Doctor Who star David Tennant says series ‘deserves to run forever’

David Tennant has said Doctor Who “deserves to run forever” after it was put out for tender by the BBC.

The sci-fi series currently faces an uncertain future after its annual Christmas special was axed for the second year in a row while screenwriter and TV producer Russell T Davies, who rebooted the programme in 2005, announced his Doctor Who departure in June.

Tennant, 55, played the 10th incarnation of the Doctor from 2005 to 2010 and briefly returned as the 14th Doctor in 2023.

The Scottish actor has now weighed in on the future of the show and said he hoped it could continue.

He told Deadline: “I hope so. I love it. It’s a true television original, and it deserves to run forever. It will in some form, the fandom will keep it alive.

“We’ll have to wait and see, I’m sure somebody brilliant will give it a go. So, there’s no reason why not.”

Asked if he thought the franchise – which was first broadcast by the BBC in 1963 – would survive, he added: “It depends who gets it, doesn’t it, and what they do with it.

“It’s clearly a format that has legs. It’s done all right to survive since 1963, so there’s every reason to believe that it can.”

He added: “I think it’s difficult for anything in the current environment, especially a show like that, which needs a bit of money behind it, and I don’t necessarily know where that will come from.

“I’m so outside that loop now because all the people that I do know are no longer part of it. So I guess it depends who wins the tender.”

The Doctor Who Christmas special was set to be written by Davies and produced by Bad Wolf, and would follow on from the series finale last May in which Ncuti Gatwa’s incarnation of the Doctor regenerated into Billie Piper, who previously played the Doctor’s assistant, Rose.

However, in June Davies announced he was leaving the long-running programme, writing on social media it was a “goodbye from me but hello to a big new future for the show”.

He added that he was also “excited as anyone to see what comes next”.

Addressing the speculation around the Christmas episode, Davies added: “For the record: There was no script, I never wrote it, and no actor was ever approached to play the next Doctor.”

In a statement revealing the news, the BBC said: “After careful consideration the BBC, Russell T Davies and Bad Wolf have collectively decided not to go ahead with the previously announced Doctor Who Christmas episode.

“This decision was not taken lightly, and we know it will be disappointing for fans, but in order to set the show up for future series it was decided that rather than bridge the gap with a one-off special, we are choosing to push forward to invest in the long-term future of the show which ensures that when the Tardis lands once more, it does so in all its glory.”

Doctor Who, which first launched in 1963, follows the adventures of an eccentric Time Lord who travels in a spaceship that disguises itself as a 1960s British police box.

Tom Baker, Sylvester McCoy and William Hartnell are among the stars who portrayed reincarnations of The Doctor in the original series of the show, which was cancelled in 1989.

It was later revived in 2005 by showrunner Davies, and in the last two decades stars including Christopher Eccleston, Tennant, Matt Smith and Jodie Whittaker have played the eccentric Doctor.