American Doctor Who fans will have to polish off their spoiler-dodging skills if they want to experience spinoff The War Between the Land and the Sea without knowing some of the story’s biggest twists in advance. The five-part series will officially begin airing on BBC One and BBC iPlayer with a two-episode premiere on December 7, leaving U.S. fans (and pretty much anyone who doesn’t happen to live in the United Kingdom) out in the proverbial cold for what will likely be months to come.
Disney+, which still controls the rights to broadcast the series thanks to its original partnership deal with the BBC that has since gone up in flames, doesn’t seem particularly pressed about airing it, and has only said that the show will be available “in 2026”. They’ll get to it when they get to it, okay? The break-up is clearly not going all that well.
To be fair, this sort of airing schedule isn’t unusual — we’d all just gotten used to not having to really deal with it anymore. In the early days of the modern reboot, the series aired in America on the Sci-Fi Channel (now Syfy) and would often premiere months after its original U.K. broadcast. (And with terribly inserted commercial breaks!)
But in recent years, the show had finally begun to transmit on the same day and date in both countries — thanks to time differences (and what seems to be a profound lack of network interest), the show even dropped several hours ahead of its BBC One airings for U.S. viewers during the Disney+ era. Hardcore Whovians who’d basically spent years using livestreams or VPNs to watch the British broadcasts were finally able to relax. It was, honestly, a golden time for all of us. But nothing lasts forever, it would seem.
