By The long-running BBC series “Doctor Who” has seen an obvious budgetary jump as part of its new deal with the Disney+ streaming service.
Indeed, the deal was essential for the show’s survival according to showrunner Russell T. Davies, who was responsible for resurrecting the series in 2005 and is now back for last year’s 60th anniversary specials and this year’s launch of the Ncuti Gatwa-led era.
Speaking on the They Like to Watch podcast with hosts Sara Barron and Geoff Lloyd, Davies discussed how Disney’s involvement impacts both production and audience:
“We live in a world of streaming, and we live in a world where every 11-year-old is watching Stranger Things because there’s 11-year-old kids in it, and that’s their language, that’s their culture, that’s their references, that’s their memes.
I think it’s a real shame for Doctor Who not to be up there with the big hitters. I’m sitting here watching The Mandalorian, the Marvel shows, Stranger Things.
I’m thinking, ‘I’m watching that, that should also be Doctor Who!’ So even before [the show] approached me, I had already said in various interviews, ‘I think Doctor Who will have to become a co-production.’ There’s no way the BBC is going to fund that.
You’ve also got to look at the long-term, at the end of the BBC, which somehow is surely undoubtedly on its way in some shape or form. What, is Doctor Who going to die then?
You’ve got to prepare for that kind of stuff. But all of that is kind of like the flimflam on top of the fact that I love it. And it’s the only chance you have in television for me to really write in pictures, to do pictures. It’s all pictures.
It’s skies, it’s explosions, it’s armies, it’s people on their own in a vast landscape … it’s rope ladders in the sky on Christmas Day. I love that.”
The Disney partnership has thus resulted in “pictures that match other people’s pictures now” and the move “does open up stories for now, sometimes on a vast scale”.
“Doctor Who” returns with the Gatwa-led first season on May 10th.
The post Why “Doctor Who” Went To Disney+ appeared first on Dark Horizons.
