‘Goodbye Whoverse. My God, that was fun!’ : Russell T Davies on writing the ending of Doctor Who | Russell T Davies

BIllie Piper surprised us all. We knew Ncuti Gatwa was leaving, so I had written the climax in which the Doctor, after saving a baby’s life in The Church on Ruby Road, the first episode of Ncuti, now leaves saving a baby’s life because the universe is at stake. But we had to make these final episodes not knowing whether the Disney contract would be renewed. It had nothing to do with us at (independent production company) Bad Wolf; this was due to conversations with Disney and the BBC. So we had no idea what was going on. Deep down, I thought no. You could guess what I was thinking, because I was already creating a new work: Tip Toe for Channel 4, and I was also putting together the dance version of It’s a Sin with Rambert. In fact, in some ways it would have been a nightmare for me if that third series had happened, but I would have made it through.

While the third series was in development, the finale was set to culminate with unlimited regeneration. So we shot this with Ncuti: he smiled and said his last line, and the screen faded into a golden glow… Except when we edited this together, it looked like the death of the show. We said, “Think about the kids watching this. It’s like death. We can’t do this to them.”

By the time we got to the edit, it was pretty much confirmed that Disney had said no. Unfortunately, we had to wait months because the BBC was in a difficult situation. The BBC is always slow to act in a crisis, simply because it is a very large institution. And at the same time, people were leaving the BBC, like Charlotte Moore (director of content), who had always been one of the biggest champions of Doctor Who. But now she was gone. And the BBC never knows how to deliver bad news. In all honesty, who really does it? And the BBC has plenty of right-wing press and media barons ready to attack every decision it makes, so it’s no wonder it’s nervous. As a result, there was a delay of several months during which none of us could say anything and none of us could do anything, because they wanted to put all the pieces in place to say how and why this show failed.

At the same time, there was the launch and transmission of the second series. So you can understand why there was a delay. We couldn’t start a new batch of episodes and say, “Oh, by the way, this deal is falling apart.” I completely understood.

We were stuck in limbo with several months of inaction, while I sat there watching an ending that felt too much like an ending. So I called a Zoom with all of our executives, and I said, “We can’t transmit this. “We need someone to step up. We need someone to be there. Someone he can physically regenerate into before our eyes. We decided that the Doctor should regenerate into… Billie Piper!

We approached her and she was very excited to do it, because she loves Doctor Who and she loves the team. We all remained great friends over the years and Bad Wolf made Billie’s I Hate Suzie series. She gave us the quickest yes we could have had.

And it worked, because everyone was paying attention to the show again. I can’t begin to tell you how many people – on the street, students here in Manchester, members of my own family – were talking about it. Two days after the transmission, I went to Charlotte Moore’s farewell drink in London. The great and good of television were there, and I couldn’t believe how many people asked me about Billie. Real seasoned TV professionals who I never thought were watching Doctor Who, all saying, “Billie, Billie, Billie!”

There was only one problem.

Like I said, everyone hates breaking bad news. Thus, when announcing the end of the Disney deal, the BBC wanted to announce at the same time the existence of a 2026 Christmas special, to confirm its dedication to the show. Now, I had doubts from the start – a Christmas special about what, for whom, where is the money coming from? – but for the first time in my life, I let my name appear in a press release that made me a little uncomfortable. That will teach me!

But I had a story. I presented it to the BBC and they loved it. An old-time English village interspersed with a huge and mysterious spaceship, a space festival called Winternox, and many Daleks, with something very unexpected hidden… Oh, yes, I liked that!

Then everything slowed down. Let’s be real, when a show isn’t in production, it slips off everyone’s lists. Production thrives on energy, and it is dangerous when it dissipates. I didn’t even get a contract to write the Christmas Special until late March 2026, after it was announced as October 2025.

And then I was very busy with Tip Toe, busier than I expected, because Channel 4 wanted to transmit it as quickly as possible; it was so topical, and there was dialogue about Keir Starmer and Kemi Badenoch that was in danger of being outdated if we didn’t hurry. And then Billie got busy with this awesome Netflix show on Wednesday, so the time continued to pass. There was even talk about whether this might become an Easter Special for 2027. For a while, I became obsessed with the idea of ​​a Christmas story carried over to Easter, because, as part of the plot, time was thrown out of whack. The Doctor runs around shouting, “It’s not really Christmas!” » A little meta, but fun.

But then I thought: listen to yourself. What do you say? A Christmas at Easter special, which then leads to… what? At exactly the same time, projects are accelerating at the BBC. The biggest changes in television happen when bosses change, and now it’s happening again. Things had slowed down when Charlotte Moore left, but then new boss Kate Phillips took to Doctor Who with energy and vigor. Which I really enjoyed, because when you’re in a high position at the BBC you have to deal with Trump, Netanyahu, Reform and a million problems every day. So it’s hard to put an old sci-fi show at the top of your list. But Kate did it! Which gives me enormous confidence in the future of the series. But it impacted us at the same time.

The BBC has always talked about one day going to tender on Doctor Who, as this respects the Royal Charter and agreement requiring all television content to be subject to free market competition. We had always thought that the tender could take place somewhere in the future, maybe in 2028 or 2029. But suddenly it was decided to start the process in 2027. It’s true! GOOD! Great!

Except that leaves one question. What is this Christmas special? There is an immense era behind us, there is an immense era before us, what is this thing in the middle? A single episode that is neither here nor there, neither fish nor fowl. It really existed to please fans, except the irony is that it was exactly the kind of episode that fans wouldn’t like. On top of all that, the tender became a good exit point for me and Bad Wolf. Let’s be realistic, we weren’t going to come back a third time! So, I quietly said to myself: I’m going to spend a year working on this, but everything will be disclosed before it airs.

BListen to me for a little tangent here. When it comes to science fiction, the problem of online leaks is now so vast and so pernicious that it threatens to ruin everything. And it’s fiercer than ever with Doctor Who. Every decision we made, every plot twist, every moment, right down to Billie’s appearance in the very last seconds of the last series finale, has been leaked. It’s absolutely extraordinary, and I swear it has destroyed the profile of the series a lot. This introduces cynicism into fans, as they are no longer surprised by anything. Their response to a leak is weariness, an instant assumption that what has been leaked won’t work. They instantly imagine the worst version of it, and then when they finally see it, it inevitably confirms their bias. So we had to work for two years knowing that there were leaks, and yet we were powerless.

The BBC managed to track down the person posting the information online, but it was a member of the public. They were probably friends with someone at some point in the Doctor Who delivery chain, and we simply had no legal right to seize that person’s emails. I wish we did. This was my copyrighted material – why don’t I have the legal right to have this person arrested? But the BBC has always been very afraid of what this might look like: a member of the public prosecuted for simple copyright infringement; it would be like breaking a butterfly on a wheel.

To this day, we don’t know who the leaker was, which made us suspicious of every person we worked with. There have been some awkward conversations at work. But at some point, all of these episodes go through a hundred technical processes in a hundred different suites, and I’m sure it’s just some random person sitting in the back of a room — not the one in charge, but the person whose job it is to simply press play on every single thing we’ve done, who would then tell their mate, who would then post it online. That person is still out there. They may be reading this and frothing with joy. Well done, buddy, enjoy your masturbation. But we were helpless, absolutely powerless, to do anything. I think this little element of…