The other day, a new Doctor Who Christmas Special dropped on the BBC and on Disney+. Disney has made a big investment in the (very) long-running sci-fi series, and in addition to the special it gave fans a preview of the new season to come. Watch above!
Doctor Who has a tried-and-true formula for reinventing itself. Every few years, a new actor will step into the role of the Doctor, the ancient alien who travels through time and space in a police box-shaped time machine. Our current Doctor is Ncuti Gatwa, who appeared in his first full season earlier this year.
The show also often swaps out companions, who accompany the Doctor on his wild adventures. In the last season, the Doctor's companion was the whimsically named Ruby Sunday, played by Millie Gibson. Gibson will still be around in the new season, but this time she'll be working at the fictionary military organization UNIT, rather than traveling the cosmos with the Doctor. UNIT deals with extraterrestrial matters, so Ruby's insights will no doubt be invaluable.
Meanwhile, the Doctor will get a new companion in the form of Belinda Chandra (Varada Sethu), who apparently does not want to be on the TARDIS. "Doctor, you need to get me home," she demands in the teaser trailer. According to the synopsis for the upcoming season, the new duo will go on an “epic quest to get [Belinda] back to Earth. But a mysterious force is stopping their return and the time-traveling TARDIS team must face great dangers, bigger enemies and wider terrors than ever before.” Just another day for the Doctor.
There are other clips from the new season floating around. Here's one of the Doctor hanging out in a hospital for some reason; Belinda walks through the background, so apparently she's a medical professional of some sort. Who knows what calamity of happenstance will lead her to pairing up with the Doctor?
SERIES 15 CLIP FROM UNLEASHED!! #DoctorWho pic.twitter.com/gsktzDIPjN
— It's Sn-Owen! ☃️ (@WhovianLife) December 25, 2024
The next season of Doctor Who is coming out sometime next year, but we don't know exactly when. As for what happens after that, it's unclear. Ratings for the last season apparently weren't as high as producers were hoping, but the show did very well in its target demographic of younger viewers, and getting younger people on board is very important to a show's health.
In any case, a new season beyond the upcoming one hasn't been confirmed, but Doctor Who has consistently been on TV in some form since the 1960s, so I imagine it will stick around.
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h/t The A.V. Club