“The End Has No End”

When was “old” Doctor Who cancelled? The last episode of the last twentieth century series of the programme was transmitted on 6th December 1989. That was twenty six years, one week and six days after the first episode of the first. BBC Drama had not formally announced the ending of the series, and it never did. Enquiries as to Doctor Who’s future over the next couple of years were met with a form letter; this explained that the series had not been cancelled, but that there would be a longer than usual gap between seasons. When the programme returned, it said, it would be as a co-production between the BBC and an independent company.

Were BBC Drama and BBC One simply deflecting fans and media enquiries with empty promises? They had, after all, experienced the incredible tabloid furore that had erupted when Controller of BBC One Michael Grade and Head of Drama Series and Serials Jonathan Powell had tried to cancel Doctor Who in February 1985. Was the letter just a ruse? Or did “the BBC” honestly think that Doctor Who would return far more quickly than it eventually did? 

That Doctor Who would one day be back, and that when it did so it was as an independent co-production turned out, in the long run, to be true. But what about it not having been “cancelled”? That’s open to debate. What does “cancelled” actually mean, after all? You don’t have to announce or even admit that you’ve “cancelled” a series for it to end. You just have to decide not to make it, and by the beginning of the 1990s, the BBC had certainly stopped making Doctor Who.

Often fan assumption is that this wasn’t the result of an active decision. That it just sort of happened, as part of a long and drawn out process, and in the face of option paralysis when it came to deciding the series’ fate. Those who do think a choice was made tend to see it as being made out of malice. Out of spite. A series no one in BBC management liked being put out of their misery.