The shock cancellation of Doctor Who's upcoming one-off special has been described as necessary to avoid the episode becoming a "Christmas-shaped bomb" in plans to secure the series' future.

That's according to TV insider Richard Osman, speaking via The Rest is Entertainment podcast, who said he'd spoken to numerous people behind the scenes of the BBC's long-running sci-fi series in the wake of news that it was now seeking a new production company.

For many fans, the future of Doctor Who has now felt uncertain for years, with its most recent era marred by falling ratings, complaints over rushed storylines, and a sense that co-funding partner Disney had quickly lost interest in the whole thing. Last year's confirmation that Disney was parting ways with Doctor Who came as no surprise — but only deepened the sense that the show was in danger of cancellation.

Finally, last week, the BBC stated that it was putting Doctor Who out to tender — a process in which it seeks pitches from other production companies, including its own commercially-funded arm BBC Studios, to carry the show forward.

Osman revealed that this process had actually been planned since last year, and it had become increasingly apparent that any plan to still begin production on a one-off special for this year would only cause further headache to this process beginning.

"What happened was, 2025, Disney pull out, the BBC are still absolutely saying 'no, we'll carry on with Doctor Who, what we'll do is put this out to tender in 2028/2029.' At which point everyone says, 'Let's do a Christmas special to bridge the gap,'" Osman began.

"And because the BBC were dealing with [the legal case involving President] Trump and Charlotte Moore, who was the chief content officer, was leaving and Kate Phillips was coming in, there was a lot of churn at this point," he continued. "As soon as Kate Phillips got her feet under the table she said, 'Let's put it out to tender at this point, because the whole point of putting it out to tender is it's a big deal for us, it's the opposite of saying we're going to rest it, it's the opposite of saying we're putting it out to pasture. We want to give it multiple series, we now need production companies to pitch.'

"As soon as you say you're putting it out to tender, you can't make the Christmas special, because the canon of the show will be affected so much by what they were about to do with [the regeneration of] Ncuti Gatwa to Billie Piper. You can't lay that on companies who are working on where they'll take the Doctor Who universe. If you're about to drop an enormous Christmas-shaped bomb in the middle of that, it makes that process impossible for everyone."

Of course, none of this would have been needed if Disney had not pulled out, and former showrunner Russell T Davies has previously spoken of making plans for future seasons. To be fair, though, Disney has also gone through changes in how it spends money in recent years, as seen by a marked reduction in its big-budget Marvel TV series.

While Doctor Who's recent viewership ratings may not have been good enough for Disney, "the fact is they're doing it all suggests the ratings are there for the BBC," Osman suggested, before acknowledging that the series' future "has to be an awful lot cheaper."

"But you can do that with Doctor Who," he added, "it has always been about emotion and storyline rather than CGI."

"The BBC tender a lot of things, and there has not been a single thing they've tendered which has not gone on to multiple [seasons] after," Osman concluded. "They've never done a tender and then gone, 'Oh we'll get rid of this,' or done one more [season]. Every tender the BBC has ever done is for shows they're absolutely committed to and want to go forward with. It is the opposite of [kicking it into] the long grass, it is the short grass."

All of that said, Deadline has reported that Doctor Who is unlikely to return on-screen for up to five years, while another production company is found and the franchise is given time to begin another new era.

Tom Phillips is IGN's News Editor. You can reach Tom at tom_phillips@ign.com or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social