Russell T Davies signs off his letter from the showrunner in the latest edition of Doctor Who Magazine (DWM 613) with the words: “I am confident. Doctor Who is forever, and the future is bright!”
Excellent news! Except, it’s not actually news. For actual news of what’s happening with Doctor Who after the next series finale airs, we’ve been told we have to wait. The word from on high is that a decision apparently won’t be made on commissioning more Who until Ncuti Gatwa’s second run has begun to air this spring. That decision rests with the BBC of course, but, BBC finances being what they are, the involvement or not of international distributor Disney+ is obviously a factor in what shape the show would continue.
What hasn’t been clear until now is whether the show’s next Christmas Special, which would be due to air on December 25 2025, had been packaged in with 2025 series commission. Now we know that it wasn’t.
In DWM 613 Davies specifies the contents of what he calls “The First Order” (not a Star Wars reference): “…it simply means the first order of three Specials, two seasons of Doctor Who and a five-episode spin-off, 26 episodes in total.”
Doing the maths, that means the initial commission was for the three 60th anniversary specials “The Star Beast”, “Wild Blue Yonder” and “The Giggle”, 2023 Christmas special “The Church on Ruby Road”, the eight-episode series 14, 2024 Christmas special “Joy to the World”, the eight-episode series 15, plus the five-episode Sea Devils spinoff The War Between the Land and the Sea.
A 2025 Christmas special wasn’t part of the initial package and so presumably its fate hangs in the same balance as the potential third series with Ncuti Gatwa in the TARDIS. If a decision isn’t made until say, April or May of this year, would that make it too late for a 2025 Christmas special to air?
Not necessarily. Although filming on the 2024 festive episode was wrapped by late 2023, that was an unusually long lead time. 2015 Christmas special “The Husbands of River Song” filmed in September and wrapped just three months before it aired. If a script has, as rumoured, already been written for a 2025 festive episode, then it’s still a feasible turnaround.
Acknowledging Davies’ and excitement for the new episodes, it’s nonetheless hard not to read nostalgic melancholy into his DWM 613 report. He reminisces about the non-clip trailers they used to make in the eras of the Ninth, Tenth and Eleventh Doctors and ponders bringing them back. “I liked them. Maybe it’s time to do that again. But we’ll see, it’s too soon to say!” Davies goes on to describe the vast Bad Wolf soundstages empty of Doctor Who sets earlier this month. “The studios creak. Dust in the air. An old coffee cup on its side where a Titan will soon stand on your TV. Plans sit waiting.” The TARDIS, he writes, “sits in shadow. Like a secret.”
Let’s hope those plans aren’t left waiting for much longer and that Davies is just teasing us with all that desolate imagery to make the announcement of more Doctor Who even more spectacular when it arrives. Fingers crossed that the TARDIS-secret turns out to be a good one.
Doctor Who series 15 (or season two, depending on your preference) will land on BBC One and iPlayer in the UK, and on Disney+ around the world, later this year.
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