I hope Jed Mercurio gets a chance at writing for the show...

It would be fab if Jed got a go. I adored Line of Duty and loved it from Series 1. So pleased other got the hype in the end.

I'm sure I read an article on was it here of cultbox where Jed said and Moffat had had a chat about possibly writing an episode, but it never went any further than that. A shame, let's hope something eventually comes from that.

Haven't been here in a while and still nothing has happened..... what happened to them kick starting filming in May.... apparently now its July.... so they start filming just under a year from when the last series started airing.... ouch, that's a gap.....

Seems DW has gone the way of the Dodo atm....

Don't worry and keep watching your DVDs.

Don't have the DVD's


When is the next series even suppose to air.... like this time next year..... that's poor..... Can't help but think DW has been badly handled... its not Moffats fault, the BBC should of got other people to do the job when it became apparent he was having difficulties putting out a regular run each year..

The moving filming dates are a cause for concern to me. Can't help but think it's been cancelled in all but name.

I agree. It has been poorly handled, though I'm not sure what the BBC could have done, given the situation.

At the same time, I have no doubt that DW will return next year.

Who's gonna tell Chibnall? (or Chibbers; that seems to be catching on!) He'll be gutted. Stick with Broadchurch, mate. Don't write anyone out at the end of the current filming of series 3. Hedge yer bets....

I think they messed up big time somewhere along the line. I say messed up because I don't see this as deliberate or anything remotely resembling a story that demands a tin-foil hat. Moffat made his first public comment about being closer to leaving than joining way back in 2014. He since has stated that he intended to leave in 2015. Yet somehow his successor won't be getting their first series out until 2018? This is one of their flagship brands... but of late they've had a track record for mistreating those, just look at Top Gear and how they put all their eggs in a Clarkson-shaped basket. I think they put too many Doctor Who eggs in a Moffat-shaped basket. To their slight defence, and without meaning to get into a political debate, I do think this Government has had its claws into the BBC for a long time too and this has impacted budgets, quality, output etc. I don't think they're wholly at fault, and that there's wider factors at play which have meant the BBC just isn't as efficient at getting a show like Doctor Who out right now. The promotion for Series 9 was poor, the viewing figures were all over the place with no correlation to episode reception and impacted by poor scheduling which put it up against both ITV's entertainment output (X Factor) and ITV's sporting output (rugby world cup). It held its own throughout, and I say that subjectively, but there are numerous ways they messed up along the way.

If you look at it another way you could spin it that they've done relatively well. When RTD planned to leave we had a year hiatus with what was essentially three specials episodes (counting End of Time as a single story). They were spread out across a whole year, and the edge was taken off the sting because we had two spin-offs in play as well as the ridiculous hype of what a Steven 'Blink' Moffat series might entail. But the reality was that there were only three Doctor Who stories out that year, and a colossal gap between Series 4 and Series 5.
When we look back on this there's a sizeable gap between Series 9 and Series 10 but it's still a smaller gap all the same. And better still once Series 10 is out of the way we'll have a Christmas special that breaks the even smaller gap until Series 11. If Class happens to be any good as well then that too might actually turn fortunes and opinions around a bit. We're in a huge lull right now, but it has to be hoped that the lull is so that they might actually nurture and look after the show rather than just churning out passable episodes with an exhausted cast all the time. If it means we'll be using spoiler threads in years to come because they eventually saw the mistakes they made and tried turning them around then it'll have been worth the wait.

Is it though....

Series 5 started 2 years later from series 4.... but in the year between we had 4 one hour specials..... Leaving one year have 4 specials spread out rather than a continues full series, and then the next year be back to normal with a series... But the point being DW was on air with multiple episodes for each year

However with this new gap.... Series 9 started in September 2015... when is series 10 starting, May 2017 at the earliest it seems... so at best a year and three quarters on from the last series... not far off from the series 4 to 5 gap... BUT the big difference being we had four specials in between with the last gap in series, effectively a mini series if you like..... That's very different from what we are getting now....

The gap between series 9 to 10 is easily the biggest/longest there's be with out new episodes... bar Xmas episodes.... we have a year where there's only the Xmas episode.... nothing else... and the last episode was the last x-mas episode.... we never had that before.... the Xmas episode being followed up by the next Xmas episode.... That's the big difference....

This is easily the worst position DW has been in since it came back in 2005....

Patrick Ness was asked at the Orlando solidarity sigil in Cardiff Bay...
"Been asked if Class will have LGBT representation in it. Will a lead character with a boyfriend who he kisses & sleeps with & loves do?"

"We were keeping that secret, but today that secret doesn't seem very important. #lovewins"

"Worst" is a very subjective word though. You have to think about it in terms of what the alternatives would have been. Had Series 5 gone ahead under the usual scheduling at the time, it would have been around April 2009, but the delay was a literal gap year until 2010. And it's not as if the episodes that filled the gap have a particularly good reputation (quality rather than quantity matters more to me personally). Only two were non-Christmas specials as well, so you're banking on Planet of the Dead and The Waters of Mars on being enough alone to compensate for a "lost series".
Had Series 10 gone ahead under the usual scheduling it would have been out in September of this year. A delay to April or May next year is not so bad. The only difference is that we've nothing to fill the gap. But if this all serves to up the quality, and gets the show out of the awful autumn scheduling spot then I think it's a necessary move... and 'worst' becomes a tough love choice that actually benefits the show in the long run.

To be honest it just sounds like your trying to sugar coat a big pile of.... well you know what....

Fact is this is the longest there's been with out episodes... and there's nothing to say the quality will be better when it returns.... Moffat's era has had plenty of delays and the quality has never gone up because of it.....

This is the first year since 2005 that there won't be new episodes aired (bar Xmas episode) so its not just opinion that DW is in a worse position than its been before, its a fact...

It's just more of a positive spin, and you really can spin things either way to look positive or negative. There was a gap of 11 months between Series 6 and Series 7 with only The Doctor, The Widow and the Wardrobe to fill the void. At the time that gap seemed massive and even when it came back we got just five episodes before it was off again...eventhough 6B had only been comprised of six episodes itself. I'd say that was a significantly worse time myself, with such fragmented runs and sporadic broadcasts. At least now we're back to when we get a series we get a series.

Odds are the BBC could have pushed to get Series 10 finished with Moffat in time for an autumn broadcast this year to some extent if they'd wished (and it's logical that the BBC would prefer to broadcast their flagship show as much as possible - granted it's their poor judgement that caused issues with scheduling in the first place)... either by advance-planning or by splitting Series 10 across 2016 and 2017. But Series 9 proved that the slot just doesn't suit the show at all. It is therefore in the best interests of the show to postpone that tenth series to the following spring. This is far less an incidental delay and more a deliberate postponement. It may even have given the writers more time for some tighter scripts, sparing them from being so creatively exhausted. The jury is still out on all of this but in terms of 'worst' we have been certified at least two more series in a prime slot for the show. They're shaking up the way the show is written from Series 11 which could be to its benefit (I don't think a writers room approach is a bad thing...but that may be my personal disinterest in Chibnall clouding my view). It doesn't actually sound that bad to me. When Series 10 wouldn't have gone out until late September at the earliest anyway, holding back into the start of the following year amounts to a matter of months really...half a year delay at best. And that's not too shabby considering a showrunner change, and a need to shift the show out of an awful timeslot.

Yes because thats why they would have cast a new companion, announced a new showrunner for the 2018 series etc.

Im sure the July filming date is purely to accomodate Pearl Mackies schedule as she is in a play until the end of June

Yes it is the longest gap since the series returned, no one is trying to say otherwise. But this doesn't automatically mean the end of Who as you seem to be suggesting. The delay was initially caused by the problems involved in getting the cast of Sherlock together, a delay that seems to have got longer as they are still filming Shelock at the moment, when the original plan had been to have moved onto Who by now. The BBC isn't too concerned however as Chris Chibnall's commitments to Broadchurch will stop him from taking over until next year anyway. So it looks like the decision has been taken to delay Who, make Moffat's last season, and then Chibnall's first with the minimum of gaps, rather than have a big gap as before Matt Smith took over. Presumably this will allow for better continuity of production, and possibly regular cast. Assuming that the next series is properly promoted then the gap ought not to impact too badly.

So filming starts in june/july. The show starts broadcast in January is it?
So the next series will end in March 2017.
So when does the chibnall filming start ? Is he going to start filming in July 2017.

Perhaps the bbc will come out and say an August broadcast date is better. But 2017 is too early so wait to 2018.

Noooooookkoooo

I thought series 10 was going to air in the old time slot of April to June 2017.
Filming takes roughly 9 months so July should be about right.

Matt Lucas' Nardole is back for S10 and Frank Cottrell-Boyce is back writing episode 2 (eugh).

Oh dear is that the best they can come up with.and the more I hear about "Class" the more i think I won't watch it. I mean why bother ? Why not have just produced a new series of Doctor Who ?

Because it's an entirely different production, channel, showrunner, budget etc etc.
It's a totally different show that just happens to have links to Who.
Some people are very quick to write off a show, months and months before it's even aired, based on a few teeny snippets of information. I'm going to at least give Class a chance, then make up my mind if I like it. But I seem to be in a minority...

The way the release is written, it sounds like Matt Lucas will be a regular in S10

Sarah Dollard back as well, I thought she did a decent job with Face the Raven.
And Mike Bartlett which is a good choice, Doctor Foster was excellent.

I'm guessing he'll be more like Maisie Williams with about three or four episodes than Samuel Anderson with ten plus.

So recurring guest star more than Series regular.

Could be wrong.

Then again maybe he's playing Bill's boyfriend and she gets dropped back to visit him every episode


So that's Five writers we know of I think (Gatiss plus the four in the article).

Not exactly enthusiastic about Matt Lucas' character returning, but Sarah Dollard and Mike Bartlett are excellent news.