‘Doctor Who’ Shouldn’t Worry About That Billie Piper Cliffhanger, Says Mark Gatiss

The BBC put Doctor Who out to tender in June, leaving everyone—fans, celebrities, and studio executives alike—to wildly speculate about the show’s future. Since then, actor and former Doctor Who writer Mark Gatiss has emerged as one of the media’s go-to Who commentators. Earlier this month, he told Radio Times, “I think maybe it’s just time for a proper break, because you want people to miss it and have fresh ideas, and probably someone to run it who grew up with David Tennant as the Doctor, rather than Tom Baker.” Perhaps unsurprisingly, Gatiss’ thoughts on how to resolve the whole “is Billie Piper the next Doctor or not” debacle are similarly hands-off. Namely: he thinks the show should just move on and not worry about explaining whatever the hell happened at the end of “The Reality War.” He even used the classic TV series Dallas as an example of how Doctor Who could pull it off and why it’s the best approach. As Gatiss told the Half the Picture podcast (via Radio Times): When Dallas came back, to use a strange example… the last episode of Dallas, Larry Hagman is visited by a strange man, played by Joel Grey, who turns out to be the devil. It’s like a strange version of It’s a Wonderful Life, where he shows him life without him, where Cliff becomes president and all these things. And then he turns out to be the Devil at the end, and it ends with the bang of JR shooting himself. That’s the end of Dallas. It came back 15, 20 years later and JR says, “I saw a lot of crazy shit that night.” Because he’d been drinking. Ok, cool. Gatiss is clearly a Dallas superfan, which only reinforces our belief that he’s good people, but what’s that got to do with Doctor Who? He continued, “So in the future, if someone wants to explain why the Doctor turns into Billie Piper, it’s easy. But equally easy is not to bother because it doesn’t really matter. Of course, it doesn’t. There’s always an explanation. I’ve already thought of 18 of them.” It is an enticing idea to just wipe the slate clean after the mess that Doctor Who turned into toward the end of Ncuti Gatwa’s run. Maybe it would be better to just start over. But then again, we’d also be pretty intrigued to hear those 18 ideas that Gatiss has about Piper’s return. Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.