10 Biggest Mistakes Of The Doctor Who Disney Era

For any show, your pilot is make or break. For a new era of Doctor Who – especially one with as much pressure as this – this is no exception.

If you’re trying to reassure fans that the show is back and better than ever, then you want to hit the ground running. The Eleventh Hour, Partners in Crime, The Impossible Astronaut, Deep Breath – these are standout episodes that brilliantly introduce the show and its characters while setting up interesting mysteries to come.

We had the 60th anniversary specials and The Church on Ruby Road which were all pretty good episodes, but Space Babies was the TRUE jumping on-point. It was the big relaunch, the main event. The start of the era. RTD has even commented how Disney only really started pushing the show from the start of Season 1!

So what did new and returning viewers get? They got Space Babies – one of the few episodes of the show that can be considered genuinely embarrassing, and painful to watch.

It was annoyingly, deliberately juvenile, with its CGI deepfake babies, literal bogey monster, and nappy fuelled spaceship – it’d be childish even by CBBC standards. It wasn’t morally complex or dramatic. There was no fantastic hook. It was what it was. This was a make or break moment and the era could not have got off to a more catastrophic start. You’ve got to seriously question who signed off on this being the FIRST episode, and who allowed it to be written in the first place. 

When your viewers can flick to a different channel and watch the likes of Severance, Slow Horses, Shogun, The Bear, and Succession, it’s no surprise that many bailed before the era even began.