The current season of Doctor Who has gotten pretty decent marks from fans, but ratings have been falling. Season 13, the last featuring Jodie Whittaker as the Doctor, averaged around five million viewers per episode, according to Barb, the UK's official ratings body. Season 14, the first full season with Ncuti Gatwa as the Doctor, averaged around four million per episode. The current season is averaging around three million. With ratings falling, lots of rumors are flying about the show's future, or lack thereof. A chunky new one dropped today on the front page of The Sun, claimed that Gatwa had been fired:
BBC denied this outright, saying that reports of Gatwa's firing were "pure fiction," per Deadline. But it didn't deny that Gatwa may have quit, which is another rumor that's been floating around out there; Gatwa himself has stayed mostly quite on the matter.
And BBC didn't address whether the current season of Doctor Who might mark the end of the co-production agreement between BBC and Disney, which has resulted in an injection of cash into the show. “As we have previously stated, the decision on Season [16] will be made after Season [15] airs and any other claims are just pure speculation," a spokesperson said. "The deal with Disney+ was for 26 episodes – and we still have an entire spin-off, The War Between the Land and the Sea, to air. And as for the rest, we never comment on the Doctor and future storylines.”
BBC also didn't comment on rumors that the show may go on a hiatus after this latest season, something that even showrunner Russell T Davies has contemplated. "Sometimes there might be a pause, and during that pause, the viewers of Newsround now will grow up a few years and start writing stories and they’ll bring it back,” he said recently. “So I have absolute faith that that will survive because I am living proof of it and that’s what happens to good ideas. No good idea ever dies.”
At the same time, Davies has also talked about there already being scripts written for future seasons, and we've heard reports that the show would continue on BBC even if the Disney+ deal ends. So we're getting some mixed messages, but on the whole, it sounds like the show is headed for some kind of inflection point. I think Davies is probably onto something when he says the series might take a break for a while and could get rebooted later. It's happened before. The first-ever season of Doctor Who aired in 1963, aired for 26 seasons, took a break starting in the late 1980s, and got rebooted in the mid-2000s by Davies himself. Maybe we're on the brink of another hiatus.
Or maybe they'll keep making Doctor Who with a smaller budget; at this point, the options are open, but I'm betting we hear something fairly soon. The season 15 finale will air simultaneously on Disney+ and BBC on May 31.
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