Flush with new cash thanks to The Walt Disney Company, Doctor Who is getting another spinoff.
The BBC and Disney+ have ordered The War Between The Land And The Sea, a five-part spinoff series starring Russell Tovey and Gugu Mbatha-Raw alongside existing Doctor Who stars Jemma Redgrave and Alexander Devrient.
The War Between The Land And The Sea focuses on military organization UNIT. Per the logline, when a fearsome and ancient species emerges from the ocean, dramatically revealing themselves to humanity, an international crisis is triggered. With the entire population at risk, UNIT steps into action as the land and sea wage war.
Doctor Who showrunner and executive producer Russell T Davies wrote the spinoff with Pete McTighe (A Discovery of Witches) and it features the return of the Sea Devils, classic Doctor Who villains first seen in 1972. It comes after the spinoff was alluded to in the 73 Yards episode, the fourteenth episode of Season 14 of the revived era.
The series, announced at Comic-Con, marks the latest spinoff for the classic British sci-fi property. K-9 and Company, which focused on the adventures of Sarah Jane Smith and a robot dog, was the first official spinoff, although it was only one episode in 1981. Torchwood was arguably the most successful spinoff, coming from Russell T Davies and starring John Barrowman, running for four seasons. There were two animated series – The Infinite Quest and Dreamland – as well as youth-skewing series The Sarah Jane Adventures, which starred Elisabeth Sladen and ran for five seasons on kids network CBBC. There was also Class, which ran on BBC3 for one season.
Spinoffs of Doctor Who – all set in The Whoniverse – have been in the works since Davies returned to the franchise and Disney+ came on board. Last year, It’s A Sin creator Davies told GQ that it was “time for the next stage” for Doctor Who.
“I thought — with no criticism whatsoever towards the people who were running it at the time, because they were running it within the BBC’s measures — it was time for the next stage for Doctor Who. I thought the streaming platforms are ready, the spin-offs are ready; I always believed in spin-offs when I was there. I did Torchwood as a spin-off, The Sarah Jane Adventures as a spin-off. Those spin-offs declined when I left, and I can see why. And I very much left after 2008, when the money became scarce, I think that’s fair enough for the public service broadcaster that the money is spent on other things,” he said.
Tovey is best known for starring in series including BBC supernatural comedy Being Human and HBO series Looking. He also starred in American Horror Story: NYC and Feud: Capote Vs. The Swans. Mbatha-Raw previously starred in Doctor Who as Tish Jones, the sister of companion Martha Jones. She starred in Fox series Touch alongside Kiefer Sutherland, Apple’s The Morning Show and Surface and Disney+’s Loki.
The series is produced by Bad Wolf, with BBC Studios for Disney Branded Television and BBC. Filming begins next month and will be directed by Dylan Holmes-Williams, who directed season one episodes 73 Yards and Dot and Bubble. It is exec produced by Davies, Phil Collinson, Joel Collins, Julie Gardner and Jane Tranter.
The spinoff comes after Season 14 (or Season 1 for Disney+) just finished airing last month. Sex Education’s Ncuti Gatwa stars as the Fifteenth Doctor alongside Millie Gibson as his companion Ruby Sunday. Thanks to Disney coming on board – Doctor Who previously aired on (BBC America in the U.S.), the budget of Doctor Who soared to around $13M per episode.
However, it hasn’t been a ratings success. In the UK, the first ep from May launched with a disappointing 2.6 million overnight viewers, miles behind the opener of previous Doctor, Jodie Whittaker, and also shipping two million from the Tennant-starring specials. When consolidated seven-day viewing figures were taken into account, the entire series averaged an audience down almost 1.5 million per episode compared to Whittaker’s last in 2021, according to Barb data supplied by overnights.tv, while it failed to light up Barb’s daily seven-day streaming rankings. The BBC stresses that it is the public broadcaster’s top drama for under-35s this year.
“The ratings are a problem,” one source told Deadline. “They can talk all they like about young viewers but they’re still down from the specials and down from the Jodie [Whittaker] series. I imagine serious conversations are happening. Disney will want to see results.”
Obviously, Disney+ didn’t disclose any ratings for Doctor Who in the U.S. or internationally. Ratings analyst Parrot Analytics told Deadline that Doctor Who was the most in-demand UK-originating show with U.S. audiences during its early release, and reached a high of seventh on Disney+’s list of most in-demand series, trailing the likes of The Simpsons and the Star Wars offshoots.