10 Wildest Doctor Who Rumours Ever

The Doctor Who rumour mill continues to churn in the lead-up to the 60th anniversary in 2023 and a potential multi-Doctor adventure. As executive producers like John Nathan-Turner and Russell T Davies have understood, it pays to keep the series in the public eye. It's why RTD would tease information to the press, such as the Dalek Sec photograph that looked more creepy and moody than the finished article on-screen.

Nathan-Turner was also well aware of the appetite for Doctor Who exclusives, and is reported to have left a note on the Who office whiteboard that simply read "The Doctor's Wife" in an attempt to smoke out a whistleblower. It's unclear if it actually worked, but if nothing else it inspired Neil Gaiman's much loved season 6 episode of the same name.

It's always worth keeping the Doctor's Wife in mind when reading through rumours in the press and on social media. The Kris Marshall as Doctor Who rumour felt like exactly the sort of faintly plausible snippet that a production office may use to ensnare a leak.

Doctor Who has had so many bizarre rumours bandied around over the past six decades that the previous list of ten merely scratched the surface. So, here are ten more insane rumours about the show that never came true.

It was big news when David Tennant announced his departure from the role of the Tenth Doctor. The many actors rumoured to succeed him when Steven Moffat took over the show in 2010 included James Nesbitt, Chiwetel Eljiofor... and Jason Statham?

Quoting "an anonymous source", many outlets at the time reported that:

"Doctor Who is still seen as a bit geeky, but Jason will add sex appeal and give the character a more dangerous edge."

These reports suggested that the new series would be "Doctor Who meets gangland", which conjures up images of Sylvester McCoy being pumped full of lead in a San Francisco alleyway. There was clearly no truth in the rumour whatsoever – it was either someone selling a lie, or someone in Steven Moffat's production office having a bit of a laugh.

After all, who looks at Moffat's dark sci-fi fairytales and middle-class sitcoms about school newspapers and thinks "Yep, this guy definitely understands the mean streets!"

The prospect of Jason Statham doing Venusian aikido like a grizzled Jon Pertwee is certainly an enticing one. But it's best saved for our wildest dreams.