Billie Piper’s Doctor Who regeneration casting was last-minute

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It was the end of the Fifteenth Doctor — and the moment was hastily prepared for.

When Ncuti Gatwa’s Fifteenth Doctor regenerated in the last episode of Doctor Who Season Two, The Reality War, the Doctor changed into the form of former companion Rose Tyler actress Billie Piper.

Piper also played the interface of the sentient weapon The Moment in the Doctor Who 50th anniversary special The Day of the Doctor.

The Fifteenth Doctor regenerates

According to Billie Piper at Florida Supercon 2025, she was cast very last minute.

“Oh, This is such a minefield and now I have to really engage with how I answer this…”

After a pause to collect her thoughts Piper continued:

“All I can say is I was approached very last-minute, and I can’t talk about in what capacity, but I found it very emotional to film and I think it’s a really great ending.”

“I just found it quite moving, and it was really fun to film because it had such a sort of cloak and dagger feeling about getting it made. So, yeah, I have to lie a lot about anything to do with Doctor Who, it seems.”

As of October 2024, Ncuti Gatwa told Graham Norton that we planned to return to film a third series of Doctor Who in early 2025. Instead, he returned in early February 2025 to film new scenes for The Reality War, allegedly a different ending than the one that was originally filmed.

Some time between October 2024 and February 2025, Gatwa’s plans changed and it is rumoured that the ending of the final episode was changed to add a regeneration and provide closure for the Fifteenth Doctor and his companion Belinda Chandra (Varada Sethu).

The question remains whether the regeneration scene, as cast, is appropriate closure for the Fifteenth Doctor. The last-minute casting of Billie Piper and the lack of commitment to announce her as the Sixteenth Doctor suggests that not a lot of thought was put into the regeneration scene other than to create some kind of eyebrow-raising stunt.

No further Doctor Who series have yet been commissioned by the BBC and it could be years before future series return to television. How the regeneration is resolved could possibly be the task of a different showrunner, production company and streaming partner. The future of the programme is that uncertain and the last-minute, is-she-or-isn’t-she-the-Doctor conundrum only adds to the uncertainty.