Doctor Who Ex-Showrunner Says He's Not Bothered About Walking Away With His Cliffhanger Ending Left Unresolved

Doctor Who ex-showrunner Russell T Davies has described his unresolved cliffhanger ending as "a piece of p***" for the series' next production team to resolve, following his departure from the franchise amid clear frustrations over plot leaks.

Davies' tenure as the head writer of Doctor Who officially ended this summer when the BBC finally admitted that it (plus Davies and production company Bad Wolf) were no longer planning a final Christmas special to wrap up the show's current era. This followed the collapse of Disney's co-production deal after two seasons, and significant reshoots to navigate the exit of series star Ncuti Gatwa.

Doctor Who now sits in limbo as the BBC searches for a fresh production company to take the series forward. And, in the meantime, Davies has now published his first account of what happened as his time on the show came to an end.

In an excerpt from his upcoming memoir The Queerest of Folk: A Life in Television published by The Guardian, Davies said that the future of the Disney co-production deal was unclear when he was writing the second season.

"That was nothing to do with us at Bad Wolf; it was down to conversations with Disney and the BBC," Davies wrote. "So we had no idea what was going on. Deep down I thought it wouldn't. You could tell what I was thinking, because I was already creating new work," he added, listing off a couple of other projects that he had already begun planning for other broadcasters.

"In some ways it would have been a nightmare for me if that third series had come along, but I would have managed it," he continued. "As the third series was in flux, the finale was intended to climax with an open-ended regeneration. So we shot that with Ncuti: he smiled and said his last line, and the screen melted into a golden glow... Except when we edited that together, it looked like the death of the show. We said, 'Think of children watching that. It's like a death. We can’t do that to them.'"

There's a lot to unpack here, but first it's worth noting what Davies has not discussed — the fact that the second season finale was initially something else entirely before Gatwa's regeneration was shot. On-set reports, leaked images and actor interviews have all discussed that the season was set to end on a positive note, with a party featuring the show's main cast being observed by original Doctor Who actress Carol Ford, who played the Doctor's granddaughter Susan.

Davies has not discussed what happened here to prompt the need to film Gatwa's exit — something that required a rewrite of the episode's ending and reshoots in order to film. There's also no sense of Davies himself or Bad Wolf being in any way responsible for the Disney deal's collapse. Rather, Davies paints the matter as a business decision between Disney and the BBC — which it was, but likely one judged against the success of the show Davies and Bad Wolf delivered.

Finally, there's the sense that an open-ended regeneration sequence would have acted "like a death" for the show. This is going to be a matter of personal taste, but what we got instead — the promise of a big reveal for why Billie Piper appeared, and a Christmas special — has arguably been more painful.

"When it came to announce the end of the Disney deal, the BBC was very keen to announce the existence of a Christmas Special for 2026 at the same time, to confirm its dedication to the show," Davies wrote, discussing his final episode that, ultimately, never came to be.

"Now, I had my doubts, right from the start," Davies claimed, "a Christmas Special about what, who for, where's the money coming from? – but for the first time in my life, I allowed my name to go on a press release that I actually felt kind of queasy about. That'll teach me!"

Details

One other interesting point to note here is Davies acknowledging the show's current status of being put out to tender had been discussed internally already, though was expected to "lurk somewhere in the future, maybe 2028 or 2029." This would fit with previous fan expectations that Davies was due to deliver four years of Doctor Who (perhaps three seasons and a series of specials, similar to David Tennant's era?) before bowing out.

"Yes, that leaves us with a Billie puzzle, but c'mon, that's easy," Davies wrote, addressing his biggest dangling plot thread. "Doctor Who problems are simple to solve (remember, in 1996, it was proclaimed that the Doctor is half-human – that was fixed by everyone discreetly never mentioning it again). A new production team can either seize hold of that appearance happily, or – and this is more likely – they can explain the event away with exactly seven words. Painless. That's not a problem, that's a piece of piss."

It's worth stating that the Doctor's claimed half-human parentage is one of many fans' biggest plot holes and bugbears from the show's history.

Davies' excerpt concludes with a lengthy airing of his frustrations with a prolific Doctor Who leaker who revealed every key plot beat from the Gatwa era up to a year ahead of transmission. How this leaker gained this information remains a mystery, though their complete accuracy and intimate knowledge of the show's production means they must have been part of a small circle of team members working on the series.

"It's absolutely extraordinary, and I swear it did a lot to destroy the profile of the show," Davies wrote. "It introduces a cynicism among fans, because they're not surprised by anything any more. Their response to a leak is weariness, an instant assumption that whatever has been leaked won't work. They instantly imagine the worst version of it, and then, when they eventually see it, it inevitably confirms their bias. So we had to work for two years knowing that leaks were happening, and yet we were powerless."

While the leaks were damaging, it's fair to state that only a fraction of the series' audience would have likely heard about them. They were discussed on Doctor Who fan forums and reddit boards dedicated specifically to leaks, rather than something shared in the mainstream.

"The BBC managed to track down the person who was putting the information online, but it was a member of the public. They were probably friends with someone at some point in the delivery chain of Doctor Who, and we simply didn't have the legal right to seize that person's emails. I wish we did," Davies wrote. "This was my copyrighted material – why don't I have the legal right to get that person arrested? But the BBC was always very scared of how that would look – a member of the public being prosecuted for simply breaking copyright; it would be like breaking a butterfly on a wheel.

"To this day, we don't know who the leaker was, which made us suspicious of every single person we worked with," Davies concluded. "There were some tricky conversations at work. But somewhere down the line, all these episodes go through a hundred technical processes in a hundred different suites, and I'm quite sure it’s just some random person sitting in the back of a room – not the person in charge, but the person whose job it is just to press play on every single thing we ever did, who'd then tell his mate, who'd then post it online. That person is still out there. They might be reading this and frothing with glee. Well done, mate, enjoy your masturbation."