In what’s tipped to be a little over two weeks, Jodie Whittaker bows out of “Doctor Who” with a BBC Centenary special episode.
The actress will be replaced by Ncuti Gatwa as the fourteenth official incarnation of The Doctor, who will get to work with his first full series expected to arrive in 2024.
Before that, a 60th anniversary special will air next year that will see David Tennant and Catherine Tate return to their roles of the Tenth Doctor and Donna Noble a little over a decade after they played them.
The special also marks the return of Russell T. Davies as showrunner following his stints as the man in charge of both Christopher Eccleston and Tennant-era “Who”.
Speaking with The BBC recently, Tennant discussed how his return came about and it tied back to both the pandemic and then later Davies being put back in charge of the franchise:
“It all slightly happened a little bit by accident. The lockdown watch along is where this all started. At a certain time and day, everyone would press play on a certain episode, and some of the people who had been involved in those episodes were tweeting along. I don’t tweet, but my wife helped me.
We were just having a text exchange. Catherine said, ‘Wouldn’t it be fun to do it again?’ And then Russell said, ‘We could do a one-off, maybe they’d let us’. We said, ‘yeah, that would be a laugh,’ and then it all went quiet.
Suddenly, Russell let us know that he was taking over the show again and he would be back fully in charge, and would we come and play a little bit for him? So I don’t know if we gave him the idea to take Doctor Who back, but certainly we thought if he’s doing it, we can’t let these young people have all the fun.”
Tennant also has nothing but praise for Gatwa’s casting:
“He’s a lovely, lovely man, and he’s full of beans, and he’s really talented. I mean, he’s like scary-talented. So I’m thrilled for every Doctor Who fan for what’s to come, and I include myself in that number.”
Just how the pair will return isn’t clear, with speculation high ranging from this being the ‘meta crisis’ Doctor from the episode “Journey’s End,” to an impostor, to one from an earlier point in the timeline. Those who’ve watched the filming suggest this isn’t some ‘lost earlier story’ as events seem to take place post-“The End of Time”.
