BBC shares major update on Doctor Who future amid hiatus

Doctor Who will return with or without the extra funding from Disney, BBC bosses confirmed yesterday.

The sci-fi show is currently on a hiatus following the end of the two-year deal with Disney, which culminated with the departure of Ncuti Gatwa in the title role.

Crushing rumours that the show would not return if Disney’s huge cash injection did not return, the BBC’s new head of content Kate Phillips said: "Rest assured Doctor Who is going nowhere. Disney has been a great partnership and it continues with The War Between The Land And The Sea next year."

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Speaking at the Edinburgh TV Festival Kate, who is just two months into her job, stressed: “With or without Disney, Doctor Who will still be on the BBC."

The uncertainty around the series has been caused by Disney's continuing reluctance to commit to either renewing its funding deal with the BBC - or pull out.

But show creator Russell T Davies has indicated he’s already working on scripts for the next series, and also for another one after that.

Later in the session, the BBC's drama controller Lindsay Salt said she had “no update” in terms of timings " on Doctor Who but said that information would be made public as soon as it was possible.

Agreeing with Kate, she said the BBC commitment to Doctor Who as one of its biggest brands was water-tight, adding that the show was "hugely important to us"."

Now Doctor Who fans have the spin-off show, The War Between the Land and the Sea, which expected to start around Christmas.

Disney reportedly injected around £100million into Doctor Who, which gave a a significant boost to the show's production budget, allowing for CGI use of dinosaurs and other stunts.

There is still a chance that the deal will be renewed, or that BBC Studios will find another partner to join forces with.

In the session about the BBC, Kate also said the corporation “acted fast” after misconduct allegations against former MasterChef presenter Gregg Wallace.

And she urged anyone who felt they had grievances to air against top talent to come forward, stressing that they would be taken seriously. “No one is irreplaceable,” she said.

On MasterChef, she said she’d acted on the information she’d had in 2019. “So there were two complaints. I dealt with them. I acted on them fast. I think I acted responsibly. I left him in no doubt of the expected behaviour that we expect at the BBC, if you like. I stand by the actions I took at the time with the knowledge that I had. Other allegations didn’t come to us until much later, sort of at the end of 2023, and at that point we did act, and we acted fast.”

Wallace was dropped from the series after multiple claims of inappropriate language and behaviour against him were upheld. Later his co-host John Torode was also dismissed after a complaint over his “racist language” was upheld.

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