If fans were concerned about the future of Doctor Who in the next few years, they can rest easy – Steven Moffat has laid out some assurances.


Speaking on the long-term plans for the series, Moffat said: “I thought it would last ten years. I didn’t think it would last ten years with BBC Worldwide trying to get me in a room to talk about their plan for the next five years!”

“It’s going to do a minimum of 15. I mean, it could do 26!”

“That’s not to say its easy,” he told Doctor Who magazine. “It’s not easy to find new people. It’s not easy to find new Doctors. That could be the danger – that you start to think that it’s easy. There’s nothing easy about doing Doctor Who.”

Hot on the heels of the rebooted series’ tenth anniversary, it’s good to know Doctor Who has at least another half-decade on the air – and according to Moffat, that’s largely down to its unusually consistent viewing figures.

“Ten years on, our ratings are pretty much the same. Actually, internationally, bigger. No show does that! You’re meant to go down! Doctor Who just stays. It’s extraordinary!” he said.

“When I first took it over, the BBC said to me, ‘We’ve done all our calculations. The ratings will now fall. Expect to lose quite a bit. We don’t mind that. We’re going to keep it going. So long as it’s a good show we won’t mind if the ratings stop being quite as amazing as they were. That’s absolutely fine.’ And they didn’t. They pretty much stayed the same.”

This all sounds like good news for Who fans, except for one thing – many may not even have considered that the show could end in five years. Don’t worry though, here’s Ben Stephenson, head of BBC drama, to see Moffat’s offer and raise it…

“Because it’s such an amazing format, because you can constantly revive it and re-imagine it, then as long as the people looking after it are passionate about it and the BBC is passionate about it, there’s absolutely no reason why it can’t do another 50 years.”

All meet back here for the next big anniversary, then…

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