Doctor Who — The State of Streaming
During the celebration of the show’s sixtieth anniversary, Doctor Who is coming at us from all angles!
During the celebration of the show’s 60th anniversary, Doctor Who is coming at us from all angles!
Doctor Who is returning this week after a break of over a year. Newcomers to the sixty-year-old science fiction program may be baffled by the sheer volume of offerings and platforms that have suddenly become available for those wanting to visit the beloved Time Lord. Frankly, even long-time fans are struggling to keep up with what’s going on. Here’s a recap of where things stand at the moment.
Disney+ will be airing new episodes of Doctor Who beginning on Saturday, November 25th. “New” is an important word here because, while the streaming service has been a little cagey about its long-term plans for The Doctor, it is not currently planning on airing any episodes made prior to the David Tennant-starring specials dropping this month.
Seemingly to cement that this is some sort of new beginning for the series, when David Tennant’s Fourteenth Doctor (See here and here for an attempt at explaining how the multiple Doctors thing works) regenerates into Ncuti Gatwa’s Fifteenth, the thirty-nine-series show will be renumbered — both in the U.S. and Britain — with the new season becoming “Series One.”
The schedule, matching that of the BBC in England, will be three Fourteenth Doctor specials airing on November 25th, December 2nd, and December 9th followed by a Christmas episode featuring The Fifteenth Doctor, followed by… Season One.
Confused yet?
While Disney+ is not embracing the show’s six-decade-long history, the BBC is. Their BBC iPlayer streaming service (not available in the U.S.) has made every existing story from its entire run available, with one, very notable, exception.
The first Doctor Who story — often referred to as An Unearthly Child, but more properly per its script title, The Tribe of Gum — was written by BBC staff writer Anthony Coburn, partially based on input by BBC Head of Light Entertainment Sydney Newman and producer Verity Lambert. Coburn, notably, created the show’s iconic time and space travel machine, the TARDIS. While Coburn seemed content to let the series continue to use his creation and, as a contract writer for the BBC, understood that the company legally held the rights to most of what he created, his son, Stef Anthony Coburn, has, since his father’s death, decided to punitively raise the fee to re-license his father’s writing beyond what the network was willing to pay. According to Coburn’s posts on social media, this is in protest to both the continued use of the TARDIS — the use of which he believes he is owed sixty years of compensation for — and, very unfortunately, his anger about the BBC’s decision to cast a black man in the role of The Doctor.
This troubling situation has left any new licensing of Doctor Who’s origin story off the table for the time being and the episodes comprising it are the only still-existing ones not on the BBC iPlayer. (They are currently still available on the BritBox streaming service, but Coburn has stated that he will not renew their license there, either, when it expires.)
Speaking of The Fifteenth Doctor, Ncuti Gatwa; his introduction as the Time Lord has already happened. Much to fans’ surprise and delight, he was edited into the end of the docudrama An Adventure in Time and Space (2013) when it was dropped into the BBC iPlayer’s “Whoniverse” offerings last week.
An Adventure in Time and Space tells the story of the creation of Doctor Who and, in particular, the rise and eventual decline of its star, William Hartnell. A surprisingly engaging tale, the made-for-television movie originally ended with a fantasia of Hartnell (played by David Bradley) looking up from his TARDIS console to see then-current Doctor Matt Smith smiling back at him. The new version has replaced Smith with Gatwa giving The First Doctor a smile and a wink marking the first appearance of The Fifteenth Doctor behind the TARDIS console.
It’s charming and shows a wonderful dedication to the continuity of the show through the years.
And finally, there’s Tales of the TARDIS (2023), another Whoniverse offering on the BBC iPlayer which brings back old TARDIS teams — Doctors and their companions — in a “Remembered TARDIS” that needs them to tell their stories. Reaching as far back as First Doctor companions Vicki and Steven and as late as The Seventh Doctor and Ace, the show adds bookends that explore the repercussions of the classic stories: here re-edited as feature-length films.
Current showrunner Russell T Davies has been very clear that Tales of the TARDIS is not part of the Disney+ deal and that there is “no Disney money” involved.
So that should get you up to date on the dizzying state of Doctor Who streaming as we celebrate the show’s 60th anniversary with three specials and then the premier of its, uh, first(?) season… again.
See you on Disney+ for the return of Doctor Who in The Star Beast on 11/25!!!!
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Kelly McCubbin is a columnist for Boardwalk Times