It’s the last day of 2025 and I’m not entirely sure where it all went. You know, I sometimes think about how the different eras of each Doctor coincide with each of the different phases of my life. (Consider this then to be my Eras Tour!)

• The Ninth Doctor was my introduction to the show at the surprisingly apt age of 9 years old.
• The Tenth Doctor era subsequently coincided for me between ages 10-14, arguably the primetime era for any Doctor Who fan in childhood.
• The Eleventh Doctor era ran through with those awkward teenage years working through GCSEs and A-Levels.
• The Twelfth Doctor era then coincided with my four years spent as a student at the University of Exeter, some of which was spent running the university’s nascent Doctor Who Society.
• The Thirteenth Doctor era then runs through my awkward stumble into adult life, managing my first full-time job, and trying to make new friends along the way.

It’s December 2025 and we now know for certain that the Disney+ era of Doctor Who, comprising of both the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Doctor eras, not to mention some rogue spin-off about fancying a fish person, has firmly come to an end. So what does this era represent to me in the ongoing saga that is simply known as My Life™. I’d say it started out with such hopeful promise and then ended up not really going anywhere. It’s currently stuck in some sort of holding pattern, not sure whether to look backwards or forwards.

In particular, this was my experience of the most recent series of the show – that’s Season Two if you’re a fan who works on the show, and Series 15 if you’re just a regular fan. You can even hear my abject disappointment in The Reality War in a podcast I recorded with Molly at the start of June. And on reflection, that’s been my general feeling about the year 2025 as well. It seemed pretty hopeful at the start, but now it’s the end of the year and I’m not as happy, healthy and fulfilled in either my work or my hobbies as I’d like to be. I suppose you could say there have been one or two cracks in the fabric of reality.

I briefly met Steph de Whalley, the actor who plays Anita in Joy to the World and The Reality War, at the most recent Gallifrey Cabaret in London; she said hello to me and was very nice to chat with. Maybe she could conjure up the magic door into January 2026 that I need right now? I mean, that’s what January is – a magic door through time that takes us into the New Year. January’s name literally comes from the Latin word ‘ianua’ meaning door. It’s also associated with the Roman god Janus, who famously has two faces, one to look back and the other to look forward, overseeing the transition from one era to the next.

2026 will see Doctor Who transition away from Disney+ and back into the hands of BBC Studios. It will consist of one episode, a Christmas Special, presumably being led by an actor who last appeared as a regular cast member around 20 years ago. We must wait and see whether the mantle of the show passes onto a new lead actor, and indeed whether it passes onto a new showrunner, before the year is out. Time continues to march forwards, as it always does, but the show also appears to be looking backwards right now. Like I said, it’s in some sort of holding pattern, trying to hedge its bets, trying to find a way to survive. A state of temporal grace, perhaps?

But then I remember there are still several positives to my 2025.

At the start of the year I set a resolution to put out at least one new blog post every calendar month this year, and I’ve actually managed to achieve that! The new series of Doctor Who has taken me to London, Bristol and Cardiff to watch episodes and socialise with friends. I’ve also travelled to Oxford and Exeter to meet friends I have made through Doctor Who fandom, whilst some of those friends have also travelled to see me at my home. I also got to celebrate my 30^th birthday in London this year with around a few dozen friends, nearly all of whom I have met through fandom. It’s a show that, despite its recent narrative flaws, keeps on giving in ways I sometimes forget to appreciate.

Experiencing the show with friends always leads me to remember the more idiosyncratic details about watching the most recent series of the show: the collective groan at the AI/Al pun in The Robot Revolution, the smirk on my face when the planet Midnight is mentioned in The Well or the Think Tank is mentioned in Lucky Day, the pointing and laughter directed at me by two friends when the Rani was revealed in The Interstellar Song Contest after I had spent weeks posting in the group chat on how it better not be the bloody Rani, the wide range of reactions – some positive, some not so much – of friends in the pub after Billie Piper’s appearance at the end of The Reality War.

And then of course, there’s Dugga Doo.

As I’m sure you are aware, Dugga Doo was the entry from the planet Grimbald during the 803^rd Interstellar Song Contest, performing their catchy eponymous song to over three trillion viewers in the year 2925. Thanks to the Doctor Who intern, the song, entirely the creation/fault (delete as appropriate) of Murray Gold, was ultimately livestreamed 24/7 on the Doctor Who YouTube channel for what seemed like weeks on end. Dugga Doo is my hero. Dugga Doo is an icon, a legend, the saviour of us all, and has definitely not committed any crimes, except for being just a little guy.

Now I love a little guy.

But I’ll be honest, I did not expect to receive so many of the little guy.

Thank you to my friends who sent me the above (you know who you are!) or indeed any other Dugga Doo memes, videos, merch, etc!

It’s a tough world out there right now, but never forget the weird little things in life that somehow manage to bring you joy. Perhaps the real Joy To The World were the Dugga Doos I collected along the way?

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Okay, that’s it, I’m Dugga Done with 2025. Over and out.

And incidentally, a happy Who year to all of you at home.

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