I’m not here to speak on the quality of The Mandalorian or its movie “spinoff”. I haven’t seen either. I don’t have Disney+ and can only go by what I’ve heard from fans, that the first two seasons were well received but the show dropped off storywise in the third season, when “baby Yoda” was brought back for profit reasons rather than story reasons when his arc was supposedly over with after being collected by Luke Skywalker for training. Apparently training Yoda/Grogu’s race is a lot faster than everyone else. Or DisneyFilm wanted to sell more plushies or something. That never ends well.
Sorry, Gremlin. On another show I might have liked you, but you don’t fit that show.
No, I haven’t forgotten what you did to Flash Gordon, NBC Saturday Morning programmers!
However, I can speak to the current treatment of the fanbase by the show’s new stewards. I’m more and more convinced that showrunners, directors, and producers are weaponizing unaware actors against fans as they try to rework franchises into their shows at the expense of what made the property so beloved in the first place. The SEECA crowd (snobs, elitists, egotists, corporatists who let them, and to a lesser but growing level the current activist movement in Hollywood) continue to alter properties to fit their tastes, partly because the studios aren’t paying attention but forcing them to only make existing IP due to being risk averse…only what they’ve done is almost a bigger risk in killing those properties by giving them to people who don’t care at the expense of people that do.
Yes, I do blame the creators for not caring what the fans want rather than show what they can do with an existing property and garner enough support to convince the studios and services to let them make what they want. I also blame the studios for putting the wrong people in charge. I do NOT blame the actors who are out of touch for making the show…but I WILL blame them for fan responses.
Enter Brandon Wayne, one of the suit actors for Pedro “almost literally phoning it in unless I need the helmet off for five seconds so I can make five other movies at the same time” Pascal for the Mandalorian sub-franchise. I get it. It’s a good assignment and a paid gig, hopefully being paid what you’re worth. In a recent interview with Movieweb, Wayne spoke out against the critics of The Mandalorian And Grogu, and used the previous hate leveled against Jar Jar Binks from The Phantom Menace against the classic fans. It’s not the solid argument he thinks it is, and shows us that even the suit actors are happy to take on the fanbase as “toxic” rather than passionate. You can see from the start that article writer Manuel Demegillo has a few biases of his own.
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BW Media Spotlight 
On WhoCulture’s Response To The Current Doctor Who Status
I’m not necessarily celebrating the end of Doctor Who. It was once one of my favorite fictions due to how vast the Whoniverse, is with a diverse group of races both friendly and enemy. Also the potential of other Time Lords having their own adventured, along the same lines as other starships or starbases in Star Trek’s Federation to play with (both of which fan productions and official material have done well and ill with). The only other franchise in my favorites that matches it is Transformers, even if you stick to the “G1” 1980s continuity with or without the Japanese animes. Throw in the multiverse and you have yourself near unlimited potential for expansion. Star Wars has tried but it always comes back to original trilogy cast in some form.
What I am happy about is that time will be taken for Doctor Who to find itself…and without Russell T. Davies. While I wasn’t the biggest fan of his first run and had my concerns going into his second, he at least displayed an attempt to want to make good adventures with the Doctor and a love for the show in that first run. I just disagreed with some of his ideas, but still overall enjoyed it, even if Steven Moffatt hit more of my happiness buttons than missed. So the only person who’s probably happier to see Davies and Bad Wolf Productions leave Doctor Who is Christopher Eccleston.
What does this have to do with Doctor Who news and theory channel WhoCulture of the WhatCulture network?
Back when the cancellation of the show entirely and the Christmas Special specifically were just rumors I put together an article response to main contributor Ellie Littlechild counterpointing her claims that everything was fine and we just had to wait. We had some disagreements. When the news dropped I was able to get on it with my thoughts, but Ellie was on vacation (or “holiday” as they say in the UK) and couldn’t respond herself to the news. Because I used her previous comments on the rumor as a basis for my own thoughts, I thought it fair to go over her updated comments. To her credit she’s not backpedaling or drowning herself in cope, and there were a few things we did agree upon even in the rumor video.
So in fairness and credit where it’s due, and totally not for being a cute redhead with an alluring accent that will benefit readership and totally no other reason because…I think I killed this joke, here is Ellie Littlechild’s post-vacation thoughts on the cancellation of the Christmas special and “tendering” (aka “shopping around for a new production team rather than just going back to BBC Wales) of the series as a whole. Then my thoughts.
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Posted by ShadowWing Tronix on June 16, 2026 in Television Spotlight and tagged Bad Wolf Productions, BBC, commentary, Doctor Who, Russell T. Davies, WhoCulture.
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