Get ready for some new Who. Doctor Who, that is. The 13th Doctor will fittingly return for the 13th season later this year. During the San Diego Comic Con @ Home Doctor Who panel, the cast revealed the first trailer teasing the further adventures of the 13th Doctor and her companions. Check it out below.
Notably, the trailer introduces new companion Dan Lewis, played by John Bishop. He’ll take over the seats on the TARDIS left by Graham (Bradley Walsh) and Ryan (Tosin Cole) who said goodbye to the Doctor (Jodie Whittaker) in this past year’s New Year’s Special, “Revolution of the Daleks.”
This isn’t to say that the Doctor is losing all her old companions, as Mandip Gill will reprise her role as Yaz. The trailer also offers a glimpse of Jacob Anderson, who played Grey Worm on Game of Thrones, making an appearance as a recurring character named Vinder.
Last season offered up some big changes to the long-running show, for better or for worse. In our review of last season, we said that it “marks a step down from the previous one, although it deserves points for trying to inject new life into a tried-and-true formula.” But it looks like this coming season will try a different tactic in changing things up. Showrunner Chris Chibnall announced that the coming season will consist of a single story told across each episode. During the panel, he explained how the COVID pandemic spurred them to structure the show in a different way:
There were times before we started making it that we didn’t know whether we’d be able to make the show under COVID conditions this year, so everybody’s pulled together to make that possible. There were two ways you could go, you can go, ‘We’re just going to do lots of tiny episodes in one room with no monsters’ or we can throw down the gauntlet and go, ‘Were going to do the biggest story we’ve ever done and we’re going to go to all different kinds of places, we’re going to have all different kinds of characters and monsters, and it’s all going to be part of a bigger whole.’ I think it’s definitely the most ambitious thing we’ve done since we’ve been on the series.
You can check out the full San Diego Comic Con panel below. Highlights include Jacob Anderson geeking out over getting to go inside the TARDIS set, John Bishop talking about seeing the alien actors on-set, and the cast answering fan questions at the end.
The 13th season will arrive later this year on BBC One and BBC America. It will also mark the last season with Jodie Whittaker and Chris Chibnall, who just revealed the pact they had made to do three seasons together before leaving the show. This coming season will mark their third together, so we’ll see their last TARDIS adventure as star and show runner respectively.
