Doctor Who: Would RTD Return for a Third Run as Showrunner? Nope

Posted in: BBC, TV | Tagged: doctor who

Doctor Who: Would RTD Return for a Third Run as Showrunner? Nope

Ex-Doctor Who Showrunner Russell T. Davies isn't looking for a third run as showrunner - but as a fan, he wishes the new team all the best.

Published Mon, 12 Oct 2026 07:37:08 -0500
by Ray Flook
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Article Summary

• Russell T. Davies says he will not return for a third stint as Doctor Who showrunner as the BBC seeks a new team.
• While ruling himself out of the Doctor Who tender, RTD says he is excited to see who takes over the series next.
• Davies adds that, as a lifelong Doctor Who fan, he and viewers will be watching and cheering the show's future.
• He also reveals shelved Series 3 plans, including Rogue's return and a huge Doctor Who Dalek four-part finale.

Ex-Doctor Who Showrunner Russell T. Davies has been making headlines with his memoir, The Queerest of Folk: A Life in Television, and what he's had to share while promoting it. With the BBC's tender invite deadline having come and gone, we're beginning to learn more about who did – and didn't – pitch to be the next stewards of the long-running show's future. But what about down the road? Could Davies see himself returning as the showrunner, after his original 2005 start and his return with the David Tennant and Catherine Tate-starring 60th anniversary specials and Ncuti Gatwa/Disney era? Nope. "It's out for tender – it's nothing to do with me, I'm not going to do it for a third time! But apparently – I've been in your studios all day – they've just announced who's going for the tender, so that's exciting," Davies shared with BBC Radio 2's Jo Whiley. But as a fan of the show since he was a child, Davies wishes the new crew nothing but the best. "Don't we want that show back, Jo? And we'll be there watching," he added. At this point, I definitely believe him – but who's to say, down the road? Plus, there's nothing saying he couldn't pen an episode or two.

Doctor Who Series 3 Plans: Rogue Return, Epic Dalek Finale & More: RTD

Though his second run as showrunner would wrap with "The Reality War" after two seasons, Davies opens up about where things stood with a potential Series 3: a "What If?" look back at what could've been, culminating in "a Dalek four-part epic." Sharing that "it's such a shame we never got to make Series Three," Davies noted that three scripts for the third season were "fully written," offering details on the three chapters:

"We had a brilliant story set during the Great Fire of London, written by the powerhouse team of Laurence Clark and Jack Thorne, and we should have had the budget to do it properly, with the flames and panic and everything."
"And we had a brutal horror story, written by the brilliant Lydia Adetunji, set on a NASA-type space station, all about trypophobia – look it up, it'll make you shiver!"
"There was a really lovely episode set on a council estate in the middle of Manchester. That would have been the ultimate place to bring the Doctor; I would have just loved to see that. It was written by Sharma Angel-Walfall, who's lived that life. It was like 'Doctor Who' meets the film 'Rocks.'"

From there, Davies shared that he had reached out to Juno Dawson ("The Interstellar Song Contest") to pen another episode, and that he was speaking with writers Kate Herron and Briony Redman about a return for Jonathan Groff's Rogue ("which would have been glorious"). Wanting to include it during Series 3, Davies wrote that he was working with Herron and Redman "about Rogue in an eighties story, maybe set in Blackpool with video arcades at its centre." With "a lot of fabulous ideas, some fully fleshed out," in play, Davies added that the third series would've wrapped "with a Dalek four-part epic."

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