Wait, Is David Tennant Really NEVER Coming Back to ‘Doctor Who’?

Last year, David Tennant returned to Doctor Who for a stint as the Fourteenth Doctor and fans everywhere rejoiced. Fourteen’s three episodes alongside Donna Noble (Catherine Tate) were highly anticipated. But then in the third episode of the run, something happened that had never before been seen in Doctor Who history. The Doctor bi-generated! He split into two! One Doctor remained as David Tennant’s Fourteen, and the other one changed into Ncuti Gatwa’s Fifteen.

The Fourteenth Doctor opted to stay on Earth with Donna and her family while the Fifteenth Doctor went off into time and space to have adventures. So surely that means Fourteen will be back at some point in the upcoming season of Doctor Who … right? Well, as it turns out, no.

The fate of the Fourteen Doctor

Showrunner Russell T Davies, who is currently promoting the new season of the show, had some words for British newspaper The Times about what happened to Fourteen after he parted ways with his other self. “I think he died. I’m going to start saying that,” he said. “He went to Venice, 2063, when the city sank, and he went into a whirlpool, which is really sad…”

Okay, we can probably (maybe!) assume that Davies is joking here. (What an end that would be for any Doctor, though.) But we won’t be seeing David Tennant on the show again while Davies is in charge, because he seems very adamant that Fourteen’s story is over.

“David is parked and retired and it’s all Ncuti’s show now. Genuinely,” Davies said. “Not that David might be coming back—he’s absolutely not coming back.”

So that settles that. From now on, it’s up to our imaginations what happened to Fourteen after he remained on Earth. Did he have new, more local adventures with Donna and her family and UNIT? Did he go off in his other TARDIS and explore the universe some more? Or, as Davis suggests, did he fall into a whirlpool during the sinking of Venice? (Nooo!)

Or at least, it’s up to our imaginations for the time being, because you never know, a few showrunners later and many decades into the future someone might decide to bring David Tennant back again, whether in his original role as the Tenth Doctor or as Fourteen. After all, look at how many past Doctors have popped up in cameo roles in the current show. Tennant (and all of us!) will look very different by that point of course, but he’ll always be the Doctor for a lot of people.

(featured image: BBC)