Doctor Who was destroyed by wokeness

So farewell then, Doctor Who.

It was once the jewel in the tarnished crown of the BBC – remember those Christmas idents of 2009, when David Tennant charmed a devoted nation with his reindeer-drawn TARDIS? But this week, the BBC announced that not even its heralded ‘festive special’ would go ahead. As it stands, the show’s future looks uncertain, with the BBC reported to be inviting production companies to pitch for a role potentially co-producing a new series.

The announcement was greeted not with national sorrow but with a collective shrug of the shoulders and an embarrassed sigh of relief. However beloved something is, there’s only so long you can watch it suffer.

The scriptwriter, Russell T Davies, had assured us in December 2025, following Ncuti Gatwa’s calamitous run as the Doctor, that he had already shared his plan for that next Christmas special with the BBC bosses, and they had been left with ‘jaws agape, loving it’. To be fair, maybe their jaws were agape, but with something other than love.

Davies had originally left the show in 2010 along with David Tennant, both of their reputations burnished to a dazzling sheen and their fan bases solid and adoring. Tennant’s finale was thrilling, heartrending and genuine; the fate of Catherine Tate’s Donna left much of the nation sobbing. Goodness, that man Davies could write.

Never has the advice ‘quit while you’re ahead’ seemed so apposite. Why on Earth did he come back in 2022, to reclaim his throne in the wake of showrunner and head writer Chris Chibnall’s awful rewrite of the entire canon? It’s a fair bet it’s a question that will haunt the BBC at least until they find a new Doctor (what used to be a career-making role has become a career-wrecking one) and a new production partner (Disney got the hell out of Dodge as soon as they realised they’d bought an over-ripe turkey).

Davies’s two-season run with Gatwa in the TARDIS was characterised by flimsy plots, atrocious writing and an apparent determination to alienate what was left of the show’s already decimated fanbase. Drag queens and villainous white men were the obsession, and the Doctor himself never stopped blubbing. Existing fans were derided – literally, in one ridiculous episode – and Ncuti Gatwa advised fans to stop watching the show and ‘touch grass’ if the show wasn’t for them.

Ahead of Gatwa’s introduction, in a move that was a crime against fiction and genuine emotion, Tate’s character was brought back. This was just so that she could have a cross-dressing ‘transgender’ son and they could both scold the Doctor, at that moment played by David Tennant, about pronouns and his white male privilege.

Why did Davies return? He clearly didn’t do it out of love, because the vandalism he inflicted on his characters and their arcs – and the show’s decades of history – reeked more of contempt. I can only conclude that he came back out of spite, even when it was astonishingly self-defeating. ‘Here’s my chance to stick it to everybody I don’t like, and to hell with a show that has had the heart and admiration of a nation since their grandparents were small enough to hide behind the sofa.’

When I was a children’s writer, I used to recommend Davies’s co-authored 2008 book, Doctor Who: The Writer’s Tale, on school visits. It had such heart and passion wrapped up in expertise. In it, Davies explained that he was against using writing to hammer home ‘messages’. He particularly understood television writing, and was lightly dismissive of physics in favour of drama – impressive flames in oxygen-free outer space, anyone?

Well, it’s all gone now, destroyed for a man’s political obsessions. Even Davies’s Instagram statement on Wednesday came across as a ya-boo-sucks-to-you-all parting shot: ‘There won’t be a Christmas special – we only cooked that up to guarantee a future when no one knew what would happen… there was no script, I never wrote it.’

In other words, he lied and tried to deceive the audience. I’m not sure the Doctor would approve, but it hardly matters. Despite what Davies must have hoped would be grief and anguish at the news, there were only relieved grunts. We all knew already. The last few seasons mortally wounded a beloved national institution, but the old dog was in pain and a trip to the vets was cruelly overdue. ‘Here comes the future, vworp vworp!’, concludes Davies airily.

Vworp vworp, Doctor. We’re surprisingly happy to let you go.

Gillian Philip is a writer and a driver in the haulage industry.