10 Biggest Mistakes Of The Doctor Who Disney Era

The Disney era saw the launch of the ‘Whoniverse’ – the show’s attempt at ‘doing a Marvel’. 

Fundamentally, fans know the show has the potential to pull this off. RTD did Infinity War before it was cool back in 2008 with The Stolen Earth, and both Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures took off in their own right. There was no reason why a second attempt at this by RTD, with both the benefit of hindsight and a glowing proof of concept in the MCU, couldn’t be a smash hit.

Except they got cocky and rushed it. Before the main show had even re-earned its stars, a UNIT spinoff was pushed into development. Sure, this is something we’ve wanted for years (inclusion of the Sea Devils notwithstanding), but Torchwood was commissioned only once the main show had become a big hit. And it’s far from that at the moment.

The result is a spinoff that nobody really cares for, and one that seems to lack a vote of confidence from even the team that made it. It feels like the BBC wants to just dump it out so that it can move on from the Disney deal, while Disney clearly doesn’t care about it in the slightest, bizarrely delaying it to 2026 and barely even acknowledging that it exists.

The War Between the Land and the Sea also seems to have caused problems for Doctor Who, with its mere existence delaying Disney’s decision about whether to continue with the Whoniverse. If the spinoff didn’t exist we might’ve heard about the future of Doctor Who much sooner, and as a result it just feels like a holiday with your recently-divorced parents that you’ve still got to go on because they booked it two years ago and it wasn’t cheap.

The War Between the Land and the Sea could end up being the best bit of Who in years, granted. But to give oxygen to this project before the main show had re-established itself was clearly a mistake.