Was anyone else aware that the new Dr Who series was starting tonight??

[bizzey]

😮..I have come across it by accident.

Last year it was was well advertised.
The TARDIS flying on the BBC screen at every opportunity and so.

I do record a lot of my programmes so maybe I missed it ?

But I didn't last year 🤔.

And I really thought they said it was going to be May for the new series ?

Have I been on another planet ? 😂😂😂 !!

That's how I understood it.

Poppy in space babies is why she turns up in Wish world ie a baby they already knew and remember being repurpose.

However not sure why she was in The Story and the Engine at all - maybe as she a story some by product of story machine - I'm really not sure - make very little sense to me.

DH is a massive Whovian so I've seen all the "new" episodes, and a couple of the vintage ones.

The Ncuti series have been my absolute favourites. After the twist last night, I'm excited for the next one!

She was getting back to her job and her parents in first world - he job was really important to be back for.

Last one when she became a mother it was all about getting back to kid - didn't register nursing was really a focus to me. TBH as a mother getting back to my kids would be important more so than a job - but delegating traveling in a time machine to when Poppy grown smaks of not a person but a MUM thinking to me.

I've seen in it a few things now either ignore motherhood entirely or motherhood is really all woman then are - made me think of those other shows when they did that.

But normal for Timelords and could have created some great storylines with Tardis childcare involved or Belinda travelling off with occasional DGP care and returning just in time for the playgroup play.

The destruction of Conrads “bad” ‘world in which women (and Belinda) can only be SAHMs was replaced by a world where women are equally constrained by motherhood, they just get to do approved paid work as well but can’t do anything exciting or risky. So new improved world, same as the old bad world which says a lot about the cultural creating group I mentioned earlier.

In the real world women do dangerous jobs and have children - it could be an interesting mine of stories.

The next one may not happened - it's a wait and see.

The BBC seem to have floated idea of hiatus of a few years - but have publcilaly said nothing is decided - and viewing figure have been on very low side all series and on downward trend even with later veiwing via Iplayer. Disney also not said they are renewing their deal.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/clyvzy82l4no

There is still uncertainty about when the drama will return. Russell T Davies has previously said that no decision would be made on commissioning the next series until this series had been broadcast.
The last two series of the show have been co-produced and broadcast internationally by streaming service Disney+, which has given the time travel drama a bigger budget. Discussions about whether the BBC and Disney wish to renew that deal, or whether other options should be explored, are likely to take some time.
For a new series to be ready for 2026, production would need to get under way relatively soon. So at the moment a new series or a special starring Billie Piper before 2027 looks unlikely.

I’d have no problem with Billy Piper as the new Dr, sadly they could cast Tom Hardy, Idris Elba etc and it would make not the slightest difference until they get back to watchable storylines. How it’s gone from the excellent stories when it came back with Christopher Ecclestone and the early David Tennant episodes to the utter drivel it is now is beyond comprehension

Hopefully it'll make sense if it does return rather then happening for the sake of it. Episode was all over the place and whereas before this would've been a shock now less so just case of she's back again in some form.

Its a shame if this is the end he didnt get longer. Again his doctor seemed a bit all over the place though. Shame

The next one may not happened - it's a wait and see

Is that Dr Who timeywimey stuff there, @CatHairEveryWhereNow ! Love it!

I despised the shoe horn ‘Rosie is so fabulous, Conrad couldn’t imagine her’ stuff.

And generally feel like I’ve been through the washing machine. All partially inside out and tangled up, damp, dizzy and uncomfortable.

I’ll be slightly sad not to have NC to look forward to on Saturdays - but given his range and current professional ‘hotness’ (in terms of work he might be offered) I’d have been surprised if he wanted to spend too much time within the limitations of a show watched by children (as well as adults, obviously). The role doesn’t afford the kind of acting opportunities he had on Sex Education, and no amount of hugging or crying on Doctor Who is going to earn him an Oscar.

(Thus far I’ve been less impressed with his stage performance, but I’ve only seen Earnest and perhaps other things might suit him better.)

He’s a magnetic screen presence - but I can’t help wondering what he’d have made of, say, The Eleventh Hour, or The Girl Who Waited, or A Good Man Goes to War.

This is an interesting and more sympathetic take on the finale:

https://them0vieblog.com/2025/05/31/doctor-who-the-reality-war-review/

There is a very obvious problem with this. Davies isn’t as good at basic structure and construction as Moffat is. Most of Davies’ finales are big messy muddles, like Doomsday and The Last of the Time Lords. Even the Davies era finales that work, such as The Parting of the Ways or Journey’s End, work largely because they find a strong enough emotional core to cut through that messiness, rather than because they are any more disciplined.

When it comes to his series finales, Davies has never been an especially disciplined writer or showrunner. His impulse has always been to go big, with the fate of the planet or the cosmos on the line. The additional Disney budget arguably does Davies no favours, instead giving him a blank cheque to indulge his biggest and silliest ideas without any constraints.

I’ve heard a few interviews with tv/film writers talking about writing discipline in this way (across different genres).

Some of them after years of working in TV and working to really tight disciplines - x minutes per episode, advertising breaks at a,b and c minutes, cliff hanger to drop in minute 48, max of z actors, budgets for everything etc found the “freedom” of the big money streamers seductive but problematic.

The discipline imposed by all the limits forced focused and good quality writing. Take away the constraints and the temptation to “do” everything was hard to resist. Similarly film writers and editors who used to structure films to fairly fixed limits of 80/100 minutes found it harder to write given scope to fill up three hours. The hard nosed self editing discipline goes out the window.

In the case of Doc Who the time window remained (appropriately 😀). but bigger budgets have not helped and there has been heavy use of special effects which often feels superfluous. I wouldn’t want to return to old carpet for yetis but that temptation to eat the whole sweet shop is painfully familiar in recent series.
Perhaps it would have worked better if Moffat had written the finale as a more disciplined writer, leaving RTD as the overall show runner.

I’ve just finished reading The Writer’s Tale, which is RTD’s take on the last couple of years of Tennant’s tenure. There’s certainly a lot of times that things are cut/changed because he has to save on the FX etc.

A brief, sad goodbye:

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2025/jun/02/why-did-ncuti-gatwa-leave-doctor-who-so-soon

The Writer’s Tale is a stupendous read! Highly recommend.

But there’s no doubt RTD has proved a better show runner than writer on Doctor Who. Though it’s true the Disney money, or something, has destabilised the running of this and the last season. It’s such a shame.

That would have been under the Beeb’s more limited budgets? In which case its consistent with the article and what I’ve heard from writers.

From what we have seen over the last couple of seasons I can’t see any shortage of FX, just rather too much of it. I’d say the two best episodes of this series were The Well and Story and the Engine, both of which were “old fashioned” character/story driven episodes with less dominating FX.

Agree!

I wonder if it suffered from having RTD do too much. He wrote 6 of Gatwa’s first 8 and 4.5 of the second 8. Moffat wrote Boom and Joy to the World. Chibnall and Gatiss weren’t involved at all. So there was less of an “equal team” than for the Nine/Ten episodes.

Ooh, something that I would like to see is the Fugitive Doctor and Rose (as companion) in an xmas special. The glowing around her could be something to do with pulling Rose out of the other dimension, rather than her being the regeneration

I’m sure they’ll have a loooooooooooooooooooong time to come up with a reason for Ms Piper’s appearance.

I like her as an actress but would find her insertion as Doctor verging on unacceptable. They need to have the courage to finally move on.

Assuming we get a next series I want Daleks, cybermen, more episodes in a series, (and the moon on a stick??)

Just to start another argument the Times’ “experts” top 20 episodes of the post 2005 era😀:

https://www.thetimes.com/article/e8a7ce5b-47e0-41e5-a541-65e926a0aa6f?shareToken=cc7a1a1c16e70105d9e2c59cb14e8e69

I suspect we can mostly get behind their choice for #1 (well I can) but lots of room for quibbling over much of the rest of the list - both content and placing.

Yes if we can’t have daleks and cybermen every series (which I reluctantly accept) we should have a minimum quota across series 🤓

Is there much more to say about Daleks and Cybermen?

Is the earth still supposed to be half human half zygon?

@SheilaFentiman always room for tin cans! I assume we’re still half zygon. But who knows these days!

Well that Times list is just wrong. If I rated 20 we'd be here all day, but I can offer

5 -The husbands of River Song - unfortunate for the introduction of Nardole and underuse of Greg Davies, but the end had me weeping - and all done without snogging.

1. Human Nature/Family of blood - poor old John Smith, marvellous Martha

1. Journeys end - Donna getting her brain wiped. I initially had issues with Catherine Tate - I was weeping at the end - to have all of her adventures taken away, to 'just be a temp' again. The sense of companion as representative of fandom - could that be us? Did we travel and we've forgotten? More tears.

1. The doctor the widow and the wardrobe - my favourite Xmas episode. Even more tears. I see a pattern.

1. Vincent & the Doctor. Combining two of my favourite things - & the doctors awkwardness around VVGs mental health and that he couldn't fix everything.

& here we currently are, twirling in a kilt and calling everyone 'babes'.