“The Boss” And Other Lost ‘Doctor Who’ Plotlines
by Erik Amaya
In the first of the Doctor Who 60th anniversary specials, “The Star Beast”, the titular creature (voiced by ) makes an ominous statement to the Fourteenth Doctor (David Tennant): “just wait until I tell The Boss!” In the moment, The Doctor shrugs it off, but it was clearly meant to be a recurring idea. Following the bi-generation into Ncuti Gatwa‘s Fifteenth Doctor, that incarnation encounters a character known only as “Rogue” (Jonathan Groff) — which also happens to be name of the episode featuring the character. He also mentions “The Boss.”
Sadly, this is just one of the stories we expect to be abandoned when the program returns someday.
Former executive producer and showrunner Russell T. Davies loved to layer in narrative hooks like this one. In his previous stewardship of the show, he ended a story featuring The Doctor’s best enemy, The Master (John Simm in this incarnation), with a close-up of a ring the character wore throughout the tale. At the time, he said it was placed there for a subsequent production team to pick up when they wanted to bring back The Master, but he ended up using it in Tennant’s first Who swan-song, “The End of Time”, to resurrect the Simm Master after he failed to regenerate in the earlier story.
Prior to that particular plot development, each of Davies’s seasons saw a phrase — “Bad Wolf”, “Torchwood”, “Mister Saxon” — chasing The Doctor and his companion through time. After The Master, the phrases became more complicated: “There’s something on your back” and “he will knock four times.”
Dangling threads, like season-long arcs, are key elements in 21st century TV storytelling, and Davies played into it well during his first run as boss of Doctor Who. But “The Boss” indicates he was grasping at straws to keep viewers engaged and now, with the revelations of the last few days, we seriously doubt he had a proper idea in mind for the teased character.
Unless, of course, it was always meant to be Tennant’s Fourteenth Doctor breaking bad and setting up his descent into The Valeyard — a future incarnation of The Doctor introduced in the mid-1980s (played then by Michael Jayston), a time when the program’s future was also in doubt.
Similarly, Rogue himself seemed to be a character Davies meant to return to. He even made a cameo appearance in the second Disney season’s two-part finale. Stuck in Hell dimension, it is possible the Fifteenth Doctor was meant to rescue him and, possibly, kiss him again. Additionally, the “Rogue” episode featured a moment when the title character scans The Doctor and sees their previous forms — including Richard E. Grant‘s out-of-continuity Shalka Doctor. Davies claimed that was just to get people talking and, now, I believe that to be one of the few honest things he said during his second time with the program.
But as I mentioned in our coverage of the 2026 Christmas special cancellation, the most heartbreaking lost plot from Davies’ second era is the reunion between The Doctor and their granddaughter, Susan (Carole Ann Ford). The actor, who appeared in the first episode of the show in 1963 and remained part of the TARDIS crew through 1964’s “The Dalek Invasion of Earth” shot a handful of scenes for the most recent season, but only one made it to air. In 2025’s “The Interstellar Song Context”, she makes a telepathic connection with her grandfather to wake him out of an absolute-zero stupor. It set up something. And per leaks coming out of the set, Ford also shot a scene for the finale, allegedly meant to reveal Belinda Chandra’s () newly created daughter, Poppy (Sienna-Robyn Mavanga-Phipps) — long story — was in fact Susan’s mother.
A timey-wimey twist I was not enthused about since Susan should be part of The Doctor’s linear life on Gallifrey before stealing the TARDIS and going on the run.
When it became clear the show’s continued relationship with Disney was imperiled, Davies deleted that story tease in favor of seemingly regenerating The Doctor into the form of Billie Piper, a cliffhanger which — if reports are to be believed — only further poisoned the waters for anyone interested in continuing the Time Lord’s adventures.
And, as it happens, Davies told me there would be “answers” for Susan when I talked to him ahead of the first Disney season:
As an older Who fan, the loss of this storyline is more devastating than the cancellation of the 2026 special or the reality of the program entering a second Wilderness period (the first occurring between 1989 and 2005 minus the 1996 TV movie). Ford, sadly, is aging. She is, in fact, the last member of the original cast still with us. Acknowledged as a Time Lord, the character could regenerate to bring her back into the narrative, but we also wanted to see Ford reunited with a current Doctor.
Maybe the lesson here is to doubt Davies’ promises.
Yeah, that might sound like bitterness, but the current state of Doctor Who as an ongoing TV concern leaves a bitter aftertaste. At the same time, I can acknowledge Davies wrote or orchestrated some really good episodes during his second go as showrunner. But even in his first run, endings were a problem and this time, it scuppered some things that could’ve been magical.
Luckily, Ford regularly returns as Susan in various Big Finish audio dramas, so reunions with her grandfather happen on the regular in that space. She even has a son who often travels with the Eighth Doctor (Paul McGann).
Meanwhile, the expectation among fans is a hard reboot of Doctor Who, which means a TV reunion between Susan and The Doctor — to say nothing of further stories with The Boss, the Shalka Doctor, or Rogue — will never materialize.
