No, Russell T. Davies, Spoilers Shouldn't Land Someone In Jail
The former 'Doctor Who' showrunner has decided to close the book on his time with the show with a bizarre screed on what he perceives as its real enemy: leakers.
There are dramatic flare-outs of shows dying, and then there's whatever the hell's been happening with Doctor Who.
The show has had a funny old couple of years, between having its near future abruptly cancelled after months of silence, its further future being put out to tender, and the general drama that came with just how explosively the final days of the "RTD2" era collapsed. But the titular man himself behind that era is not going quietly, it seems.
This past weekend The Guardian previewed Davies' new book, The Queerest of Folk: A Life in Television, with an excerpt covering the writer and producer's unvarnished explanation of how his time with Doctor Who, and almost Doctor Who itself, came to an end. Who fans promptly scoured it for details—when Davies knew Disney wouldn't renew its deal to co-produce the show (before even the second season had aired), how far along the 2026 Christmas special got before it was scrapped (not very, but far enough for a general story outline and a tease of the Daleks' return for the first time since "The Power of the Doctor"), how and why they decided to have Ncuti Gatwa regenerate into Billie Piper (a grand delusion to suggest the show had a future that, in Davies' true style, he believes was received with overwhelming positivity).
But perhaps the most telling part of it all has nothing to do with Doctor Who's end but an aside turning into one final bizarre screed from Davies himself about spoiler culture and leaks that dogged his returned tenure on the show.
"The BBC managed to track down the person who was putting the information online, but it was a member of the public. They were probably friends with someone at some point in the delivery chain of Doctor Who, and we simply didn’t have the legal right to seize that person’s emails," the excerpt reads in part. "I wish we did. This was my copyrighted material—why don’t I have the legal right to get that person arrested? But the BBC was always very scared of how that would look—a member of the public being prosecuted for simply breaking copyright; it would be like breaking a butterfly on a wheel."
The BBC was, rightly, scared of how it would look if the corporation went after online Doctor Who leaks with the intent to put someone behind bars. Because it's an insane suggestion.