10 HUGE Revelations About Disney Doctor Who In Russell T Davies' New Memoir
1. RTD Doesn’t Think The Billie Piper Regeneration Is A Problem
One thing that RTD mostly glosses over in The Queerest of Folk is The Reality War's reshoots, acting as though it was always part of the plan for Ncuti to leave at the end of Season 2 (it wasn't).
But he does confirm something we basically all knew: that Billie Piper’s cameo was a very, very late addition.
As many theorised, the Fifteenth Doctor’s regeneration was originally going to be open-ended. But as transmission neared, Russell grew concerned that this ending was too final, reasoning that there needed to be someone for the Doctor to regenerate into, as he explains:
"Trust me, I saw that [original] climax, and it absolutely did not work. We said, think of children watching that. It’s like a death. We can’t do that to them."
That’s all well and good. But having created this massive Billie Piper-shaped problem, how does he think the show should deal with it?
Well, funnily enough, he doesn’t think it actually is a problem – rather, something that the next production team can either embrace or ignore, like the Doctor being half-human in the 1996 TV Movie. Russell says the following:
"A new production team can either seize hold of that appearance happily, or – and this is more likely – they can explain the event away with exactly seven words. Painless. That’s not a problem, that’s a piece of piss."
Not sure the BBC and the next production team feel quite so carefree about the whole situation...