RTD Dismisses Concerns Over Leftover Piper Cliffhanger: “A Piece of Piss” for Doctor Who’s Next Team

Russell T Davies has dismissed concerns that Billie Piper’s Doctor Who cliffhanger could cause problems for the show’s next production team, calling the mystery “a piece of piss” to resolve.

The comments come from an edited extract from Davies’ new memoir, The Queerest of Folk: A Life in Television, published by The Guardian ahead of the book’s release on 8 October.

Piper unexpectedly appeared following Ncuti Gatwa’s regeneration at the end of The Reality War, but the episode did not explain who or what she was playing.

With Davies and Bad Wolf now stepping away from Doctor Who, the mystery will be inherited by the show’s next production team. But Davies does not see that as much of a problem.

“Yes, that leaves us with a Billie puzzle,” he writes, before adding: “but c’mon, that’s easy.”

“Doctor Who problems are simple to solve,” Davies continues.

He points to the 1996 TV Movie revealing that the Doctor was half-human, joking that it was eventually dealt with by “everyone discreetly never mentioning it again”.

Davies says the new team has two obvious options for Piper’s appearance.

“A new production team can either seize hold of that appearance happily,” he writes.

Or, in what Davies believes is the more likely outcome, “they can explain the event away with exactly seven words.”

“Painless,” he adds, before describing the issue as “a piece of piss.”

Elsewhere in the same memoir extract, Davies reveals that Piper was not originally part of Gatwa’s regeneration at all. The original version ended with an open-ended regeneration before Davies decided in the edit that it looked too much like the end of Doctor Who.