6 Times Doctor Who Was Nearly Cancelled (And The Time It Actually Was)

Of course, as we all know, Doctor Who made its triumphant return in 2005, coming back to TV screens with a bang and garnering critical and audience acclaim. After a fantastic first series with Ninth Doctor Christopher Eccleston, the news broke that David Tennant was to be cast as his successor. In the few years that followed, Doctor Who re-established itself as a cultural icon, entering what many deem to be the show’s third ‘golden era’, as it became the BBC’s flagship Saturday night viewing.

Its fair to say that the two biggest factors in this widespread success were David Tennant’s Tenth Doctor and the top-tier storytelling of show-runner Russell T. Davies. The world simply couldn’t get enough of these two. But good things can’t last forever, and in 2008 RTD announced he would be stepping down, closely followed by David Tennant’s announcement that he would also be leaving the show. The two would work together on a series consisting of five feature-length specials leading into the next regeneration, and that would be it. Cue widespread hysteria.

Around this time, the BBC were considering cancelling the show, unable to imagine it succeeding without Tennant. This was a little naive on their part, because history had proven time and time again that the show still had legs after recasting it’s main character.

In place of RTD, Steven Moffat was enlisted as show-runner, having penned some of the most popular scripts of NuWho at the time: Blink, The Empty Child , Girl In The Fireplace and Silence In The Library. The Beeb and fans alike felt as if the show was in safe hands, but were still skeptical about the idea of The Eleventh Doctor. So much, in fact, that Moffat tried to get Tennant to stay on until series 5, with early drafts of some scripts featuring his Doctor instead. Originally, Ten would be the one to crash-land in Amy Pond’s garden, only for it to be revealed at the end of the series that the version of The Doctor who appeared at the start was a future version of The Doctor at the end of his life, and about to regenerate.

Thankfully, Tennant refused, and the world was introduced to another very popular incarnation in the form of Matt Smith, who hit the ground running in The Eleventh Hour faster than any other Doctor and put naysayers to rest swiftly. Series 5 would prove extremely popular, introducing an entirely new, fairytale-esque vibe to the show - a vibe that certainly wouldn’t have worked as well with a Doctor we were already very familiar with.

In the coming years, the show continued to go from strength to strength, finally managing to garner a significant following outside of the UK for the first time in its long history. That’ll show you, BBC. Ye of little faith…