(Note: this essay is part of a series.)
Season 1 of RTD2 got the worst ratings in Doctor Who’s history and terrible fan feedback and was a laughing stock online, the height of “woke” storytelling. Having cost a fortune to make and with much fanfare about partnership with Disney, as a new lease of life for a sixty year-old programme it fell disastrously short. The question, of course, was what would happen next.
The immediate factor was that Season 2 had already been made. It wrapped filming just before Season 1 began airing. As a result, there was no time - and no money - to make any changes based on feedback about Season 1.
Bad Wolf Productions and their funders/broadcasters Disney and the BBC, as well as Davies himself, could only grit their teeth for a full year while Season 2 was post-produced and, eventually, broadcast.
We resume our coverage just after Season 1 ended, when everyone was shell-shocked from the disaster and Davies was smugly promising more drag and gay material in Season 2.
Davies was well aware, before and during and after the airing of Season 1, that there was a groundswell of complaint on social media. As shown in the images above, YouTube was very active, but when talking about the matter Davies always focussed on Twitter/X.
[When we lament a fandom’s alleged resistance to inclusion] are we actually talking about society now? Or are we talking about a single platform [Twitter] that is very noisy? None of us knows the answer to that.
The show’s low ratings surely confirm that Twitter was accurately representing general society and that the objections posted there were shared by most ordinary people, but Davies didn’t want to admit that. Nor did he want to admit that it wasn’t only on Twitter.
So it feels like we’re having a conversation into an echoing box. Unless you lift your head, and then the world is very different. Or you have to hope that the world is very different.
Yes, he was hoping. But in truth there is only so far you can push the public. Of course there is a limit. And that limit is where they feel that your demands and indulgences could harm their children, or even other people’s children.
But Davies didn’t think of that. So locked was he in his obsession with gay rights and individual freedom, he ignored all possible reasons against it and kept on fighting “bigots”:
So what do we do except keep on fighting? And I think it is a fight. I’m conscious of being part of it. It’s a tough old battle... but I simply will not back down.
This, I think, is how Davies ended up killing the thing he loved. In 2005, he used Doctor Who to ask for tolerance from the mainstream, and at first he received it. But he pushed too far. As the years passed, and the world grew ever more tolerant of sexual deviance, he became ever less grateful, ever more entitled, demanding, obnoxious, preachy and self-righteous. From 2023, he used his cherished TV show to reprimand the mainstream. In the process he made it unwatchable, alienating it (and himself) from the mainstream.
While Season 1 was playing out, various outlets attempted to hide the damage. Rotten Tomatoes froze public reviews throughout the majority of the broadcast period because they were so at odds with those of “professional critics” (regime apparatchiks):
As the low ratings gradually emerged, there was a scramble among devoted fans to explain them away. First, they laughably said that the warm weather was keeping people outdoors. By season’s end they had come up with a whole slew of excuses:
The first sign of doom came on the 11th of June 2024. With Season 2 filmed, Davies revealed he was writing ahead:
I’m working on the fourth script now for [Season 3]… Those scripts have to be ready by about August, for prep… It’s not actually commissioned, that’s still up in the air.
So Disney hadn’t renewed yet. By this time, Season 1 was three-quarters over. For renewal not to have happened by then was less than encouraging, to say the least.
But that’s the same for every TV programme. I shouldn’t say we’re confident, because that’s asking for a fall, but we’re very confident, to be honest.
Asking for a fall, indeed.
Davies did acknowledge the show’s low ratings:
You know, they might not be the ratings we’d love. We always want higher.
Then - and this is so desperate that I think it must signal that, deep down, he knew the truth - Davies mentioned 28-day cumulative ratings. I had never heard of this metric before, let alone seen it used as a barometer of success.
But they are building over the 28-day period. Episode 1, Space Babies, is already up to 5.6 million and counting. So it is getting there.
Every episode between 2005 and 2017 got 5.6m views on its first night. Taking 28 days to reach the same number is an astonishing decline.
Davies also claimed:
according to the people who juggle the numbers, all targets have been reached and exceeded. The BBC are running around like mad things.
This seems like an outright lie.
Asked whether, in retrospect, he would do anything differently with the RTD2 era, he replied:
I mean, no, to be honest – I’m very proud of it!
At this time, I think his colleagues were all afraid to tell the emperor the truth about his new clothes.
The mainstream media were also “toeing the line”. During Chris Chibnall’s tenure, they at first sang its praises - the female Doctor, the non-white casting, the increased wokery - but eventually had to admit it was a dismal failure. In 2024, there must have been even greater pressure to defend Davies. He is a much more prominent and influential figure in the British television industry than Chibnall, more recognisable to the general public, and more beloved by luvvies. All through Season 1, no mainstream journalist dared admit the problem.
Inevitably, though, cracks started to appear.
It began on the 17th of July, when Deadline suggested Disney might withdraw and Gatwa might leave, returning only to film a death scene for his Doctor to cap Season 2.
Comic-Con 2024
At Comic-Con in late July to promote the show, Davies was amongst friends. The audience there are not the sci-fi fans of the 1990s, but hardcore progressives who cheer on the subversion of franchises. These people are in disagreement not just with ordinary opinion but even with most male fans of sci-fi. United by progressive dogma against a mainstream they feel (or imagine themselves to be) excluded from, they constitute a new subculture.
It is a subculture that Davies himself helped to cultivate, with Doctor Who back in 2005, more with Torchwood and now even more with RTD2. It is a subculture of confused females and emasculated males who are obsessed with being different. Paradoxically, these people are fanatical about sci-fi franchises, but will celebrate those franchises being twisted out of recognition in the name of trans rights, gay rights, multiculturalism, feminism, etc. - this nexus of ideologies being their religion.
The more a franchise alienates itself from the general public, the more these people will cheer. But, while there is an unfortunately large number of these people, it is nowhere near enough to sustain a franchise.
Many of these people are politicised gays - far more politicised post-2005 than they would have been in, say, 1995. Many were Millennials not given sufficient lead by social convention, and left to drift into the various categories awaiting them on Tumblr. After this social group was brought together in the post-Buffy world of sci-fi/fantasy fandom, they became the “SJWs” of the mid 2010s and in some cases the violent antifa of the late 2010s and certainly the BLM rainbow drones of the early 2020s, and are now the childless forty-somethings of today, still clinging to the progressive activism which once gave them a sense of purpose and triumph.
For a flavour of how such people think about Doctor Who, here are some gay fans discussing Season 1:
UNWIN: It’s the first time that the Doctor talks like I do, as a gay man.
McCURDY: I feel exactly the same, he’s talking like how I talk.
BEVERIDGE: The Doctor has always appealed to gay men, because he’s a nonconventional male role model. So having the Doctor be more queer has allowed people to identify that bit more closely with him.
Fundamentally changing a sixty year-old character is perfectly fine, if it panders to your own feelings.
At Comic-Con, Davies spoke about trans rights, invoking his endless obsession with being persecuted:
I don’t go online much. Maybe I should, maybe that’s wrong. I’m talking about Twitter/X as “the portal” online. I don’t feel particularly safe [on Twitter] as a gay man. Increasingly, I think that it’s worse, worse, and worse in society. I see what’s said out there, but that’s a long discussion for another time. But I’m not sure I can even be part of that. So that’s tricky. So that stops me going online in many ways... So I get my agent telling me what’s going on...
There are several points to pick up on here.
First, he says he is fighting “battles” with gay/trans issues, but also that he doesn’t like to take part in debate online regarding those issues. He doesn’t feel “safe” on Twitter. Knowing what is said on there stops him going on. In other words, this is a man who cannot defend his ideas on a level playing field, and knows he can’t, so prefers to use his massive MSM soapbox to preach to people instead of debating with them on an equal footing. You could not get a clearer example of condescending, arrogant progressive elitism.
Second, it confirms his long-held loathing of Twitter, especially since Elon Musk took it over. This in turn confirms that the sly mention in Season 1 of an evil tech billionaire was indeed a reference to Musk. It is also another reflection of the change in the Left since Trump/Brexit: before, they were very pro freedom of speech, but afterwards they have turned against it, to such an extent that they demonise Musk for enabling it amidst a climate of near-universal and arbitrary leftist censorship.
Third, his focussing on Twitter seems tactical. Instagram, Facebook and especially YouTube were also ablaze with vituperation about RTD2, but those platforms don’t have “a reputation” that can be invoked in order to neutralise the criticism. By contrast, post Musk’s take-over, Twitter is “understood” by leftie liberals (Davies’ people) to be a den of right-wing fanaticism, hatred, conspiracy theory, bigotry and stupidity, therefore it actually plays in Davies’ favour to associate it with opposition to RTD2. This casts said opposition as a product of the right-wing bogeyman, not of ordinary people.
After saying this, Davies thought for a moment then changed tack:
I think Doctor Who’s fine… I think there are things happening in the culture wars, particularly with trans rights these days that are a million times more important than what’s happening with Doctor Who.
I think this should be interpreted carefully. He specifies “what’s happening with” the show, not the show itself. I think his actual meaning is that the controversy surrounding his revamp of Doctor Who is less important than trans rights, so please talk about that instead of his monumental screw-up.
He continued:
[There are] battles to be fought. And it’s getting worse. It’s… it’s terrifying.
Alex Kurtzman said:
You’re fighting some of those battles on the show just by [having] the [minority] representation.
Davies agreed:
I do that on purpose… Absolutely, that’s part of the battle.
Given these comments, there was no ambiguity: Davies no longer primarily saw Doctor Who as a thing in its own right that existed outside of him, but as his personal plaything and his vehicle for pushing his political views - onto children. He had turned from a dramatist into a demented propagandist. The results were celebrated by Comic-Con, but rejected by a nation.
Six weeks earlier, Davies had said:
Ncuti’s off to do a play, The Importance of Being Earnest. And so we’re coming back [to film] after that [in February 2025].
So filming would begin once Gatwa became available. But now, when asked at Comic-Con, Davies refused to confirm that Gatwa would be appearing in Season 3. It seemed he was preparing to throw Gatwa under the bus in an attempt to ensure that there would even be a Season 3.
Davies’ belief in an August 2024 deadline for delivering the Season 3 scripts seems to have evaporated by the end of that month, when he told SFX:
[Season 3 is] an industry decision, it’s like any business – these things take time. I think the decision will come after the transmission of season two.
Also in August came the astonishing news that Davies would be teaching people how to write TV drama. Given the incredible shoddiness of his writing on Season 1, the mind boggles as to how anyone could think him fit to teach the craft of writing. He had also taken to vastly over-estimating the quality of his own work. Such a man is the last who should be allowed to train novices. But who can be surprised? The job was given to him by his long-time friend, Jane Tranter, executive producer of RTD2.
Interviewed on a BBC show in October, Gatwa said he would be filming Season 3 in 2025. Ominously, the BBC removed this statement before broadcast.
Disney omitted Season 2 from a preview trailer of their 2025 content. This lack of enthusiasm made it seem increasingly doubtful that they would be funding any Season 3. It was probably around now (November 2024) that Gatwa made the decision to leave, prompted by Disney’s apparent impending departure and by his own skittish treatment by Davies.
2024 Christmas special
This was written by Steven Moffat. He is a talented writer, far more so than any of the new writers Davies brought on board. He delivered an intricately-plotted, engaging and heart-warming story. However, it has two serious flaws, which a responsible showrunner would have spotted.
The first is that it is too busy and “all over the place”, precluding the character development that would have been welcome with both Anita and Joy and thereby weakening the emotional punch that it tries to deliver.
The second is something endemic to RTD2: a callous disregard for things once deemed important. Namely, the Doctor encounters a hotel that enables its visitors to dip in and out of different points in history, doing untold damage to the timeline. This would have outraged any Doctor before now, yet Gatwa’s incarnation thinks nothing of it. This frivolous attitude is all over RTD2: nothing seems to matter. Well then, why should the viewer care?
For all that, it is probably the best script of the RTD2 era. Sadly, by now the damage had been done, and it got lower ratings than any previous Christmas special, 1.5m down from its predecessor:
The official rating is 5.91 million viewers, but the incremental data shows that during most of the broadcast it was actually below 4 million:
A story like this deserved better, both in finessing and in the episodes that preceded it and should have brought in more viewers, but instead drove them away.
2025
In January 2025, Bad Wolf advertised their studio space:
That the advert spoke in the past tense about Doctor Who being filmed there, not as an ongoing concern, was ominous. Of course, in the normal run of things, filming of Season 3 would have started by now.
More pressing still, given that Season 2 was “in the can”, was the question of whether a Christmas special would precede a future Season 3. Davies confirmed a 2025 Christmas special hadn’t been included in Disney’s “first order”, but nevertheless claimed to be confident about the show’s future. A month later, the Sun reported that, sans funding, there would be no 2025 special.
In early February, the crew was unexpectedly spotted doing location work. The Sun suspected this was hastily-arranged filming of Gatwa’s exit from the show, and turned out to be correct. It was exactly as Deadline had predicted in July 2024.
Soon, the Sun alleged that Gatwa had quit and the production crew had been told to find new work because the show was being axed.
Apparently Gatwa had had to turn down a very lucrative perfume advert because of his Doctor Who contract - one reason he might want to buy himself out of it. (Can anyone imagine Jon Pertwee doing a perfume advert?)
The Sun quoted an “insider”:
Ncuti doesn’t want to be tied to the series beyond this and plans to relocate to Los Angeles with several Hollywood projects standing by for him.
His team also see a lot of fan backlash from the series, and don’t want the perception of him still being The Doctor to get in the way of any future work.
The BBC denied everything. Nevertheless, it was obvious that Gatwa had left. He soon removed mention of the show from his Instagram bio.
In mid March, Davies won Gaydio’s “Pride Icon” award. In his acceptance speech, he fulminated about various right-wing bugbears and yet again repeated his lifelong refrain about gays being in more danger than ever:
I think times are darker beyond all measure, and beyond anything I’ve ever seen in my lifetime.
He elaborated to the Guardian:
As a gay man, I feel like a wave of anger, and violence, and resentment is heading towards us on a vast scale… I’ve literally seen a difference in the way I’m spoken to as a gay man since that November election, and that’s a few months of weaponising hate speech, and the hate speech creeps into the real world… I’m not being alarmist. I’m 61 years old. I know gay society very, very well, and I think we’re in the greatest danger I have ever seen.
By now Davies had announced his next project, a gay drama for Channel 4. For this he was reuniting with Jewish producer Nicola Shindler (his enabler on Queer as Folk and It’s a Sin). It seemed significant that he would take on new projects while supposedly immersed in the huge task of steering Doctor Who. As he would later explain:
I was technically busy on Doctor Who, but I was driven to this [writing] desk. I had to write it in Manchester. And I would have written it for free. It just had to be written.
And the reason? Donald Trump, Elon Musk and Reform UK.
They’re out to get us. The president of the United States is literally out to get us, is discounting us. He would be happier with us invisible and gone, defunded, completely invisible if not biologically altered to become as straight as him.
This was typical Davies paranoia, but more deranged than ever.
In late March, a YouGov poll revealed the show’s dreadful standing with young and old viewers alike.
And now Season 2 was imminent. The long wait must have been agony for everyone involved in making it. They surely knew and dreaded the backlash it would elicit, but were powerless to avert it.
The arithmetic is simple. The middle of the curve does not enjoy being browbeaten by the bell-ends.
The irony is that, if homosexuals ever face the kind of violence Davies fantasizes about, it will be as a direct result of people like him insisting on pushing their perversions into normal people's lives. By the late 90s, they had gotten the acceptance from mainstream society that they said was their goal. You were already more likely to lose your job for using "gay" as a pejorative than for being gay. Normal people had agreed to live and let live.
But that wasn't enough; they had to keep pushing right up to the point of insisting that parents allow mentally ill men into their daughters' restrooms and smile about it. And now that people are pushing back on just that most extreme intrusion, Davies wants to keep fighting them instead of backing off and settling for a truce that still includes everything else they gained up to about 2020. He's like the small bully on a playground who keeps picking on the big, quiet kid because he knows the big kid will look bad if he "punches down" at someone smaller, and then he feels persecuted when he finally gets stomped.