Doctor Who: Into the Wilderness!

Eighteen months is too long to wait… but it looks like we’ll have to wait even longer than that. After previously announcing that Doctor Who would return with a Christmas special in 2026 – a bit over eighteen months after the transmission of The Reality War – the BBC has now announced that the Bad Wolf era of Doctor Who is over and the show will be put out to open tender. That tender process doesn’t necessarily mean that a new production company will come out of the ether to make pitches – indeed, reports suggest there might be a little reluctance in the industry to pick up this particular hot potato – but it does demonstrate an intent on the part of the BBC to continue to make the show, because the tender is a process their charter requires them to undertake if they’re changing up the production arrangements on an in-house show, so if no really convincing third party pitch comes in they still have the option of doing it themselves. (As the Deadline report notes, that’s exactly what…