Doctor Who isn't dead – but it does need to avoid one fatal flaw

Things are getting very dramatic when it comes to Doctor Who.

Naturally, the absence of news about whether the show will be recommissioned by Disney has led to speculation and more than a little concern about its future.

As a Doctor Who fan (and someone who writes about it almost on the daily!), I'm right there with you – I, too, am in the trenches waiting for news on my favourite show.

I also love a touch of drama. Don't we all? But even I fear things have gone a little far. Why?

Well, earlier this week, writer Robert Shearman, who penned the brilliant season 1 episode Dalek, told Doctor Who Magazine: "I go through phases; I have a real push/pull thing with the show. At the moment I’m in a ‘pull’ phase. It’s weird because the show is probably as dead as we’ve ever known it.”

I'm a big fan of Shearman's, with Dalek being one of my favourite ever Doctor Who stories. But to say the show is "as dead as we've ever known it" feels like catastrophising to the highest extent.

Certainly, Doctor Who is going to be absent from screens for a good while, as the drawn out decision from Disney has no doubt slowed things down, if only because it's meant no new episodes of Doctor Who can be filmed at the moment.

But "as dead as we've ever known it"? As it stands, we're just a few months away from The War Between the Land and the Sea, the upcoming Doctor Who spin-off, starring Russell Tovey and Gugu Mbatha-Raw (it doesn't yet have a release date, but it's expected to air sometime soon).

Meanwhile, although Disney hasn't yet committed to more Doctor Who, the BBC certainly has. Lest we forget the announcement that echoed across the Whoniverse at Edinburgh TV Festival, which saw Kate Phillips, chief content officer at the BBC, declare: "Going forward, with or without Disney, Doctor Who will still be on the BBC."

To me, that feels worlds away from the death of Doctor Who. After all, the show has died more than once before – in 1989 and then in 1996, before regenerating to come back stronger than ever.

However, Shearman also goes on to to say: "After 1989, we had, for years, a current Doctor. Now, everything that is ever going to be produced in Doctor Who terms is going to feel retrogressive. At least with the New Adventures and then the BBC Books, you thought, ‘It’s the current Doctor – McCoy or McGann.’

“No one’s going to start writing Doctor Who books with a Billie Piper Doctor, because no one knows what that means. In a funny way, the closing moments of The Reality War seem to put a full stop on things. We didn’t have that before.”

As a fan, I don't mind there not being a "current" Doctor. I certainly don't think that signals the death of the show – and I think Doctor Who nostalgia is something to be celebrated. However, I do worry The Reality War will be treated as a "full stop" when it absolutely shouldn't be.

At this point, I don't think anyone – including showrunner Russell T Davies – knows what's going to happen with Piper's role in the show, a sentiment shared by former Head Writer Steven Moffat, who spoke to RadioTimes.com about the twist earlier this year.

That, in itself, isn't the end of the world. But, when Doctor Who returns to screens, if that storyline is simply neglected, the show risks losing a lot of goodwill from viewers. Already, in season 15, we've seen various threads seemingly unceremoniously dropped, most prominently, the role of Carole Ann Ford, whose long-awaited return amounted to mere moments on screen.

If I'm being cynical, I can imagine a world in which the regeneration is fumbled, and Piper's role ultimately amounts to nothing more than a few moments of screen time because it was the only way to end season 15 on a dramatic note. If and when a new Doctor is cast and introduced, will the writers just want to forget that Piper's return ever happened? That is what I'd call a fatal flaw and I worry that would harm Doctor Who's reputation for good.

I'm not saying Piper needs to immediately be locked into a contract for a three-season run as the Sixteenth Doctor (although...). But I do think Doctor Who's reputation rests on doing justice to that storyline and not immediately writing Piper out of the show, with a couple of lines of questionable dialogue to explain why the Doctor suddenly had the face of Rose Tyler.

I definitely believe it's possible – in fact, I genuinely don't think there's a corner that Davies couldn't write himself out of. He's already done something like this before – and brilliantly. It only took three specials for David Tennant to have a satisfying arc as the Fourteenth Doctor. Perhaps that would work for Sixteen too? It would allow things to reset a little bit before introducing the next Doctor, which feels like something we all need.

Maybe that's the key to Doctor Who cheating death this time round. After all, the show has been doing it for more than 60 years – it's not about to stop now.

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