David Tennant Shouldn’t Return As The Doctor

Posted by By our-little-miss-is-home March 7, 2025 62 Views 9 Min Read
David Tennant Shouldn't Return As The Doctor



Summary

  • Tennant is speculated to return as the 16th Doctor, but this idea may not be well-thought-out.
  • Bringing Tennant back could interfere with the character arcs of the 14th and 15th Doctors.
  • Doctor Who needs consistent, quality storytelling rather than relying on past eras to save the show.

David Tennant is, by far, the most famous actor to ever take up the mantle of playing the bombastic and eccentric Time Lord in the BBC series Doctor Who. He has inspired and captivated millions with his fiery and deeply personal portrayal. However, with rumors circulating that Ncuti Gatwa is retiring from his run as the 15th Doctor, and fears of the show being axed on the horizon, bringing Tennant back for a third time sounds more like desperate, wishful thinking, than a seriously thought-through idea.

For weeks now, fervent speculation has swamped all coverage surrounding Doctor Who Series 15. The BBC has furiously denied claims that cancellation is on the cards, but fell unusually silent on the issue of Gatwa’s departure. It has been rumored for years that the lead’s regeneration scene is already filmed. The Sun quoted an inside source who said: “Ncuti doesn’t want to be tied to the series beyond this and plans to relocate to Los Angeles with several Hollywood projects standing by for him.” Recent reports have only reignited a long-running debate over who, if anyone, could replace Gatwa to become the 16th Doctor.

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Lisa McLoughlin of The Standard reports that Tennant is now the frontrunner in betting markets to take over the TARDIS controls as the 16th Doctor. The BAFTA host has odds of 5/1 on betideas.com, beating out younger candidates like Challengers star Josh O’Connor at 2/1, and Slow Horses lead Jack Lowden at 4/1. This has spurred many online fans to call for Tennant to swoop in and save a show struggling to maintain its audience.

However, it’s important to remember that in the early days of Modern Who (2005-2023), crossovers between incarnations were entirely novel to an audience unfamiliar with the Classic series. Nowadays, Tennant has had two separate regenerations, spawned a human-Time Lord twin, had a part in the 50th anniversary, and another run as the 14th Doctor, which resulted in a bi-generation that led to the character’s retirement, not death. At this point, the novelty of cast reprisals is beginning to wear extremely thin. In days gone by, Doctors would unite together to end decades-old story arcs. Now, they are parachuted in to rescue the show when it’s facing cancellation or running out of steam.

Tennant Returning Would Ruin The 14th & 15th Doctor’s Arcs

Talkin’ Bout My Regeneration

Before Russell T. Davies even considers returning Tennant to the TARDIS, the creatives behind Doctor Who should pause and think about the long-term ramifications of their decisions. The 14th Doctor’s purpose, the very reason for their existence, was to help the character process the many traumas they had experienced throughout time and space. This incarnation was a stop-gap, a physical manifestation or warning sign that the Doctor needed a break, and the 15th Doctor was supposed to be free of it. Would a 16th Tennant Doctor return past traumas to the main protagonist? If so, it would render Ncuti’s clean slate and this new era of the show to be slightly irrelevant or significantly diminished.

Whether this fresh start for 15 was even an ideal choice to begin with has been debated frequently anyway. On the one hand, it has allowed Ncuti’s Doctor to feel more fun, energetic, and brimming with hope. On the other hand, it has disconnected this incarnation from the longstanding history of the show. Davies has taken some strides to make the Doctor’s orphaning—a carry-over from the Chibnall era—a focus of the new season, but 15’s internal struggles took a backseat throughout Series 14. Millie Gibson’s own orphaned character, Ruby Sunday, served as a nice lens through which we see the Doctor dealing with parental abandonment in other people. However, the companion has now exited the TARDIS, and we have yet to see how this monumental development in the Doctor’s backstory has affected the Time Lord emotionally. A Tennant return would only detract from this overarching storyline and further render this soft reboot futile.

The 14th Doctor’s arc would also become relatively pointless. Bi-generation, the most controversial piece of new lore from the 60th Specials, left Tennant’s second incarnation in peaceful retirement with Donna’s family. Part of that retirement implied that 14 would remain grounded, ditching his travels for a life of tranquility and meditative healing. It’s difficult to see how prioritizing mental health would coincide with Tennant racing off once again to battle Daleks or Cybermen.

Doctor Who Needs To Be Consistent

Fans Won’t Go Anywhere If You Don’t Give Them A Reason

In a post-Steven Moffat world, the series has lagged with regard to keeping a consistent canonized overarching plot. Gallifrey was saved in the 50th Anniversary, only for it to apparently be destroyed several years later in 2020’s “Spyfall.” The Doctor is revealed to have an infinite number of lives in “The Timeless Children”, only to have the Doctor throw away the evidence of those years in “The Vanquishers.” Half the universe was also destroyed by the Flux in that episode, but for such an earth-shattering event, audiences still haven’t seen how this has affected the wider cosmos on a microscale. Davies deftly adapted it into the 60th Anniversary as a means to create a final straw to break the Doctor’s cycle of trauma, but all mention of it has completely vanished. During the Doctor’s tangle with the Toymaker in “The Giggle”, the villain himself admitted he was responsible for a soft retcon of all these lore-breaking events: “I made a jigsaw out of your history, did you like it?“

The show has always had an issue with keeping its canon simple, but the development of its characters is suffering as major plotlines are set up, then blown up, and eventually forgotten about entirely. It is becoming extremely confusing and audiences are rightly very perplexed about what the overall direction of the show is. Viewership continues to decline, reaching a low-point of 3.38 million with Series 14’s “Dot and Bubble”. Doctor Who needs a strong, bold, consistent vision. The Time War, Davies’ first overarching plot from 2005, was such a strong, simple throughline that connected so much of the early modern reboot. Since Gatwa’s introduction there hasn’t been one to match that ideal narrative knot. Doctor Who doesn’t need to keep bringing back an older era of the show every time it’s in trouble, but it should take lessons from it and focus on quality storytelling, not optics.

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