The tender for Doctor Who has been published, and the plan is to award the contact by next Easter, with the show’s return a good three years away.
Most of you are very aware of the story so far here. That last year, it was formally confirmed that Disney and BBC had parted ways on the production of Doctor Who, leaving the show in some degree of limbo.
Russell T Davies has departed the show, and plans for a 2026 Christmas special to keep things ticking along have been aborted. Instead, a competitive tender process has been put together by the BBC, as it seeks both a new production partner and a new financial parter too.
Now, the process of formally seeking fresh partnership is underway, with the BBC officially launching its competitive tender process yesterday.
The full 21-page document has popped up over at Deadline, and it sets a timescale that invites parties to check whether they’re eligible first and foremost. The deadline for that is 2nd October, and a longlist of eligible parties is produced by 9th October.
From there, the longlisted partners have until 23rd October to submit their short editorial proposal, from which a shortlist will be compiled. The process then goes through full tender and interview stages, with the contract signed and announced in March of 2027.
The timescales from that point are in part down to the successful bidder, but if they had all the scripts ready even within a month of awarding the tender, they’d do well to get the show on screens for 2028. And they obviously won’t have the scripts ready at that point. Doctor Who is almost certainly on hiatus now until 2029.
The process is up and running at least, and interestingly, the BBC isn’t necessarily looking for a specific number of episodes, nor to lean on the strict showrunner model. We’ll have a clearer idea just which way the show is going by next Easter though.
More as we hear it.
