating into returning series star Billie Piper—came from significant reshoots to the previously planned series finale, and that Gatwa’s exit was in part due to a frustration that potential work on a third season (Gatwa had stated in an October 2024 appearance on the Graham Norton Show that work was set to commence some time in 2025; however, the comments were cut from the final broadcast) was being stalled by Disney’s indecision. The actor, who is 33, has since publicly claimed that his departure from the show was due to his increasing age and the damage the physical nature of the role had done to his body.
io9 has reached out to Disney for comment on the veracity of the details included in Deadline’s report but has yet to hear back by time of publication. We’ll update this post when and if we hear more.
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