Doctor Who's Cancelled 2026 Episode Brought Back Iconic Villains For Mysterious Story

Published Oct 3, 2026, 5:51 PM EDT Once head of Screen Rant's Star Wars coverage and co-lead of Superheroes, Tom Bacon now works with the movies and books teams. He's a lifelong fan of the fantasy and sci-fi genres, and loves franchises such as Doctor Who and Marvel. You can find him on Twitter @TomABacon, on LinkedIn @tabacon, or on Muckrack under tombacon. Tom has a wide range of interests, and he continues to serve his university as a volunteer chaplain. He's heavily involved with his local church, and anyone who checks him out on Twitter will swiftly learn he's into British politics too. Doctor Who showrunner Russell T. Davies has finally dropped some major hints about the cancelled Christmas Special, as well as shining a light on just what went wrong with the BBC / Disney Doctor Who partnership. Doctor Who is set to return in 2028-2029, when the BBC has completed a process of "competitive tendering." In the meantime, even a Christmas Special by departing showrunner Russell T. Davies has officially been cancelled. According to Davies, this cancelled special would have been a family-friendly episode featuring the return of the Daleks. Speaking to the Guardian, Davies confirmed he did have a story for the special. "I pitched it to the BBC, and they loved it. 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 … Oh, yes, I liked it!" According to Davies, he knew the future of Doctor Who was in flux even when he was working on Season 15. Ncuti Gatwa had already decided to leave Doctor Who (despite never facing the Daleks, which he's described as a major regret). Davies originally chose to film an open-ended regeneration. "So we shot that with Ncuti," he explained. "He smiled and said his last line, and the screen melted into a golden glow … Except when we edited that together, it looked like the death of the show." Disney officially pulled out, but the BBC struggled to figure out how to announce the bad news — partly because of major leadership changes at the public broadcaster, and partly because the BBC could hardly announce the end of the partnership before Season 15 had even aired. "We were stuck in limbo with many months of inaction, while I sat there watching an ending that looked like too much of an ending," Davies concluded. In the end, he set up a Zoom call with execs, and they decided on the shock regeneration. Gatwa regenerated into Billie Piper. Davies hoped that shock regeneration would be enough to guarantee Doctor Who a future, simply because it would trigger conversation. He still appears unrepentant about the decision; "Doctor Who problems are simple to solve," he insists, pointing to the Paul McGann movie's revelation that the Doctor is half-human as an example. "A new production team can either seize hold of that appearance happily, or — and this is more likely — they can explain the event away with exactly seven words. Painless. That’s not a problem, that’s a piece of ****." In truth, the new production team is unlikely to pick up on Davies' mystery regeneration. It generated conversation — which appears to have been Davies' only goal — but it was heavily criticized as something of a gimmick. Davies' own comparison is more apt than he would perhaps like to admit; Doctor Who dealt with the half-human reveal by ignoring it, and the same is likely to happen this time. When Doctor Who returns, the odds are high that Billie Piper's strange return will be forgotten, and viewers will simply get a new Doctor. The one disappointment here, really, is that we won't get the Dalek story Davies had planned to pen. It would certainly have been exciting to see Billie Piper's character (be she the Doctor or some time-lost version of her former companion Rose Tyler) go up against the Daleks again. It would have been even better, of course, if Ncuti Gatwa had gotten the chance to face the Daleks instead. But Gatwa left before a Dalek story, the Christmas Special was cancelled, and the future is a mystery for Doctor Who. Release Date 2024 - 2025-00-00 Network BBC One Directors Alex Pillai, Peter Hoar, Ben Chessell, Julie Anne Robinson, Jamie Donoughue, Amanda Brotchie, Dylan Holmes Williams Cast Millie Gibson Ruby Sunday Writers Steven Moffat, Pete McTighe, Kate Herron, Inua Ellams, Juno Dawson Franchise(s) Doctor Who / Whoniverse Creator(s) Donald Wilson, Sydney Newman