In 2005, after 19 years off the air, Doctor Who made its triumphant return to TV screens with Russell T. Davies at the helm. After four seasons and three specials, Davies exited the series, with Steven Moffat and Chris Chibnall taking the reins and keeping the adventures of The Doctor and their companions continuing for a further nine seasons. And now, another 19 years after Davies rebooted the series, he is back as showrunner and ready to launch Doctor Who for a new generation.

With a new Doctor and Companion, and a new production partner in Disney+, the quintessentially British show from the BBC seeks to expand its audience even further. So far, Doctor Who is bigger and better than ever, with ratings for its 60th-anniversary and Christmas specials in 2023 having reached some of the highest of the series’ run so far. Now, the sci-fi show is expanding its global reach as it is translated into new languages and new countries around the globe.

A Bit of Background About Doctor Who
Doctor Who Originally premiered in 1963, Doctor Who is a sci-fi series that follows a powerful being known as a Time Lord, referred to as the Doctor. Using an interdimensional time-traveling ship known as the TARDIS, the Doctor travels time and space with various companions as they solve multiple problems and help avert catastrophe as much as they almost cause it. Though the Doctor is always the same character, they experience regenerations, allowing them to be recast every few seasons as a unique immortal being with new personality traits.Release Date March 26, 2005 Seasons 14 Streaming Service(s) Disney+

Launched on November 23, 1963, Doctor Who tells the story of The Doctor, an alien known as a Time Lord who travels through time and space in a living ship known as the TARDIS, which takes the form of a 1960s British Police Box. Through the ingenious idea of regeneration, the series has continued for decades via a process that allows The Doctor to change their form instead of dying, casting a new actor whenever the lead is ready to move onto different projects.

Accompanying The Doctor in the TARDIS are a series of companions, both human and Time Lord, moving with The Doctor through their adventures across time and space. Doctor Who originally ran continuously for 26 years, from 1963 through 1989, with an unsuccessful relaunch attempt in 1996 in the form of a TV movie made in partnership with Fox in the US.

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After Davies’ surprising return to the world of Doctor Whowas announced in September of 2021, Whovians have only had brief tastes of the new era with two 60th-anniversary specials featuring the return of fan-favorite Doctor, David Tennant, and his companion Donna Noble, as played by Catherine Tate. We then got the 2023 Christmas Special that officially launched the new 15th Doctor, played by Ncuti Gatwa, and introduced his first companion, Ruby Sunday, played by Millie Gibson.

The much anticipated new season of the series will finally premiere this week, over a year after it completed production, and with a second season well into filming. With promotion for Doctor Who’s new era well underway, MovieWeb was fortunate enough to sit down with Russell T. Davies to talk about his return to the role at the helm of Doctor Who.

Making Doctor Who Bigger and Better than Ever

In the years since he exited Doctor Who in 2010, Davies has focused largely on queer storytelling in the form of successful TV miniseries such as A Very English Scandal, Cucumber, Banana, and the 1980s set drama about the AIDS epidemic, It’s a Sin.

So why now, with so many prestigious and celebrated series under his belt, did Davies want to return to the Whoniverse? “It was the chance to make it even bigger. I’m just hungry,” confesses Davies. “And I can’t believe that there are still people that don’t watch Doctor Who. We got the highest viewing figures it’s ever got. We were the number one show in Britain. And we got amazing figures in other countries of the world, but just not enough.” He continued:

The BBC were ambitious.
They always wanted the show to be bigger
. They just believed in Doctor Who. It’s an old, fantastic tradition of the BBC. The two things are woven together, Doctor Who and the BBC, and they’ve always had such faith in it. In Britain, you get Tarzan, and you get Sherlock Holmes, and you get Doctor Who. And he’s the one television legend. The others are from literature, but
he’s a proper British television legend, and there’s not many of those
. So there’s enormous pride that wants to take you forward into being a great big streaming show.

Doctor Who has long been a staple of British culture and identity, but it is still relatively niche in the rest of the world, and the desire to launch it on a larger scale appealed massively to Davies and the BBC. They would look to streaming successes of series like Stranger Things on Netflix, and envy that success. “Love that show,” Davies admits, “But I’d just be jealous, just be envious. And I’d also be sad that people are watching that and not seeing Doctor Who.”

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Doctor Who Visits Disney+

So it was the BBC that had the impetus and the desire to take Doctor Who to a whole new level, and they felt that Davies was the right person for the job. According to Davies, he didn’t hesitate for a second when asked to make the return. Especially when told that Disney+ would be a streaming partner for Doctor Who.

They asked me and it literally took three seconds to say I completely agree. I’d already independently, while not working for the BBC, had already thought the same thing about the show. It was time to take it up a level.

“And as to how to do that, we go to a partnership with Disney+, because their shows are the best. I love their ethos, I love their vision, I love their standards,” added Davis. “And that was a very natural fit, especially when they’re the ones who have been bringing all the science fiction franchises to the screen so joyfully. I love those shows. So I mean, that wasn’t up to me, that was decided on a business level of the BBC, but I was very happy to go along with that.”

Just Don’t Call It a Reboot
Disney+

There is one aspect of this relaunch that Davies does seem particularly intent on emphasizing. While a whole new audience will be finding Doctor Who, and keeping the series open and accessible to those viewers is of paramount importance to Davies, he is adamant that this is not reboot. “We never ever call it a reboot,” he emphasizes. “Even in 2005 we didn’t call it a reboot.” David continues:

I think it’s remarkable that it has been the same story since 1963.
It is one story of one person.
It’s had all sorts of different forms, but it’s never said that it’s a completely new start at any point and I love that.

He adds, “But it was important this time to sort of say, this is a worldwide platform. Suddenly it’s been translated into languages it’d never been available in before. It’s always sold very well worldwide, but not in all these languages. Not always with subtitles. And I think, for me, that’s really the best thing we can do in this life, is to become one world and one globe and all fight together. And if we have to do that through science fiction franchises, that’s the battlefield I’m on, and I think it’s a wonderful opportunity, so that I’ve written it as fresh and open and new.”

“So please, new people, come and join in!” he adds earnestly.

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Incorporating 60 Years of Doctor Who Lore (Except One Thing)

When Davies relaunched Doctor Who in 2005, it had been nearly 20 years since new on-screen content had been created, giving him an almost clean slate from which to launch the series to a new generation of viewers. Since then, new Who has been pretty continuous, and Davies is back. Yet, he doesn’t see any real difference in his role as showrunner now versus 2005. “I think I know my lore well enough to be clever with it and nimble with it,” he boasts. “The show has always been very marvelously resilient, and sometimes it’ll introduce things into the lore that will work, sometimes it introduces things that don’t.”

Davies went on to mention something which simply did not work, and which has been basically ignored (or retconned):

“When Paul McGann came along and was a one-off Doctor in 1996, that episode suddenly declared that his mother was human. And all of us fans sat there and blinked and went ‘All right, that’s news to us,’ and we’ve marvelously ignored that ever since. That’s strangely never been mentioned ever since.
And that’s not my version of

Doctor Who
.”

“But it’s such an imaginative show,” continued Davies. “If you want to just think the ways around it — it’s a time travel show — so you can admit all sorts of timey-whimey solutions to that if you want to. So I love the fact that although it’s one narrative and has never been rebooted, it’s never got caught on its own continuity.”

The Timeless Child Storyline Lives On

One piece of lore some passionate fans may have been hoping to see tabled was introduced with the controversial Timeless Child story during the 13th Doctor, Jodie Whittaker’s, run. This was during Davies’ immediate predecessor, Chris Chibnall’s, tenure as showrunner. The Timeless Child plot introduced a new backstory for The Doctor’s origins that uprooted over 50 years of established Doctor Who lore.

The Timeless Child story managed to split the fanbase, with some being intrigued by the new addition to The Doctor’s lore, and others feeling it uprooted decades of established mythology and muddied their origins. While Davies’ seems prepared to play with the story as he sees fit, he admits he never once considered abandoning it. “Absolutely never,” he professes emphatically. Partly because he admits Chibnall is a friend, but also because he feels it would be a disservice to faithful viewers of the series.

“Those episodes transmitted about 18 months ago. I don’t think you can step into a show, say you’re not rebooting it, and 18 months ago The Doctor said that her origins are unknown, and she did not know what planet she was from. That she was an orphan, that she was a foundling.
I can’t go and step on that, I think
.”

“And I don’t just mean for fans, I think for ordinary faithful viewers, sitting there watching it every week. That’s most of the audience. Most of the audience is not that sort of fan, but are happily watchers of Doctor Who. And it would be an insult to them, I think, to sort of say, ‘Everything you listened to 18 months ago, I’ve just ignored.’ I think this is just not fair.”

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It’s Just Words: The Adopted Time Lord
BBC

Davies has already incorporated aspects of the Timeless Child storyline into the series, with references to both the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Doctors in episodes written by Davies since his return to the series. Those references will continue, with Davies’ own twist. “I found interesting things in the Timeless Child,” enthuses Davies. Clarifying,​​ “I don’t honestly think […] the words Timeless Child mean much. If I was to say that to my mum, or to my sisters, or to my friends, ‘Well what’s the Timeless Child?'”

“What’s a Deathly Hallow? I forgot what a Deathly Hallow is. I can’t remember what a Deathly Hallow is,” mused Davies. “It’s a thing. Those fantasy words don’t mean much. But what does mean a lot is if you’ve eased off, if you say he’s a foundling. If you say he doesn’t know where he’s from. If you say he was adopted by the Time Lords, which means he is still a Time Lord. To be adopted by someone is to become them.”

You know, adopted people will say very passionately to you that their mother or father is their mother or father. And so I think that starts to resonate. I think people start to feel what that means. So I’ve carried on that tradition, in that sense, in terms of its emotions and feelings.

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It is this ability to step back and distance himself from something that seems so controversial to some, and take that story to its basic foundation that could be the reason Davies is the right man to shepherd Doctor Who into this new era. A longtime fan of the series, his passion for the project is unmistakable. He’s both determined to service the longtime fans, and to welcome in a new generation of Whovian.

Unafraid to shake things up, his 2005 tenure famously began with The Doctor casually informing the viewer that he was the last of the Time Lords as Gallifrey was no more, but also making sure to keep the tenants of the series. Whovians may also be in for a long ride with Davies at the helm this time around. When asked during a recent press conference what advice he’d give to the next person in charge of Doctor Who in another 20 years’ time, he quips, “What do you mean new showrunner? I will be here.”

Doctor Who airs on Disney+ from May 10. Watch it through the link below:

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