Is it time for Doctor Who to retire?

Record-low audiences have put the future of the longest-running sci-fi show in the world in doubt. The eponymous hero of "Doctor Who" may have vanquished diabolical enemies like the Daleks "all through time and space", said Martin Belam in The Guardian, but he's now "facing" his "greatest threat: viewer apathy".

Tea-time chills

Since Russell T. Davies returned as the series showrunner in 2023, "Doctor Who" has developed an "ultimately damaging obsession with chasing a family audience", said Ed Power in The Independent.

Davies seems "determined" to turn the Doctor into a "glorified children's entertainer", costing the show its "ability" to "conjure a chill at tea time". The "smartest thing" that Davies could do is to "rewind to a previous era" and focus on what made "Doctor Who" work in the first place: "make it scary again".

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During its original run, the show was the "cleverest, funniest and scariest prime-time drama on a budget soap operas would pity", said Myke Bartlett in The Critic. What the modern incarnation, with its Disney "mouse dollars", overlooks is that "what we don't see can scare us more". It needs to return to a spirit of creativity and embrace "suspense and smarts over spectacle".

"Doctor Who" also needs to pull back from the wider "tendency for pop culture to lecture its audience". The series "has traditionally held a mirror up to society", but in recent years its subtext has become "main text", "often directed bluntly at a diminishing audience". Good television doesn't have to be a "manifesto": we can "tolerate programming that dares us to pay attention", instead of assuming we "need instruction". Now more than ever, "maybe we could all do with some high-quality escapism".

Cash cow

No "formal decision" about the show's future will be made until after the current season has finished airing, said Radio Times. But Davies has already told Parade that he can "promise" fans "amazing stuff" further down the line, with plans that will "bear fruit a long time into the future".

Rumours of the franchise's demise have been exaggerated, "Doctor Who" historian and long-time fan David Howe told Metro. When the show was cancelled in 1989, it was not the "massive, massive brand" that it is today. Even if TV bosses are "looking to save some money", he said, "Doctor Who" wouldn't "even register" in their conversations now because it's "bringing in" so much cash. "Of course, you're going to make it – it's making a fortune for you."

It's "frustrating to hear so much talk" about the show's future "when its present" on Disney+ is "so much fun", said Tom Beasley on Yahoo Entertainment. While "all of this outside noise" about potential cancellations is "chuntering away in the background", "Doctor Who" is "quietly delivering one of its best and most surprising series" to date.

Leave the "obsession" around viewing figures to "suit-wearing boardroom-dwellers": all fans should "care about" is whether they're getting the "best possible" science fiction "silliness".