By the time things became public, it was already a mess—the 2025 season of the show had come and gone and was of a decidedly uneven quality even before its disastrous final episode—and would only continue to get messier until the bandage was finally ripped off: despite the writing being on the wall since the start of the year internally, by the end of October, the BBC and Disney had officially had their own parting of the ways. The show’s unfortunate handling of Sethu’s character, Belinda Chandra, took one of the show’s most promising ideas for a companion in years—a skeptic forced to travel with the Doctor by circumstance, one willing to challenge their attitude and their charms instead of immediately becoming enamored by them—and, well before the season’s end, whittled her down to a motherhood plot thrust upon her from nowhere, seemingly having no idea where to take her beyond that initial, exciting friction. While fans, commentators, and creatives alike all awaited the future of the show, report after report painted a picture of a production that struggled with Disney’s unwillingness to commit beyond the initial terms of its deal—especially at a time when, with a show that was struggling to find an audience and costing more and more to make, the studio already had enough to deal with on its in-house productions—and, if anything, an unwillingness to deal with a show that wanted to have a voice and a message at all, no matter how muddled.
Author: James Whitbrook
Published at: 2025-12-11 22:45:08
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