Doctor Who new season release date revealed, but in a confusing way

The new season of Doctor Who, the second with Ncuti Gatwa in the lead role as the Doctor, will drop on Saturday, April 12. That's according to an ad run during the BBC's coverage of a rugby match between England and Scotland, this past Friday:

According to the Independent, this particular rugby match wasn't a high-profile event (I'm just going to take their word on that), and fans are raising eyebrows. "Quite a random place to drop such a big announcement," TV journalist Scott Bryan wrote on Twitter/X.

Another fan wrote: "I find it hilarious that it was a totally unrelated rugby match that announced the release date of the next season and not, you know, the BBC itself, any of Doctor Who's social media pages, the Doctor himself, or even the showrunner. No, a trailer in a random rugby match." And my personal favorite: “The way zero fans saw this because in what world do rugby and Doctor Who fans overlap[?]”

Indeed, the announcement seems so random I wonder if there was a mistake, like the release date should have been held back until the BBC or Disney+ could make a bigger deal of it. Or maybe they just want to start getting the word out.

This new season of Doctor Who will be the 31st in the show's long history, and the 15th since the BBC revived the series in 2005 after over a decade off the air. But showrunner Russell T Davies, who served as showrunner for the 2005 revival and who has now returned, rebranded Gatwa's first season as "season 1," which technically makes this new one season 2.

So is this Doctor Who season 31, 15 or 2? Whatever, it premieres on April 12.

The buzz around the show has been iffy of late, with a rumor going around that Gatwa might "quit" after this next season. Of course, the show casts a new actor in the role of the Doctor every few years, so that wouldn't necessarily be a catastrophe; Gatwa's predecessor Christopher Eccleston lasted only one season in the role, so Gatwa already has him beat. But if you add in reports of middling ratings and the BBC's partnership with Disney hanging in the balance, there's a bit of a cloud over Doctor Who these days. It has a lot to prove with this new season, whatever number gets attached to it.

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