Ncuti Gatwa Leaves Disney’s ‘Doctor Who’ After Two Seasons of Woke Plots and Tanking Ratings

After two seasons of controversy over ultra woke storylines, actor Ncuti Gatwa has officially exited British sci fi staple Doctor Who, despite previous claims that he was not under pressure by network executives.

The most recently aired episode of the Disney/BBC series ends with Gatwa’s Doctor regenerating into a new character. Regeneration has long been established as the way one actor takes over for the previous in the 60-year-old series, and it usually involves the retiring actor engulfed in a field of brilliant energy from which the new actor emerges and is presented as the next phase of the Doctor’s life.

On Sunday, series 15 aired its seventh and final episode, Wish World, that ends with Gatwa’s regeneration, leaving his version of The Doctor ditched after only two very short seasons.

Shocking many Doctor Who fans, Gatwa’s regeneration reveals that the 16th Doctor will be actress Billie Piper, who previously played The Doctor’s companion, Rose Tyler, in 2005 and 2006 with guest appearances in 2008 and 2013.

Credits for the episode reads: “Ncuti Gatwa as the Doctor. Jodie Whittaker as the Doctor. And introducing Billie Piper.”

Fans are also left in heightened suspense because it has not been 100 percent confirmed that Piper will actually be the 16th Doctor in her own right and won’t, instead, be some sort of temporary stunt casting as the series did by bringing fan favorite David Tennant back tor a few episodes just before Gatwa officially took on the role.

Gatwa’s tenure was shorter than the average three seasons many of the previous actors were allowed. Only Christopher Eccleston had less screen time having served as The Doctor for only one season after taking the helm of the revived series in 2005. Eccleston left the show in short order over creative differences.

In the end, Gatwa’s two years travelling through time and space in the famed Tardis was filled with controversy and complaints that the series placed woke ideology over good story telling.

Just last month, rumors swirled that Gatwa was fired from his Doctor Who role by the BBC after he refused to join the popular performance program Eurovision to present the scores of the top performers. One of those top performers was an Israeli singer, and rumors suggested that Gatwa refused to appear on the program over the contestant’s nationality.

Clearly, though, with this finale of Doctor Who now airing, Gatwa’s exit was already in the works before his decision to rebuff his scheduled stint on Eurovision.

Still, Gatwa’s short tenure has been fraught with troubles. When it was first announced that he was cast as The Doctor, rumors swirled that the series was going to dive straight into woke LGBTQ stories, even as the BBC tried to deny the claims. However, as soon as series 14 debuted, it quickly became obvious that Gatwa’s Doctor was gay when he became the first Doctor to kiss another man and have a gay romance.

The series has also been filled to the rafters with “representation” of transgenders, gays, and even an unusual number of disabled characters. Another oddity of both series 14 and 15 is the inordinate number of times that Gatwa’s Doctor openly weeps on the show. In nearly every episode he is seen crying, with tears streaming, over one issue or another.

Gatwa also upset fans when he railed that white people are guilty of a lot of mediocre TV and also warned fans that if they don’t like the woke stories he is giving them, they should “turn off the TV.”

With all these controversies revolving around the series, Gatwa’s two seasons have been ratings disasters for both the BBC and Disney.

Ratings data shows that series 15’s opening episode experienced an 800,000-viewer crater over Gatwa’s first season debut last year, going from 4 million for Gatwa’s season 14 opening episode to only 3.6 million this year. The season 14 numbers are also down more than a a million over season 13’s opening episode when actress Jodie Whitaker portrayed the Doctor in her final season, going from 5.8 million for Whitaker’s final season opener to Gatwa’s first season opener of only 4 million, according to Deadline.

The second, third, and fourth episode of this season have also seen numbers crashing almost half over Whitaker’s first four episodes. Whitaker — who also suffered falling numbers over her predecessor — earned about two million more viewers than Gatwa is now earning.

Despite the appearance of Billie Piper after Gatwa’s regeneration scene concludes, there have been no confirmations that Disney will continue partnering with the BBC on a 16th season of Doctor Who, nor has the BBC actually confirmed that there even will be a 16th season.

For his part, showrunner Russell T Davies has claimed that he and his team are already deep in the writing stage for several episodes of season 16 and that he is positive the show will continue despite the crashing ratings and woke controversies.

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