Summary
- Ncuti Gatwa’s debut as the Fifteenth Doctor in the Christmas special received positive reviews and showcased his charismatic portrayal.
- The upcoming season, led by showrunner Russell T. Davies, brings a reinvention of the series and introduces new mysteries and storylines.
- The church introduced in the Christmas special will play a significant role in future episodes, with more surprises and twists to come.
The Doctor is back, and thanks to a new trailer for the 14th (or 1st) season we know when he will return for a full new series. Doctor Who’s Christmas special, entitled “The Church on Ruby Road”, fully introduced a new Doctor in Ncuti Gatwa, a new companion of Ruby Sunday, played by Millie Gibson, and delivered the kind of Who story that was almost completely missing from the tenure of Jodie Whittaker’s Thirteenth Doctor.
With Russell T. Davies back as showrunner, and the backing of Disney Branded Television, the arrival of Ncuti Gatwa’s Fifteenth Doctor is a complete reinvention of the series, and therefore Davies has proclaimed the new season “Season 1” rather than season 14 (or even season 40 for those really counting from the show’s inception in 1963). Whatever the number of the season, the festive special ended with a teasing look at what is to come next, and a release window of May 2024. Check out the teaser below.
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Ncuti Gatwa’s Doctor is Already Bringing New Energy to the Series
BBC
As the longest running Sci-Fi show ever, Doctor Who has been on the brink of extinction almost as many times as the Time Lords and Daleks in the series. But just like those two races, it always seems to find a way back.
After a run of declining seasons, both in review scores and viewership, something drastic needed to be done to save the series becoming part of the past – that something was the combination of Russell T Davies and David Tennant, who reunited to deliver a trio of 60th anniversary specials ending with the “bi-generation” of Tennant’s Doctor into Gatwa’s. This in itself was a series first, with two Doctors being present at the same time, in the same place, and as David Tennant’s Fourteenth Doctor now lives out his life away from the pressures of being Earth’s savior, Gatwa’s journey in the TARDIS is just beginning.
Release Date March 26, 2005
Seasons 14
Streaming Service(s) Disney+
In his first full episode, Gatwa’s Christmas Day arrival was met with mostly positive reviews, especially for the Sex Education star himself. Having wowed with all the charisma you could want in a Doctor, fans are now looking forward to seeing where the show will go next when it makes its return in 2024. Davies already started laying down threads and mysteries for the future in Tennant’s anniversary episodes, and the Christmas Special brings a host of new ones. Davies explained to Digital Spy and other media outlets that one big part of the upcoming series will be the church of the episode’s title, which played a big role in the special, but has a bigger role to play in the future. He said:
“You always have to be aware that it’s a new audience coming in. So you kind of start from scratch. Personally, I think it should be as Christmassy as possible. It’s amazing. We had snow, the church, but they’re always different every year. This was quite a fable, about a foundling on the church doorstep in the snow. So that story then continues into the series. We come back to that church. There’s all sorts of things. There were people in those scenes you don’t know were there. We have a lot more to come.”
Doctor Who is currently streaming episodes on Disney+.
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