There's a general dislike amongst holders of big IPs about doing that. They fear, maybe rightly, maybe not (I believe that Doctor Who actually did rather well whilst it wasn't on the screen), that if an IP isn't constantly in people's faces with new material, that they won't be able to sell as much supplementary stuff, like merchandising, and that viewers are less likely to check out existing media (of course, if the new media is rubbish, then people are less likely to look up older stuff).
Yes and no though.
Doctor Who is similar to
Star Wars and
Star Trek where theres an entire media empire out there associated with the IP. The Whoniverse includes audios, novels, audiobooks, and comics that continue interest in the show. And since the RTD/Moffat changeover, it has gone on hiatus for a couple of years to usher in a new production crew. So it's not abnormal to have a pause on the Doctor for a few years. While it wasn't a big shock that they decided to cancel the Christmas special, considering there wasn't a developed script and no production has occurred in 2026, it is a small shock that they didn't have any plan to tide over with a special or two while they reconfigured the series going forward.
RTD and Bad Wolf made so many mistakes with this recent run that I think it's smart BBC is putting a pause on the show until they can figure out a path forward. I'd say working on a feature film that was maybe 2.5-3 hours long to tide us over until a full new series would be ideal. Not a TV movie like the 90s movie. But a full feature that would go worldwide.
Also, getting back to 12 episodes a season, where we can actually get to know the Doctor and his companions, would be ideal. Social commentary as a throughline instead of in your face would also be ideal. That's what made the first 7 seasons of New Who so good, and what makes science fiction in general such a fun genre. It means you assume your audience has intelligence to see through the monster of the week, or the general plot, and understand the nuances of the episode. Media in general has gotten terrible at that.
Doctor Who has gone offline before but back then it still had a die hard fanbase and relatively intact lore to build off of. This time all it has in an activist class who thought the latest stuff was fabulously queer and wonderful...but didn't show up to watch it because they're fickle. Not to mention that for a lot of them its not about loving a thing but seeing a thing taken away from people you don't like and having it align with what you believe. Then you can busily ignore it.
I disagree with this. It feels very generalized. People stopped watching because it wasn't the same show. The DNA of the show was not there. "Boom
" and "73 Yards" were the only two episodes that felt like
Doctor Who in series 14 (and it must be noted that Steven Moffat wrote "Boom".) I enjoyed "Dot and Bubble" but it felt more like an episode of
Black Mirror than
Doctor Who. I also enjoyed "Rogue
" as a spoof of Bridgerton, which I've never seen though it was a fun episode--however, it still didn't really feel like a
Doctor Who episode. The finale was absolutely terrible and made no sense. Whle "Joy to the World" felt like a Doctor Who special, "The Church on Ruby Road" did not. Not one of the 8 episodes of
Series 15 really felt like Doctor Who. The best episode of the fifteenth series was Ruby focused and barely had the Doctor in it.
The failure of RTD's second run didn't have anything to do with an "activist class" loving it and not showing up. It had to do with the choice to change the DNA of the show to something that wasn't
Doctor Who anymore--which Davies himself admitted was his goal when he said he was going to shift focus to bring in a younger audience. It's the same reason why Buffy seasons 6 & 7 is panned by its core audience. It didn't feel like Buffy anymore. The DNA of the show vanished. Even the structure of the season shifted. You didn't have a true "Big Bad" in season 6 or 7.The First is not a "Big Bad". The First is a concept that was a great MOTW that pushed both Buffy and Angel's character arc forward, but it wasn't a true Big Bad that could be taken down. (Though again even 6/7 was loads better than much of the garbage we have today) Creators and showrunners think "we need to change things up to keep things fresh" and it almost always fails because they alienate the audience that has followed them for so long.
Personally I don't see DW coming back for a good long while; there needs to be a hard culture shift away from identity politics which, although its fading, isn't going to disappear any time soon.
I kind of(?) agree with you about the "identity politics" but I think this statement misses the mark a little. As mentioned previously, I think it's less about the identity politics and more about the overt politics shoved in our faces, instead of the nuance of subtext driving the point home. Classic sci-fi used "alien species" and fantastical elements to make social commentary. It's why Classic Who, Classic Star Trek, Buffy (seasons 1-5), New Who (seasons 1-7), etc were so great. We were given a plot our characters had to overcome, and embedded within the characters and story was the social commentary about our world at large. Making Ruby Noble trans and then commenting about her trans identity throughout
The Star Beast is overt, in your face, and alienating for the audience. Having her be a fully written trans character that had her own arc throughout the specials would have been a better way to go, as it would have been a better representation of trans people being embedded into our society instead of a special character or plot.
Unfortunately, in a mega-capitalist world--production companies don't care about commentary, they care about profit. If series and movies can make great social commentary (and win awards) while also making them lots of money, they're good. If the commentary is trash but they made lots of money, they're good. If the commentary is on point but they made okay money or they dipped, production dips. If the commentary is trash and they don't make money, they kill it off. RTD and Bad Wolf landed in the last category this time. By pandering to a "younger audience" (aka developing trash) they alienated the die-hard Whovians, and Disney bounced. Now BBC is left with an IP that has no extra backing and is expensive to make.
The kicker here is.. I don't see production companies changing. We're now in a world where consumers are inundated with so much content, and production companies are producing so much content, they have to have properties that will turn profit to make up the difference. If you have an expensive project that won't turn a profit for them, they will kill it. Its why Warner Discovery killed off the Batgirl film (and others in 2022). They were bleeding money and they decided to cancel projects that they didn't think were going to be well-received and they could recoup on tax relief. Same thing with Buffy: New Sunnydale. Hulu/Disney was afraid it wasn't going to land with audiences, so they killed it instead of wasting money. We've become an overproduced society, and now that all the major media companies keep merging, we're going to see more properties being killed off. It's not about "making art" or social commentary, it's about money. Or, as First Buffy once said "It's about power".
And identity politics.. that's what sells right now. And production companies love to exploit this division because people show up for something that aligns to their identity/beliefs. What they are getting wrong is the overt identity politics and performative choices in media is what will kill off franchises. The Doctor has always (at least sense the revival) been ambiguous in sexuality. The Doctor has always been campy. Not one of the Doctors prior to Thirteen were ever uber-masculine or traditionally heterosexual. They were quirky and odd and eccentric. Even though Thirteen was a female, she still had a bit of quirkiness and oddball to her. With a better showrunner, we could have seen more from her and a better Female Doctor. The storylines were just garbage and then revisionist, which alienated fans (and why RTD was brought back by BBC). Then, instead of going back to form and having a doctor closer to Tenant, we go full on gender fluid and making decisions like he's 23 instead of thousands of years old. Again, had we had a better showrunner, Ncuti actually could have been a much better Doctor. The DNA of the Doctor as a Character was revised by both Chibnall and Davies in the Thirteenth and Fifteenth doctors to the point that it didn't feel like The Doctor anymore.
