Doctor Who was last on our screens in Christmas 2024. During the special episode, there was a teaser for the next full season of the series – showing off the next companion for Ncuti Gatwa for the first time.
Season 14 of the show took us on a wild range of adventures, 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
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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 for season 15?
The BBC has confirmed that the first episode will be available on Saturday 12 April 2025.
It will be available on BBC iPlayer at 8am BST, and will likely be released at the same time in the US on Disney+ – that’s 3am ET/ 12 am PT.
There will be eight episodes in total.
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.
BBC/Disney/Bad Wolf Studios
If you missed it, the Doctor Who Christmas Special aired on Christmas Day, and featured Derry Girls and Bridgerton star, Nicola Coughlan as the character Joy.
Doctor Who season 15 episode titles
Here are the official titles of each episode of Doctor Who:
- The Robot Revolution: Written by Russell T Davies, directed by Peter Hoar
- Lux: Written by Russell T Davies, directed by Amanda Brotchie
- The Well: Written by Russell T Davies & Sharma Angel Walfall, directed by Amanda Brotchie
- Lucky Day: Written by Pete McTighe, directed by Peter Hoar
- The Story & the Engine: Written by Inua Ellams, directed by Makalla McPherson
- The Interstellar Song Contest: Written by Juno Dawson, directed by Ben A. Williams
- Wish World: Written by Russell T Davies, directed by Alex Sanjiv Pillai
- The Reality War: Written by Russell T Davies, directed by Alex Sanjiv Pillai
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.
The BBC has now revealed that she will be playing Belinda Chandra, and a short clip at the end of behind-the-scenes show Doctor Who Unleashed confirms she works in a hospital, just like Martha Jones did.
Other than that, we don’t know a lot about her role on the series. However, you can see how Varada reacted to the news of her new role below:
At the end of Empire of Death, Ruby Sunday left the TARDIS to reunite with her long-lost dad. However, never fear as Millie Gibson will return for season 15, as confirmed by the trailer and promotional images for the show.
We see her with the UNIT crew, so perhaps Ruby is still trying to save Earth, just not with her time-travelling companion. Davies also confirmed at San Diego Comic-Con that the character would be dealing with PTSD in the new episodes.
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.
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
Strictly champion and deaf actress Rose Ayling-Ellis will also be starring in an episode in a guest role. Davies has teased that she appears in one of the most frightening episodes they’ve ever made.
Slow Horses star Christopher Chung will play a character called Cassio, and he’s teased that his episode will have “a touch of madness”.
Alan Cumming will be returning to the Whoniverse, but as a different character. This year, he’ll be voicing Mr Ring-a-Ding, a cartoon character who terrifyingly crawls out of the screen in the trailer.
Here is the description for his character:
a happy, funny, singalong cartoon, who lives in Sunny Town with his friend Sunshine Sally… However, in 1952, after years of repeats in cinemas across the land, Mr Ring-a-Ding suddenly looks beyond the screen and sees the real world outside — and the consequences are terrifying.
Rylan will also star, seemingly as himself, to host the ‘Interstellar Song Contest’ – most likely a Doctor Who spin on Eurovision.
Russell T Davies returned to 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.
Also joining the writing cast this year is bestselling author and host of the Doctor Who: Redacted podcast, Juno Dawson. She gave the following quote on her new role:
I started watching Doctor Who with my grandma when I was 10 years old in the 1990s… From writing fan-fiction for an audience of one to scripting the best TV show of all time is truly a dream come true.
Joining her in the writing team are Sharma Angel-Walfall, Pete McTighe, and Inua Ellams. Angel-Walfall is known for Dreamland, A Town Called Malice, Renegade Nell and Supacell. McTighe is working on the upcoming Doctor Who spin-off, The War Between the Land and Sea, while Ellams comes from the worlds of poetry and the stage – making a jump into TV with Doctor Who.
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.
Is there a trailer for Doctor Who season 15?
After the Christmas special, we got a sneak peek at the future adventures of The Doctor and Belinda:
You can also see the official trailer, which shows a reluctant companion and darker tone than the previous series – though the Eurovision episode looks pretty exciting:
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 teaser, 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
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.
But how does Belinda fit into all of this? Well, we know from the clip in Doctor Who Unleashed that she works in a hospital, and that the Doctor is in that same building searching for something. Is she the key, or do the two bump into each other and decide to travel together?
In the teaser, she demands that the Doctor take her home, so she may feel that she’s in over her head.
The actress appeared 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
The teaser revealed that the Doctor and Mundy will visit an area in outer space, and we also see a very frightening clip of a cartoon character climbing out of the screen.
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.
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 this 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.
BBC/Disney/Bad Wolf Studios
If you’d rather watch episodes from the BBC, you can use a VPN to stream episodes on iPlayer as if you were in the UK. Bear in mind that this is a breach of the iPlayer terms of use since you won’t be paying the licence fee, but it will let you watch every episode of the show since the very beginning.
Warner Bros. used to have US streaming rights to the series for Max, so that’s where you’ll need to go to watch any and all Doctor Who from 2005 up until the end of Jodie’s era. Classic Who episodes are available on BritBox.
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