10 Biggest Mistakes Of The Doctor Who Disney Era

10. Casting A Doctor Who Could Not Fully Commit

Ncuti Gatwa is electric as an actor, and none of this criticism applies to him personally, but the harsh truth remains. If your brand-new Doctor cannot appear in every episode of only an eight episode season, then you need to delay the shoot, or you cast someone else. This is the danger of gunning for an up-and-coming star, especially one with a prior filming commitment to one of the biggest shows on Netflix.

The result of this high-profile casting is that we got multiple Doctor-lite episodes at a point when the audience was still trying to understand who this Doctor even was. Bafflingly, production also opted to air 73 Yards and Dot and Bubble back-to-back, which only made that Doctor-shaped hole feel even bigger. And unfortunately for Gatwa, these two episodes also comprised half of Season 1’s non-duds, leaving only Boom and Rogue for us to see the Fifteenth Doctor in action with solid writing. Season 2 was an improvement, but even then we got a third Doctor-lite story in Lucky Day.

Then there’s the whole ‘figurehead’ issue. When a new actor takes on the role, they become the custodian of a legacy. There’s the press cycle and the cons, yes, but even in the off-season, prior actors have represented the show offscreen. Capaldi was an outspoken mega-fan, Whittaker was sensational, producing in-character videos during lockdown, and Tennant… well, Tennant didn’t really ever leave. But Gatwa never felt like he had the same level of commitment to the show. 

Granted, his run didn’t even last two years and it’s not really up to him to arrange the Children in Need sketches and other public appearances, but the net result is that the Fifteenth Doctor just feels… fleeting.

Nowhere is this seen clearer than in this year’s debacle, and his rumoured reasons for leaving the show. The moment production was up in the air, he had no reason to stick around. If he did, we’d have one of the UK’s most promising young talents putting his career on hold and squandering his momentum, not to mention turning down other acting jobs. Hell of an ask.

It’s this lack of foresight in casting that ultimately landed us with those last-minute changes to The Reality War’s ending, and while the show’s next episode has now been confirmed, most of the drama of the last year could’ve been avoided if the issues in casting Gatwa had been more deeply considered at the start.

Whoever plays the next Doctor, getting them to sign a more concrete, long-term deal is ESSENTIAL.