The future of Doctor Who is very uncertain. Rumors continue to swirl of an extended hiatus, a cancellation, or the dissolution of the Disney distribution deal. Season 3 (or 16 or 43 depending on how you count) has not been confirmed. Meanwhile, everyone in the fandom is still reeling from watching the Fifteenth Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa) regenerate into Billie Piper, who may or may not be the Sixteenth Doctor. Piper previously played companion Rose Tyler in 2005 and 2006 and remains one of the most beloved characters in the show’s long history.
Not long after the Piper revelation, a friend of mine texted me something I have not been able to get out of my head. They said: “This year has become the screaming fangurlz it attempted to avoid.”
I see where they’re coming from. Fans have been calling for the return of Sutekh for years, and Russell T Davies brought him back. Every mysterious woman villain since 2005 has been rumored to be The Rani, and Davies gave us two of them (briefly). I spent years telling people The Doctor was not going to regenerate into David Tennant, but he did, and now Piper has possibly fulfilled the ultimate fan casting dream. It’s like every Facebook post, sub-Reddit, Twitter poll, Discord channel, and click bait article comment section came to life.
But is that actually a bad thing? Why shouldn’t the fangirls get a shot at running all things Who?
Doctor Who, more than any other piece of screen media outside of professional wrestling, is driven by the evolution of its fans from appreciators to contributors. Both Tennant and Peter Capaldi were geeks for Doctor Who before they became The Doctor. The show probably wouldn’t exist right now if fan fiction writers hadn’t grown into traditional writers in the 1980s and 1990s. Davies is one of those writers, and a full-sized Dalek he made as a fan creation was actually used on television in Season 7. Former showrunner Steven Moffatt used to hang out on Doctor Who Usenet forums, which is probably where the idea of The Doctor’s name inspiring our word for “healer” originated. Juno Dawson, who wrote “The Interstellar Song Contest,” also started as a Doctor Who fan fiction writer.
Not all ideas are bad because they come from the seething cauldron of fan wank. The world is certainly better for the fan casting of Patrick Stewart as Professor X. Nintendo appears to have just abdicated keeping the Legend of Zelda timeline in order to the fandom. Captain Phasma from Star Wars got her name from a fan fiction called “Tarkin’s Fist.” Mortal Kombat has been cribbing from fan theories for new characters and other features since at least the second game.
At its heart, all art is a conversation between the creator and the receiver. My version of Doctor Who that lives in my brain is slightly different than yours, and both are different from the version that made it to air and the one initially conceived by the writer. They may be very similar, but they can’t be identical because a story is like a liquid that changes to fit the shape of the mind that holds it. It’s only natural that the conversation would go two ways sometimes.
Piper is perpetually on top of rumor lists to return to the show. In fact, she said she’d love to play The Doctor early in her run. Here she is in 2021 shutting down the idea that she would either be taking over from Whittaker or appearing regularly in some other form. She said the same thing before “The Day of The Doctor” in 2013 and then appeared as a new character called The Moment. Incidentally, the idea of Rose’s Bad Wolf persona and The Moment being linked has been a fan theory for years, and may explain why Piper was not credited as The Doctor at the end of “The Reality War.”
This swirling maelstrom of possibilities is an intrinsic part of Doctor Who. While the idea of a companion actor becoming The Doctor is (mostly) untried, that doesn’t mean it’s off the table. So many actors have played multiple roles in the show that there is a whole IMDB page dedicated to it. After 62 years, this was a line that was always going to be crossed eventually.
More than that, for some people Billie Piper IS Doctor Who. She bridged the gap between Christopher Eccleston and Tennant. Her love story with The Doctor was a large part of the show’s successful reboot. The fact that Piper has only gotten more interesting every time she gets near the Tardis is a bonus, to say nothing of her blossoming from former pop star to solid acting talent capable of many different roles.
From a purely storyline point of view, her appearance during the regeneration opens the show up to so many interesting story opportunities. At this point, her being The Doctor would actually be the least interesting way to go. How Davies could stick this landing is beyond me, but I very much want to see him try. For the first time in a long time, I’m looking at the show with a brand-new point of view, one where all the old rules are thrown aside and new growth is possible.
Maybe the fangirls know something we don’t. If they don’t and the show is canceled, well, that happens, and I’ll be sad. Regardless, there’s no real reason not to give this a shot. Anyone who pretends this show hasn’t belonged to the fans since the 1980s is kidding themselves, and dismissing the Piper regeneration out of hand because it’s something the fangirls have been clamoring for is silly. Their voices are just as legitimate as anyone else’s.
This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2025.
