New Doctor Who turns 20: "I think its return has now proved that it's invulnerable"

It was 16 years on from the BBC’s original cancellation of the show, which to most of the world was a distant memory of wobbly sets and Daleks foiled by stairs. In 2005, TV was on a different planet. Could a series about a time-travelling alien in a police box really work in the era of The Sopranos and The Wire?

"It all felt terribly important," Davies says now. "I’d loved Doctor Who all my life, and I think its return has now proved that it’s invulnerable. But it didn’t feel like that then. It felt very much last chance at the saloon."

There was a lot at stake. But Davies found himself oddly confident. "In that build-up to transmission, I felt like we had a secret weapon – and that was Billie Piper," he says. "Everyone knew Christopher Eccleston was a great actor, but knowing how good Billie was, was a terrific feeling. Because people came to criticise, people came to mock, and people came to scorn."

In the end, Davies’s confidence was borne out. The Doctor Who revival became an overnight success, kickstarting a new era for the show that has spanned another two decades.

Eccleston was succeeded by David Tennant, who recalls, "When I signed on, the first series of the new version hadn’t even transmitted. I sort of signed up to be in a second series that nobody could really be certain would ever arrive. I could have appeared in a regeneration scene at the end of series one, and that could have been it. I would have been not even the George Lazenby of Doctor Who; if I can make a slightly obscure Casino Royale reference, I’d have been the David Niven of Doctor Who!”

Following Eccleston and Tennant’s time, new Doctors – Matt Smith and Peter Capaldi – came in with Davies’s successor as series boss, Steven Moffat, while third showrunner Chris Chibnall cast Jodie Whittaker as the first female Doctor in 2017. New mythology, monsters and fan-favourite episodes were born.

Today, Davies is back in charge, with Ncuti Gatwa about to embark on his second series of adventures. He was just 12 years old when the Doctor was given a new lease of life in 2005, “probably being a nuisance somewhere in Boroughmuir High School corridors,” he jokes. “Now, I’ve just done my first Comic Con and as much as it was intense, it was a really nice way to finally get close and personal with the fans. A big, beautiful family of all kinds of people.

"It’s really special to have a character like the Doctor on our screens. He tries to leave everyone happier than when he first meets them and that’s a beautiful trait. He inspires and represents a sense of curiosity, courage and compassion in all of us."

Doctor Who is a 20th-century show, successfully reinvented for the 21st. But perhaps more pertinently, it’s also a 2005 show that’s survived the changes in the TV landscape since then – the rise of streaming and the supposed “death” of traditional broadcasting. Doctor Who has become one of the biggest streaming successes for BBC iPlayer, with 36 million hours of New Who (specifically between 2005 and 2022) watched on the platform just last year.

The BBC tells RT there were over 70 million hours of Doctor Who watched in 2024, including its various spin-offs and iterations. So how does it keep going? “It’s a constant battle,” Davies admits. “It’s different every single week – not just on a different planet, but often a different genre, the cast keep changing, and that keeps people excited. And there’s nothing quite like that on TV. There’s nothing quite like that anthology-show imagination of Doctor Who, where it takes these wild leaps from one episode to another.

“Never, never, never, never would you have thought we’d be here 20 years later,” he adds. “No programme would ever think that. It’s astonishing. We were literally just hoping for a second year.”

Amazingly, since its return not only did Doctor Who get a second series, it has managed to air at least one episode every single year since. So, let’s step into the TARDIS and take a trip back through 20 years of New Who and remember how we got here…

Steven Moffat

Regular Who scribe Steven Moffat took over from Russell T Davies in 2010, staying in the showrunner role for seven years with two Doctors — Matt Smith and Peter Capaldi.

“Those extraordinary days [Doctor Who plus Sherlock] are a blur to me now,” he says. “I was working too hard and fast to properly remember any of it. I have a dim impression of panic, guilt and trying to cut down on sleeping so I could get more done. It didn’t work.

“But you know what? When I told people I was a screenwriter and they asked if they’d have seen anything I’d done… boy, did I have one hell of an answer. Ah, those days, those amazing days — I wonder what they were like.”

Moffat’s second Doctor, fellow Scot Capaldi, also has fond memories. “It reawakened the child in all of us,” he tells RT. “The revival of Doctor Who was, and is, one of the most welcome sights on TV.”

“No other epic yarn is like Doctor Who,” adds Moffat. “It’s brand new and ancient at the same time. That’s the Doctor for you: you’ve known him all your life and he’s the new kid on the block. How do you live for ever? Simples. You don’t age.”

Chris Chibnall

In 2018, Broadchurch creator Chris Chibnall took over the show, staying for four years alongside Thirteenth Doctor Jodie Whittaker — the first woman to take on the lead role.

“Running Doctor Who, you really are ‘running’ a million miles an hour,” Chibnall says now. “Each episode is a new world, new characters, new monster. It’s exhilarating, exhausting, amazing. The best job.”

“It was one of the biggest gifts I’ve ever been given, playing the Doctor,” agrees Whittaker. “There’s no right or wrong way to play that character. And the most exciting thing was that, as a woman, I got to play that part! I hope the show continues to celebrate change.”

“Regeneration is literally built into the show, on and off screen,” adds Chibnall. “Some people get frustrated that it doesn’t stand still, but that’s why it’s so enduring. It can constantly surprise. And if there was any young girl aged five upwards who saw Jodie and could suddenly see themselves in the Doctor, that’s all I ever wanted to do.”

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Doctor Who will return to BBC One and BBC iPlayer on Saturday 12th April, while previous seasons are available to stream now on BBC iPlayer.

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