Dear Rassilon, it’s been such a long time since Doctor Who has been on our screens, and it’s going to be quite a bit longer still. By time series 10 officially begins (some time in March, we’re guessing) we will have only had two episodes since the end of series nine on December 5, 2015. (Can it hurry up and get here, already!?) And true to form, we don’t know too much about what Peter Capaldi‘s third Christmas special will be, but the Radio Times has discovered a couple of interesting bits, notably there will be no companion…and there’ll be a superhero.

A superhero, eh? In Doctor Who?! Yes: evidently, Canadian actor Justin Chatwin has been tapped to play some kind of lantern-jawed comic book hero with “in all likelihood a few dark interstellar secrets of one sort or another.” Chatwin played Tom Cruise’s son in Steven Spielberg’s War of the Worlds, as well as a turn as a drug dealer who has the hots for Allison in season three of Orphan Black. It seems very unlikely this will be any kind of established superhero, but head writer Steven Moffat is a big comic book fan so he’s probably got a character or two he’ll reference.

As for the “no-companion” business, a source told Radio Times that there would be no temporary companion in the episode — the way that guest stars like Kylie Minogue, David Morrissey, and even Catherine Tate have been in the past — but that the now-recurring character of Nardole, played by Matt Lucas, will occupy that real estate. The source also curiously said of Lucas in the special, “he’s not a companion as such but it’s not as if he doesn’t play a similar role.” Umm, that’s what a temporary companion is, though. I think this source is playing a heavy semantics game here.

Again, nothing is really known about the episode itself, but Moffat has been quoted as saying the episode has “a lot of heart…[and] a lot of brain too,” and it apparently also made Doctor Who and Sherlock writer Mark Gatiss cry. So that’s something.

So even though we have just three months until the next episode, we’re still gonna have about six months until the next full series, which might only be a drop in the bucket to the Doctor himself, but it’s an eternity for fans. Dammit, am I going to have to watch all the old stuff AGAIN?! (Note: I’m not complaining.)

Let us know what you think of this superhero in Who news, and anything else about the show, in the comments below!

We did a Doctor Who after show last season…did you watch it?!

Image: BBC

Kyle Anderson is the Associate Editor and the resident Whovian for Nerdist. Follow him on Twitter!