Arrakis ecologist said:
so we got 3 episode with the "14th" doctor and then a new series with a 15th???? Seems overly fan services
I believe it's to reset from the past 5 years of Doctor Who and represent a clean break from what the show was to where it's going. Jodie's era had the lowest ratings of all the new Who seasons. The Timeless Child storyline turned off a lot of loyal fans when it retconned pretty much everything we knew about the Doctor and made many things meaningless. It was so bad, that they completely abandoned that storyline and just shelved it for another show runner that wants to take it up somewhere down the line and try to fix it.
Chibnall also did a terrible job of coming up with good 'monster-of-the-week' episodes which are what endears most fans to the doctors. In my opinion, Chibnall would nearly have killed the show if it kept going down this route as viewership was cut by 40% since the first season of Capaldi. Doctor Who averaged between 7-8 million viewers for every season until the last two seasons of Capaldi and then Jodie's run. Dipping to a low of 4.95 million this past season.
It's one of the main reasons they brought back Russell T Davies as the showrunner and head writer, to try and get back to basics of what everyone loved about the first 5-6 years of nuWho. I believe these 3 episodes will be a noticed transition to get people back watching cause it's one of (if not the) most beloved doctors returning and allow a softer landing for Ncuti when he gets going full time. It puts a clear division between Chibnall/Jodie's era, and this new one.
I also think this will allow them to get back on a schedule of releasing a new season every year which Davies has mentioned was one of his goals with taking over. It's hurt that starting with the last season or two of Matt Smith's run that there's been about 18 months to 2 years between seasons being released. It killed the momentum of one of the hottest shows on TV back in 2012 or so.
