Doctor Who season 15 airs next year, with season 16 set to film

Season 14 of Doctor Who spanned a variety of genres, from a Welsh folk-inspired horror to a Bridgerton-style adventure. In the final episode, the stakes couldn’t have been higher for the Doctor and Ruby Sunday.

Spoilers for Doctor Who season 14 below

The final episodes brought back a classic villain from the Tom Baker days called Sutekh, the God of Death. This entity had been clinging to the TARDIS for many years and laid nearly all of time and space to dust.

Fortunately, the Doctor found a solution and solved the mystery of Ruby Sunday’s mum.

If you’d like to know when Doctor Who will return and who the companion will be, we have everything you need to know.

You can also read up on the new Netflix adaptation starring David Tennant.

When will Doctor Who return?

More information on the next full season is below, but before then Doctor Who will be back on our screens one final time in 2024.

That’s for the Christmas special, which will guest star Derry Girls and Bridgerton alumni, Nichola Coughlan. She will play the character Joy.

The episode is called ‘Joy to the World’, and will hopefully air on Christmas Day, just as last year’s special did. Watch a short snippet from the episode below:

When will Doctor Who season 15 be released?

According to showrunner Russell T Davies, the next season of Doctor Who will most likely air in May 2025 with eight episodes.

Note that the BBC and Disney+ are calling the next instalment ‘season 2’, but most fans will know it as season 15.

Filming kicked off in October, so it’d be surprising if it was delayed for some reason.

Who is the fifteenth Doctor and the companion in the next season?

Ncuti Gatwa will return to play the Doctor. Prior to the show, he was best known for his role as Eric Effiong on the hit Netflix series, Sex Education.

As for the new companion, Varada Sethu will be stepping into the Tardis for season 15. She played a minor role as soldier Mundy Flynn in the Stephen Moffat episode, Boom, but we don’t know if she’ll be playing a different character when she returns.

At the end of Empire of Death, Ruby Sunday left the TARDIS to reunite with her long-lost dad. While that seems to hint that she won’t be back, all signs point to Millie Gibson returning for season 15.

The actress has given interviews indicating that she’ll play a part in season 15, while showrunner Russell T Davies stated that Ruby is integral to many stories in the upcoming season.

Jonah Hauer-King has been cast in season two in an unnamed role. Set photos obtained by the Radio Times suggest that he may be a love interest for Ruby.

Russell T Davies returned write the show just in time for the series’ 60th birthday. The showrunner originally brought back Doctor Who with Christopher Eccleston in the leading role until 2009 and then led the show with David Tennant as the Doctor. Bad Wolf is producing the series.

We also expect to see the following characters return:

• Michelle Greenidge as Carla Sunday
• Angela Wynter as Cherry Sunday
• Anita Dobson as Mrs Flood
• Jemma Redgrave as Kate Stewart
• Bonnie Langford as Mel Bush
• Yasmin Finney as Rose Noble
• Lenny Rush as Morris
• Alexander Devrient as Colonel Ibrahim
• Ruth Madeley as Shirley Anne Bingham

While you wait for the new season, you can always catch up on older episodes. The BBC added every single episode of the show from the very beginning to the iPlayer streaming service. That means you get every episode from every Doctor from William Hartnell to David Tennant’s second run, without paying a penny.

What could the plot of Doctor Who season 15 be about?

There currently isn’t a lot of information available about the plot of Doctor Who season 15, but we can guess what it may cover based on the ending of Empire of Death and earlier episodes in the season.

The key mystery that remains is Mrs Flood, Ruby Sunday’s mysterious neighbour who promises the audience that the Doctor’s story ends in “absolute terror”.

She may be connected to the Pantheon of Discord – AKA, the Gods we saw throughout season 14.

Disney/BBC/Bad Wolf

Disney/BBC/Bad Wolf

Disney/BBC/Bad Wolf

Meanwhile, Ruby will most likely connect more with her long-lost mum and dad. In the season finale, she discovered that her mysterious mother was a nurse called Louise, who got pregnant was she was a teenager and left the baby (AKA Ruby) outside of a church as she grew up in a troubled household.

Ruby introduced Louise to her adopted family and left the Doctor to reunite with her dad, who didn’t even know she existed. Therefore, we can expect to learn more about the companion’s personal life, and perhaps discover whether Mrs Flood has some connection to her.

We still don’t know who Varada Sethu’s character is. We saw her appear as Mundy in Boom, but that doesn’t mean she’s reprising her role – we’ve seen past former companion actresses play other characters before, including Karen Gillen and Freema Agyeman.

Disney/BBC/Bad Wolf

Disney/BBC/Bad Wolf

Disney/BBC/Bad Wolf

Finally, we know that Rogue is lost somewhere. It’d be great to get a reunion with the Doctor’s new love interest and find out more about this mysterious traveler.

Before all of that will be the Christmas special of Doctor Who, which will star none other than Penelope Fetherington herself, Nicola Coughlan. She will join the Doctor for a one-off festive adventure, which may very well set up the plot for the new season.

Disney/BBC/Bad Wolf

Disney/BBC/Bad Wolf

Disney/BBC/Bad Wolf

Will Doctor Who return for season 16?

The season after 2025’s instalment is all but confirmed, with Ncuti Gatwa confirming on Graham Norton (via The Radio Times) that filming for season 16 will begin next year.

We don’t yet know if season 3 will be Gatwa’s last (three is around the average for most Doctors), or if he’ll stick around for a few more years. We’ll likely learn more in the coming months.

What does the bigeneration mean for Doctor Who?

Major spoilers for The Giggle below

In the final 60th Anniversary Special, the fourteenth Doctor (David Tennant) was mortally wounded by the Toymaker, a powerful figure who defies the laws of time and space. Because of this, the Doctor’s typical regeneration was disrupted, and something rather remarkable happened.

The fifteenth Doctor regenerated out of the fourteenth, leaving two fully formed Doctors with the same memories to work together to put an end to the Toymaker’s twisted games.

The pair succeeded, and even managed to materialise a second Tardis so neither Time Lord was left without a vessel – though the fifteenth Doctor was left without a pair of trousers.

Following the bigeneration, the fifteenth Doctor was eager to set out on a brand new adventure, and leave the troubles of his past behind – quite literally. The fourteenth Doctor was left with the Noble-Temple family to live a quiet, happy life and heal from the trauma of losing his past companions and bearing the burden of destroying parts of the universe during the Flux.

While the main series follows Ncuti Gatwa as the Doctor, David Tennant’s character is still alive and well. He may not be travelling around time and space as much, but keeping him on-side for cameos and potential spin-offs is an interesting idea.

However, the bigeneration has even bigger ramifications, according to Davies. In the commentary for the The Giggle (available on BBC iPlayer), he says the following:

I think all of the Doctors came back to life with their individual Tardises, the gift of the Toymaker, and they’re all out there travelling round in what I’m calling a Doctor verse… Sylvester McCoy woke up in a drawer, in a morgue, in San Francisco… and Jon Pertwee woke up on the floor of the laboratory

Bigeneration was apparently seen as a myth by the Time Lords prior to this event, but now that it’s been brought to fruition, anything is possible.

How can you watch Doctor Who in the US?

Disney+ is now the home for new episodes in the US. This was revealed alongside the new logo for the show. Accounts for this service start from $7.99 per month.