Doctor Who on Disney+ Was Not a Failure

BBC recently announced that the deal with Disney to help produce, market, and host Doctor Who on Disney+ was officially over after two seasons. The last production to air will be the spin-off miniseries The War Between the Land and the Sea, which will air at some undisclosed time in the future. Meanwhile, Doctor Who will return Christmas 2026 with Russell T Davies as showrunner and will presumably answer the many questions raised by Billie Piper’s appearance in the finale as possibly the 16^th Doctor. Where will it screen in America? Not sure yet, but it will.

There are a lot of viewers (I hesitate to call them fans) that that see the dissolution of the Disney deal as good news. Some are crowing “go woke go broke,” ignoring the fact that Doctor Who has been an openly socially progressive show since William Hartnell’s time. Nonetheless, the presence of a Black and openly queer Doctor in the Tardis enraged the same sort of people who could barely handle the character being overtly Scottish a decade-and-change ago.

Other, more reasonable folks simply see the end of Disney Who as returning the show back to where it belongs: on state-owned British television with a smaller budget and less corporate nannying. This is a very understandable position, but it still doesn’t mean that the Disney experiment was a failure, at least for Doctor Who.

The Mouse has been interested in purchasing the keys to the Tardis since the 1980s. The era of prestige streaming seemed the perfect opportunity to try again. Disney had already built two massive extended universes with Marvel and Star Wars and were keen to add a third. Doctor Who already has half a century of lore and stories and even a history of successful network spin-offs in the 2000s.

So, Disney rolled the dice, pumped millions into special effects (dinosaurs have never looked better on Who!), and waited for the money to roll in. It didn’t, and it was never going to.

Doctor Who is not Marvel. Even though it’s usually spoken of in the same breath as Star Wars and Star Trek, it’s a fraction as popular as either. It’s very hard to measure this but look at it this way. When “Day of the Doctor” was released in theaters in 2013, the show was at its height in popularity and celebrating its 50^th anniversary. One night in cinemas sold around 320,000 tickets. Meanwhile, Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones, the worst selling live action Star Wars film, sold around 2.3 million on opening day, more than seven times as much. Star Trek: Nemesis, the worst Trek film performance at the box office, still moved around 1.3 million tickets opening day, far more than “Day of the Doctor.”

I know it feels like Who is enormously popular, but it just isn’t compared to what Disney was trying to recreate. For American audiences, the show has always been a cult phenomenon rather than a mainstream success, no matter how many sonic screwdrivers they sell at Barnes and Noble. It’s too British, doesn’t have big action sequences, is very weird, and you almost never see a major American actor in it.

Still, I think Disney conducted a grand experiment. Was Doctor Who’s budget or lack of presence on a major streaming service holding it back? Turns out the answer is “not really,” but I truly feel like The Mouse gave it a fair shot. They tried everything, from bringing back David Tennant to resurrecting fan favorite villains to musical numbers.

Aside from maybe a big Dalek or Cyberman battle or possibly using the de-aging technology on Tom Baker, I’m not sure what else they could have done. There are rumors that Disney was far less excited about Doctor Who after the return of Bob Iger, but I don’t think that reflects in the finished product.

As for the content, I am personally happy with Disney Who. The finale of the first season was a train wreck, but everything up to that point was a blast. “Lux” and “Boom” are my platonic ideal of what Doctor Who should be. The return of Bonnie Langford as a recurring guest was genius, and boy did The Mouse’s money shine! It’s going to be hard going back to BBC budgets.

The show will make do, though. It always has. Every new generation of directors, writers, and actors play with the formula. Some of these work, some of these don’t, but change is inevitable. Whatever the next era of Doctor Who looks like, I’m glad we got to see this version as well. It tried out new things, showed what big budget Doctor Who looked like, and also highlighted some of the show’s limitations in scope.

Disney Who also taught us that there is a place for Blackness and queerness in the Tardis, that having the show be a little more magical than science-y is fine sometimes, that more Americans should play villains, and that WE ALL REALLY WANT TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENED TO SUSAN OMG RUSSELL WILL YOU HURRY UP PLEASE?!

The show went new places under The Mouse, and that’s what Doctor Who has always been about. Some of those places sucked as some places always do, but you can’t draw a map forward without them.

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