They say you can’t know where you’re going unless you know where you’ve been, but the team behind Doctor Who‘s new season seems to want to head forward without looking back too much. At Thursday’s official BBC panel for Doctor Who, the Hall H crowd was greeted by Jodie Whittaker, who plays the new Doctor; Mandip Dill and Tosin Cole, who play the Doctor’s new companions Mandip Dill and Tosin Cole; new showrunner Chris Chibnall; new executive producer Matt Strevens. “New” is the word on everyone’s lips, and all over the new 45 second teaser, as well. As we’re discussing on today’s Nerdist News, this isn’t by accident!
Join our own First through Thirteenth Doctor, Jessica Chobot, as she breaks down Chibnall’s assertion that series 11 of Doctor Who won’t bring back old villains, old allies, old aliens, or anything else you’ve seen before. The Doctor Who team wants to focus on bringing in new viewers who may not have seen the show’s previous 55 years of material. For returning fans, Chibnall said he wants to keep everything inherent to the series–the fun, the excitement, the thrills, the humor–without relying on recurring villains.
Such villains were hallmarks of the modern Doctor Who‘s first 10 series, with the Daleks, Cybermen, Master, Sontarans, Silurians, Autons, and many other baddies returning periodically. And while each time the classic villains were reintroduced, writers did so with a certain degree of explanation for people who hadn’t seen the originals, having a series focused on new adventures and adversaries seems in line with the BBC’s desire to make the show more, if you’ll pardon the pun, universal.
This is not to say the series will never return to established villains, but it seems evident for now that we’ll have brand new things to talk about–and since the 45-second teaser shows us actors, sand, tunnels, and little else, we can spend the next several months speculating on everything.
Let us know what you think of the all-new, all-different Doctor Who in the comments below!
This episode of Nerdist News is sponsored by Tor Book!
Kyle Anderson is the Associate Editor and the resident Whovian for Nerdist. Follow him on Twitter!
