Based on recent history, Disney Plus is becoming to legacy shows and episodic continuations what Netflix has been for one-season fantasies, seeing as Doogie Kameāloha, M.D. has ended up as the Mouse House’s latest retooling of a popular property to fall foul of the axe.
On the plus side, the modern-day update of the Neil Patrick Harris-starring favorite that ran for four seasons and 93 episodes between 1989 and 1993 did at least manage to survive for two 10-episode runs of its own, but five months after the sophomore batch dropped, it’s officially been booted from the airwaves.
You’ve really got to wonder why Disney continues giving the go-ahead to updates of established IPs when it ends up canning the majority of them within an instant, because it’s not as if Doogie Kameāloha is an isolated incident. Willow is unavailable to watch anywhere just six months after it premiered, while among the raft of recent cancellations include sequel series National Treasure: Edge of History, fellow follow-up The Mighty Ducks: Game Changers, and legacy continuation Turner & Hooch to name but four.
Average Rotten Tomatoes scores of 92 and 83 percent from critics and audience evidently didn’t mean a damn thing in the long run, although you’d suspect part of the reason why the medical dramedy has been given its marching orders is due to low viewing figures.
That tends to be a curse that afflicts almost every Disney Plus original that doesn’t carry the Star Wars or Marvel Cinematic Universe branding, but at least the company hasn’t decided to weaponize one of its worst habits and completely excise Doogie Kameāloha from the content library altogether… not yet, anyway.