Doctor Who’s New Streaming Home Raises Fresh Questions About the Franchise’s Future

To be fair, rumors have been flying for months about where the show will end up next, and, per internet scuttlebutt, almost every streamer has supposedly been in talks to take Disney’s place, from HBO Max to Netflix, and no answers have yet materialized. But the clock’s ticking. 

A Doctor Who Christmas special is slated to arrive later this year, but we still know very little about what that particular installment will look like. Will it feature Billie Piper, whose surprise cliffhanger appearance closed out season 15? Could David Tennant return? How will it lead into the next era of the show? Or will it just skip past this rather historic mess to the introduction of a new Doctor entirely? And what of forthcoming seasons? The BBC has been rather vocal about its support for the franchise moving forward, but with no current Doctor and no announced plans for future seasons — Will Russell T. Davies remain showrunner? Could Pete McTighe take over? —- everything feels stuck in a bizarre and deeply frustrating limbo. 

While the holiday installment will almost certainly broadcast on the BBC in the U.K., the bust-up of the Disney partnership means that the show doesn’t yet have a distribution partner elsewhere, which could leave global audiences scrambling to find a way to view the festive special if something isn’t worked out by the holidays.

It seems unlikely that it would end up on AMC+, but stranger things have happened. Yes, it’s a smaller brand than say, HBO or Netflix, but given that the streamer is already home to some heavy hitters like the Interview with the Vampire franchise and the sprawling The Walking Dead universe, it’s more than proven its genre bona fides. Might it double down by acquiring the Whoniverse? Is that even something fans should be hoping for? Your guess is as good as ours.