New Doctor Who spinoff blows up in ratings after Disney dumped the franchise

The world of Doctor Who remains enchanting even without The Doctor

It's been quite the year for Doctor Who fans. The second season of the reboot starred Ncuti Gatwa as the Fifteenth Doctor, alongside Varada Sethu as the no-nonsense nurse, Belinda Chandra. While it started strong, critics and fans' reaction to the show — particularly that finale — were mixed. However, this hasn't stopped fans from jumping into the new Doctor Who spinoff from Russell T. Davies and director Dylan Holmes Williams: The War Between Land and Sea.

The overnight ratings for the new sci-fi show, set in the same setting as the BBC's biggest sci-fi franchise to date, were incredibly promising. The show premiered its first two episodes last weekend, on Dec. 7, on BBC One. Overnight, it gained an audience of 2.8m for its first episode, and 2.1m for its second. As pointed out by TV Zone UK, these ratings are considerably higher than most overnight ratings for recent years' Doctor Who episodes.

What's particularly significant about this milestone is that the first two episodes launched at the same time as the finale of one of the UK's biggest reality TV shows, I'm A Celebrity. Despite The War Between Land and Sea's second episode running for the whole duration of the ITV show's finale, it was still 400,000 viewers ahead of the BBC's slot for that time.

The success of the first two episodes came shortly after Disney ditched its deal with Doctor Who, which followed poor ratings and, according to a well-placed industry source quoted by Deadline, the show becoming "too woke for Trump’s USA." The latter was considered "a factor in Disney's mind" when it came to a renewal, along with the ratings and Gatwa's unwillingness to fully embrace the role (the actor left the show after two seasons, citing burnout).

Regardless of that, it seems pretty clear that there is still a healthy appetite for the world of Doctor Who. And, according to these ratings, the world doesn't necessarily need to include the traveling Time Lord themselves. Even so, we can't help but wonder (and hope) if the Doctor might appear somehow, someway, before the last episode concludes.

The five-part series follows Barclay (Russell Tovey), who plays a low-level staff member of UNIT, a military organization that has dealt with extra-terrestrial lifeforms (including the Doctor) more times than they can count. However, even Barclay and the rest of UNIT are left scrambling when an ancient species, the Sea Devils, rise from the sea. Having little choice but to become humanity's ambassador, Barclay consults with the creature Salt (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) to speak at a summit. Meanwhile, UNIT's leader, Kate Lethbridge-Stewart (Jemma Redgrave), is eager to go above and beyond to protect humanity.

Other stars involved in the show include Colin McFarlane, Alexander Devrient, and Ruth Madeley.

The series has a much darker tone than one would expect from Doctor Who, but as those overnight ratings show, that doesn't seem to be putting fans off at all. If anything, it might just be the thing that the show was missing recently.