GOSSIP About That DOCTOR WHO Disney Season Two Finale

What's true, what's not, what's up in the air.

The finale of the most recent Doctor Who series required significant rewriting and reshooting to accommodate Ncuti Gatwa's departure a year before planned and Disney+’s lack of decision whether or not to continue the show. Some of the stuff below you will have read elsewhere, but others you will not and, as of writing, are exclusive to the Substack.

There have been specific reports of a “wrap party” scene after The Doctor and UNIT had defeated The Two Ranis and Omega. And one screencap from that scene was, bizarrely, released to promote the finale by the BBC and Disney+. The origins of that decision are unknown, but it is the kind of thing showrunner Russell T Davies would throw out, just to see the fuss it might make.

But there has been gossip that the scene would feature Carole Ann Ford returning as Susan, the granddaughter of The Doctor, watching from the side. And that I can confirm that, not from seeing the scene, but from a friend who has seen the storyboards. There is gossip that had Susan departing the scene with Poppy, with Susan calling Poppy, her mother. But that’s not true; that was a concoction. Rather, in the scene, Susan is lit in the fashion one might associate with The Big Bad. Certainly teasing that she is a threat to The Doctor.

In the 1966 season, after defeating an invasion by the Daleks, Susan was left on a mid-twenty-second century post-apocalyptic Earth by the Doctor, with her boyfriend of a few weeks, David. The Doctor refused to allow her back in the TARDIS and told her that her future was with David not with him, but that one day he would come back. One day. But he never did.

The 2024 season of Doctor Who heavily teased the return of Susan, repeatedly, and then this 2025 season saw her on screen, memories or visions surfacing in the Doctor’s mind as he was frozen in space.

It does seem that her return was to pave the way for a Season Three in 2026 or 2027 with The Doctor Versus Susan. But now? With the appearance of The Doctor regenerating into Billie Piper, added to show Disney+ just how much media impact Doctor Who can have when it wants to? Well, it’s still all up in the air. Will Susan still be a threat now that The Doctor is her grandmother? Though I did find this official Doctor Who YouTube channel's choice of words amusing.

Could The Moment, the Time Lord weapon also played by Billie Piper have possessed the Doctor? Maybe not. But if indeed Billie Piper is playing The Sixteenth Doctor, one off those familiar faces that the Great Curator said the Doctor would be revisiting, well… An episode (or special) with Billie Piper as Rose Tyler, Billie Piper as The Doctor and David Tennant as the Spare Arm Doctor on their parallel Earth does feel like a natural choice. The Two Roses. I’ve got my £300, I’m fine, whatever.

But of all the rumours, the most disappointing one that has come to me involves the departure of Ncuti Gatwa, and is from those close to the production. Quite simply, when Gatwa looked at the possibility of leaving the show, it was not a definite thing at all, but it seems no one was particularly bothered about trying to persuade him otherwise. I am sure details will come out; there must be a Writer’s Tale II at some point. But despite his appearance of being a complete and utter lovely, in interviews and behind-the-scenes shooting, on the set of the show, people seem to have found him… otherwise. And have been quite curt in expressing their feelings about it all. It just hasn’t reached Reddit yet.

But while I am here, and have the eyes of a few Whovians, a couple of fan explanations of my own. I have already written at length why I see Ruby Sunday as a living Time Window, an ordinary young woman who became such a thing, by her own bootstraps. With both her nature and the jumbled-up timeline caused by Belinda Chandra, she was part of the malleability of time that the Doctor caused at the edge of the universe. The Doctor, indeed anyone, can now change time and they have to live with the mavity of the situation. It hasn’t been leaned on, but it has been all set up. Surely this would have been what Season Three was to have been about? Fixing time, or recognising it is a lot more fragile than it used to be? Either way, that’s a Doctor Who story. Maybe it would have ended with the Doctor doing what Rose did in Father’s Day and what the Doctor did in The Girl Who Waited, and changing time so that the Doctor went back and saw Susan, wiping out other rival futures. So Susan would no longer have to overcome... The Boss? Or be in charge of Rogue, The Time Hotel and Beep The Meep, looking for those with two hearts. The origin of that hotel is unknown. Did Susan build it on Earth in the 22nd century? Did the Time Hotel protect her from death at the hands of the Time War and then The Master?

And as for why Mrs Flood was breaking the Fourth Wall? She wasn’t talking to us; she was talking to The Wish Baby. Yes, she hadn’t kidnapped him yet, her future self would, but that also happened centuries before, so she just did things out of order. Timey wimey…

Have I put far too much thought into this? Usually. Maybe I’ll do a TikTok, people like those.