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It’s here! The first full trailer for Doctor Who‘s new series has arrived, giving us never-before-seen glimpses of Ncuti Gatwa and Millie Gibson in action. And with it comes glimpses of a whole host of new adventures and scenarios, promising a very different take on Doctor Who than we’ve seen before.
Before we dig into the trailer for hints as to what will be in store for series 14, give the the video a watch if you haven’t already:
Alright, below are all the important things we noticed in the trailer. Let us know in the comments if there’s anything we missed!
The Hooded Stranger
The Christmas Special “The Church on Ruby Road” not only introduced the Doctor’s next companion Ruby Sunday, but also a good ol’ mystery. Like Clara and Rose before her, Ruby is much more than she appears.
“Ruby Road” began with a “hooded stranger,” in the Doctor’s words, who carried the infant Ruby to the titular church and left her there on the steps. “As for the mother, she was never seen again,” the Doctor tells us. But if there’s one thing we know, it’s that the Doctor lies. In fact, the Doctor himself saw the hooded stranger at the end of the special, when he returned the infant Ruby back to the steps after goblins kidnapped her to mess with the timeline.
And so it’s no surprise when a hooded stranger is seen again, this time in the trailer. We get one quick shot of a hooded figure in a snowy place, in front of a tree decorated for Christmas, pointing imperiously toward the camera.
Of course, the Doctor may know even more than he’s letting on. Because if you pause at the right time, after the Doctor introduces himself in the trailer, you can see a quick shot of him wearing cloaks not unlike those of the hooded stranger, along with a shocked expression on his face.
Outside of that, the trailer doesn’t give us many other looks at the hooded stranger, but that makes sense. It’s clear that new/returning showrunner Russell T Davies is setting up another “Bad Wolf” type season-long mystery, and he’s not giving it away so soon.
Butterfly Effect and Mavity
Perhaps one of the best jokes in the trailer occurs when the Doctor and Ruby arrive in the prehistoric past and Ruby asks, “What if I change history by stepping on a butterfly?”
“Well, that’s not gonna happen, is it?” responds the Doctor, just in time for Ruby to stomp on a butterfly and transform into a green-skinned alien with antennae.
Given how long the Doctor has been flying around time and space in the TARDIS, it’s kinda surprising that more butterfly stomping hasn’t happened, but the trailer suggests that Doctor Who will make up for lost time. Beyond even the David Bowie song blasting over the images, it’s clear that “change” is the theme of Series 14, something already hinted at when the Goblins and the Doctor played around with the timeline in “The Church on Ruby Road.”
In fact, the setup goes back even further to before Gatwa’s Fifteenth Doctor came on the scene, back when Donna Noble (Catherine Tate) and the Fourteenth Doctor (David Tennant) went on adventures. After interrupting Sir Isaac Newton’s mediation time under an apple tree, the duo inadvertently mispronounce “gravity” as “mavity.” And since that point, people on Doctor Who have used the word mavity more than once.
It seems like the series will finally look at the stakes of messing around in time, and the effects that it has. But this being Doctor Who and not, say, an Ashton Kutcher vehicle from the 2000s, the series will take a more optimistic approach to the concept, pointing to the positive potential of changing reality.
The Beatles and Jinkx Monsoon
Speaking of changes, what if Davies borrows an idea from acclaimed English writer Richard Curtis, the man behind the series five favorite “Vincent and the Doctor,” and creates a world in which the Beatles don’t exist?
Okay, maybe Doctor Who won’t completely copy the premise of the movie Yesterday, but Disney and the BBC have already leaked information about an episode that sends the Doctor and Ruby back to meet the Fab Four. In addition to shots of Gatwa and Gibson in mod outfits, the trailer shows the nature of the threat they’ll face, weaponized musical notations a la Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.
And who, exactly, will be weaponizing those notes? It appears to be Jinkx Monsoon, the RuPaul’s Drag Race contestant whose casting was leaked months ago. We see Monsoon’s character cackling as she pounds on an unseen instrument, bars and notes swirling around her. In a later shot, those same bars and notes have entangled Ruby, lifting her in the air.
As exciting as those scenes certainly are, it appears that there will be room for more low-stakes ’60s fun. One shot shows the Doctor dancing with excitement outside of a recording booth, surrounded by hip teens. In another, we see those same teens splashing in water like they’re remaking The Umbrellas of Cherbourg.
In other words, it appears that Doctor Who is going the way of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds and making a musical episode, this time with Beatles tracks.
The Doctor Goes Bridgerton
One of the more exciting things about the trailer are all the new looks the Doctor and Ruby don, straying from the old single costume restrictions. And that’s pretty handy when the Doctor puts on a velvet suit to match Ruby’s gorgeous yellow gown to visit the Victorian period.
“Oh my Bridgerton!” squeals Ruby as she looks at her lavish surroundings. Of course, she and the Doctor, who met in a club after all, take time for some baroque dancing in the ballroom. But the more pressing matters involve the way the Victorians, including guest star Indira Varma of Game of Thrones fame, shape-shift into bird-like aliens, potentially a new species for the show.
Even more interesting is a brief shot of the Doctor in his fancy duds next to a hologram of David Tennant’s face. This could simply be another example of identification equipment pulling up one of the Doctor’s previous faces. Or it could point back to the Bigeneration that left a whole other Doctor running around Earth, eating dinner with his family in his nice English home.
Base Under Siege
As much new stuff as the trailer throws on the screen, we do get elements of an update on a classic Who episode format, the base under siege. Popularized during the era of Second Doctor Patrick Troughton, base under siege episodes tended to keep the Doctor stuck in one place while under attack by various baddies.
The trailer includes shots of the TARDIS flying towards a ship in deep space, and later images of the Doctor and Ruby exploring its halls. The smoke and green lighting recalls the lonely halls of the Nostromo from Alien, where Ellen Ripley tried to outwit a Xenomorph monster.
Of course, an alien like the Doctor rejects such terminology. As he tells Ruby, “There’s no such thing as monsters. It’s just creatures you haven’t met yet.” No sooner do the words leave his mouth than a beast roars at the two of them.
While we’ll certainly see the Doctor and Ruby prevail and escape their captivity, the trailer does show a very different dynamic between the Doctor and his companion. In classic base under siege episodes like “Tomb of the Cybermen” and “Tooth and Claw,” the Doctor is the voice of bravery and resolution in the face of the onslaught. The Doctor inspires regular people to stay strong and weather the storm.
But here, when the beast attacks, it’s the Doctor clinging to Ruby, and even hiding behind her. Is Russell T Davies going to try to give us a cowardly Doctor who slowly grows into the role, an experiment that ended in disaster with Sixth Doctor Colin Baker? Or is this a nod to the Second Doctor, who liked to play the buffoon in order to toy with his enemies?
The Return of Mel, Kate Lethbridge-Stewart, and Rose Noble
Speaking of classic Who tropes, the trailer confirms the return of UNIT, the international science force with whom the Doctor works. In “The Giggle,” we learned that former companion Mel Bush (Bonnie Langford) has joined UNIT, working under Kate Lethbridge-Stewart (Jemma Redgrave), who also gets a nod in the trailer. Other familiar faces dropping by include Donna’s daughter Rose Noble (Yasmin Finney) and UNIT member Shirley Bingham (Ruth Madeley)
But we also get more shots of UNIT’s new headquarters, which bears more than a passing resemblance to Avengers Tower in the MCU. The upgrade could be a nod to the BBC’s new producing partner Disney, whose influx of cash has resulted in better looking special effects than we’re used to seeing in the series.
However, it also speaks to a continuation of the complicated relationship between UNIT and the Doctor. As a human organization, UNIT sometimes gets aggressive and paranoid in a way that the Doctor finds reprehensible. Furthermore, we know from “The Giggle” that UNIT has the Toymaker locked away, a villain who played a role in the creation of the Fifteenth Doctor.
Within the trailer, we see only brief shots of Lethbridge-Stewart walking through headquarters or the Doctor in the control room. However, an image of the TARDIS getting scanned might point to some mistrust on the part of the Earth-bound organization, threatening a new rift between the Doctor and UNIT.
“The Whole World Could Slide Into the Pit”
“There are powers beyond the universe, so vast, the whole world could slide into the pit,” intones the Doctor toward the end of the trailer. To be sure, the Doctor says that sort of ominous stuff all the time, and it’s good advertising to pull out the line and put it prominently in the trailer.
And yes, we do see images of what looks like the world sliding into a pit, including a 9/11-esque plume of smoke pushing through buildings, a modern city turned into a wasteland, and Ruby firing laser guns in the post-apocalypse.
But the Doctor’s choice of words deserves a little more attention. Shortly after he was announced to follow Jodie Whittaker as the new Doctor, Ncuti Gatwa had a playful Q&A session with Disney in which he shared his Doctor Who love. When asked about what bad guys he wants his Doctor to fight, Gatwa named the Weeping Angels, of course, but also referenced the Beast, the Satanic figure that Tennant’s Doctor fought in a two-parter from season two.
The name of those two episodes? “The Impossible Planet” and “The Satan Pit.” Could the pit that the Doctor mentions have something to do with the pit that held the Beast? If the Beast is indeed something like an eternal evil, it would make sense that it would return again and recreate a hell-like pit.
That might be wishful thinking, but as the trailer reminds us, when it comes to the Doctor, “Everything is possible.”
Doctor Who series 14 arrives at midnight on BBC iPlayer on Saturday, May 11 in the UK, and on Disney+ in the US at 7 p.m. ET on Friday, May 10.
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