David Tennant is back in the new teaser for the future of Doctor Who
How is David Tennant back on Doctor Who? Why is he back? WHEN is he back? (Next year.)
[The following contains spoilers for Doctor Who.]
Jodie Whittaker’s final episode of Doctor Who aired today, and as is tradition when the lead actor leaves the show, her episode ended with her regenerating into a new Doctor… but there’s a but, and we’ll get to it in a bit. First, after the episode aired, the BBC released a teaser video for next year’s run of Doctor Who specials, featuring previously announced returning stars David Tennant (the 10th Doctor) and Catherine Tate (Donna Noble, whose return to the series has all sorts of curious lore implications). We also see Neil Patrick Harris as a scary looking man in a tuxedo and Sex Education star Ncuti Gatwa as the new Doctor himself.
And that’s all there is to it! Nothing else to say, unless you don’t mind spoilers, because there are… some things to say. We’ll get into it after the video.
This is your last chance to turn back! Proper spoilers right after this photo of some guy leaving a fake TARDIS.
SO, if you happened to actually see Jodie Whittaker’s regeneration, you’ll know that she doesn’t turn into Ncuti Gatwa. She turns into David Tennant, and in a statement from new (old) showrunner Russell T. Davies, he confirms that Gatwa is actually the “Fifteenth Doctor.” Christopher Eccleston was nine, Tennant was 10, Matt Smith was 11, Peter Capaldi was 12, and Whittaker was 13, which means Tennant is also 14, which seems to mean he’s literally a different guy than the 10th Doctor. There have been regeneration shenanigans before, and also this is Doctor Who we’re talking about, so there are millions of ways for the show to explain this, but damn. Davies isn’t even officially running the show yet and he’s already dropping twists!
A Deadline story says that Tennant and Tate will both appear in three special episodes of Doctor Who that will air in November of 2023, which is over a year away, and Davies promises that Gatwa’s 15th Doctor will face “mystery, horror, robots, puppets, danger, and fun,” and he’s giving everyone “a year to speculate” before “all hell lets loose.”