Posted in: BBC, TV | Tagged: doctor who

Doctor Who Christmas Special Story Had Daleks, But RTD Had His Doubts

In an excerpt from his memoir, ex-Showrunner Russell T. Davies addresses the 2026 Christmas Special that wasn't, offering new insights.

A day after the deadline for production companies to pitch to be the next team to tackle Doctor Who, we're getting some insights into what went down heading into the BBC putting the show out to tender – courtesy of ex-Showrunner Russell T. Davies. Announced back in Fall 2025, the Christmas Special-That-Wasn't has continued to be discussed, debated, and speculated about since word came down earlier this year that it wasn't happening (check out our recent timeline). In the excerpt from his memoir, The Queerest of Folk: A Life in Television, that was published by The Guardian on Saturday, Davies addressed a number of question marks still surrounding how Doctor Who ended its run going into the tender break.

First things first, Davies made it clear that he did have a story for the Christmas Special: "An olde-worlde English village intercut with a huge, mysterious spaceship, an outer-space festival called Winternox, and lots and lots of Daleks, with something very unexpected hidden away." The problem? With the BBC-Disney deal coming to an end, Davies notes that the BBC was looking to go public with a Christmas Special announcement to balance the bad news about funding and to show the fans that the BBC was still committed to the show's future. But Davies wasn't so sure, writing, "Now, I had my doubts, right from the start – 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!"

After pitching his story idea to the BBC ("They loved it"), Davies writes that "everything slowed down," adding that his contract to pen the Christmas Special didn't materialize until March of this year – despite the Christmas Special being originally announced in October 2025. While the show's future remained up in the air, Davies' commitment to Tip Toe and Piper's production schedule with Netflix's Wednesday also added to the delays. In fact, Davies notes that there was consideration of having the Christmas Special be a 2027 Easter Special – and even a Christmas Special shown during Easter. "We even wondered if it could become an Easter Special for 2027. For a while, I became obsessed with the notion of a Christmas story transmitting at Easter, because, as part of the plot, time was out of joint. The Doctor running around shouting: "It's not really Christmas!" A bit meta, but fun."

While this was taking place, Davies noted that CCO Kate Phillips had "grabbed hold of Doctor Who with energy and vigour," which boded well for the show's future. But at the same time, it meant some hard decisions had to be made in the here and now. While the move to put the show out to tender isn't a surprising one when you understand that the BBC's programming is required to engage in "open-market competition," Davies, like many, saw it as a move that would happen down the road. "We'd always presumed the tender might lurk somewhere in the future, maybe 2028 or 2029. But suddenly it was decided to start the process in 2027. Right! Good! Great!" he wrote.

The move to put the show out to tender seemed to be the only answer to the questions Davies was having about the overall goal of the Christmas Special. ""There's a huge era behind us, there's a huge era ahead of us, what's this thing in the middle? A single episode which is neither here nor there, neither fish nor fowl. It really existed to please the fans, except the irony is, it was exactly the sort of episode that fans would not be pleased by." The move to hit the pause button on Doctor Who also gave Davies and Bad Wolf the opportunity to move on and hand the reins over to the next team. "On top of all that, the tender became a good exit point for me and Bad Wolf. Let's face it, we weren't going to come back for a third time! Also, I thought quietly to myself: I'll spend a year working on this, but it'll all be leaked before it gets on air."

In May, Davies writes that he went to the BBC to deliver some bad news. "I don't think we should be making this." Davies continued, "I didn't say this next part out loud, but I thought with all my heart: the BBC is in financial trouble; it's laying off thousands of jobs in the newsroom, so should it really spend millions, with no co-production money, on a Doctor Who one-off that will soon be eclipsed by a whole new era? 'Put your energy and imagination into the future,' I said. And to be honest, I think they'd been waiting for me to say it. We'd all been too polite with each other, them not wanting to let me down, me not wanting to let them down. But this new plan sets the show free. The future can be planned by a brand-new team. Clean and bold and bright."

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