If you’re wondering how Doctor Who lured back Russell T. Davies, the writer responsible for re-launching the show in 2005, the answer is money. Not just his salary, mind you, but the new big budget the BBC got out of partnering with Disney+. “They said, ‘We want to make Doctor Who bigger. We want to take it to a streamer. We want to go worldwide. We want it to have a bigger budget. And we want it to be up there with Stranger Things and Star Trek and the Marvel shows,’” Davies told Entertainment Weekly of that initial meeting to return to the Whoniverse. “We think that it’s good enough, and we believe in the show to know that it can have that heft, weight, and swagger.’”
Davies is on the record that the Disney move was the best outcome for the quintessentially British show. “I had already said in interviews that I think Doctor Who will have to become a co-pro, there’s no way the BBC is going to fund that,” he said on a recent podcast appearance (per Deadline). “You’ve also got to look in the long term at the end of the BBC, which is somehow, surely, undoubtedly on its way in some shape or form. What is Doctor Who going to do then? You have to prepare for that.”
Now that the future of Doctor Who is secure (for now), Davies is ready to take some big swings. The Entertainment Weekly feature on the upcoming fourteenth season (which is being rebranded, at its new home, as the first) contains some juicy tidbits about Ncuti Gatwa’s run as the Doctor. For one thing, Davies was inspired by the Jodie Whittaker plot The Timeless Child to create the character of Ruby Sunday (Millie Gibson), who is an orphan. Now that the Doctor can no longer claim the Time Lords as his family of origin, both characters will be trying to figure out where they came from: “That story’s going to be the spine of the whole show,” Davies hinted.
Other fun details include returns from Bonnie Langford’s ’80s companion Mel and Jemma Redgrave’s Kate Stewart. Ruby and the Doctor will meet the Beatles at Abbey Road, and that another former Who showrunner, Steven Moffat, has penned a “top-secret, Hitchcockian” episode for the new season. As previously teased, Jonathan Groff will join the show for a Bridgerton-esque outing, and Drag Race star Jinkx Monsoon will “debut as a malicious, music-manipulating villain.” And of course, there’s the fact that Millie Gibson is not being replaced, and will feature alongside Varada Sethu in the second season, which is currently filming: “We’re heading into season 2, and my God, Ruby Sunday is important to that,” Davies assured fans. “There’s good stuff to come.”