The BBC’s new director general has described a 50-minute AI-generated episode of Doctor Who as “pretty good,” and suggested that the technology now enabled the creation of content “at the standard of a Hollywood studio.”
Brittin became boss of the UK’s iconic broadcasting company in May this year, after almost two decades at Google, where he wound up working as the company’s UK managing director.
Now in charge of the BBC, Brittin faces a tough task of making further drastic cuts to the corporation’s spending, while it continues to try and produce world-class programming — including its flagship sci-fi adventure series that’s currently on hiatus after a disastrous few years.
Doctor Who fans largely agree that their favorite show has declined in quality over the years, but especially over the past two seasons which featured Ncuti Gatwa in the role, and the return of Russell T Davies as showrunner. After just two seasons, this era of the show was unceremoniously ended when co-funding partner Disney ditched the series, prompting the departure of Gatwa in a reshot ending. A later promise to mount a one-off Christmas special that could tie-up the era’s remaining plotlines was later scrapped too, with Davies and production company Bad Wolf also exiting.
Now, the BBC has begun looking for a fresh production house to take the show on — a process it wants to result in new episodes of the series arriving in either 2028 or 2029.
“Somebody sent me a 50-minute episode of Doctor Who that was AI-generated the other day,” Brittin said, speaking at the Royal Television Society conference in London this week (thanks, Variety). “It’s pretty good. I mean, it’s not going to replace humans, and we’ll come on to that
“So everyone’s a creator. Not all the creativity is bad,” Brittin continued. “Everyone’s got the ability in their hands — or six billion people have — to create content at the standard of a Hollywood studio.”
While Brittin does not name the AI project he watched, it is almost certainly the 50-minute first episode of fan-made project The Unmade Season, which features a AI-made continuation of the series. Having watched a chunk of this myself, I’d say it is as good as you’d expect AI to be — which is to say, almost photorealistic but narratively still pretty flawed. The show picks up with a new incarnation of the Doctor who regenerates from David Tennant’s 14th Doctor, played a Scottish-sounding AI actor. Scenes feature various AI oddities, though also incorporate various familiar Doctor Who monsters, such as Slitheen and Ood.
All in all, it’s not very good. And as a Doctor Who fan, it is particularly odd to hear the boss of the BBC offering any sort of praise to content, even non-commercial fan content, that appears to have been generated by regurgitating the BBC’s own copyrighted episodes.
While budgets may be tight, here’s hoping this is the extent of the BBC’s relationship to AI with Doctor Who going forward.
Tom Phillips is IGN’s News Editor. You can reach Tom at [email protected] or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social
