The 'Doctor Who' 60th Anniversary Specials Will Be Listed Individually On Disney+

Ah the random quirks of Disney+ strike again. It’s fine.

Happy Doctor Who Day everyone! It’s officially the 60th anniversary of the British sci-fi series which didn’t arrive to the United States until 1972. Wednesday set the stage for the new era for the show internationally, as the Disney+ page for the first special commemorating the anniversary, “The Star Beast”, was made visible for those outside the UK and Ireland (where it won’t be on the service) for the first time, ahead of its premiere on Saturday, November 25.

Indeed, the page for just the first special. As a single-work page like any movie or other special. Not only did it reveal a 58 minute runtime (a metric that doesn’t really factor into what makes a special), but that at the very least each anniversary special will have their own individual pages. Will that be the same for the Christmas special, “The Church on Ruby Road” as it marks the start of Ncuti Gatwa and Millie Gibson’s adventures as the Fifteenth Doctor and Ruby Sunday? Unclear, but what is clear was the separation was made so that when Series 14 does come (especially if the use of “season 1” is not just a production thing but a public listing thing too) it will be right there to kick off the listing. Maybe buffered by the one special instead of four. This is very much a departure from how things were done previously on Who’s other U.S. streaming services.

The most comparable run in all of the series’s history is the stretch of 4 specials David Tennant did as the Tenth Doctor, which aired from Christmas 2008 to New Year’s Day 2010, following the fourth series: “The Next Doctor”, “Planet of the Dead”, “The Waters of Mars” and “The End of Time”. Coincidentally, these specials all took place in the wake of events in the fourth series finale surrounding Donna Noble (played by Catherine Tate) that Tennant as the Fourteenth Doctor is set to address in these upcoming anniversary specials. The post-series 4 specials were never listed separately and always listed at the end of series 4, across its journey through Netflix, Prime Video, and Max, where three specials to finish Jodie Whittaker’s Thirteenth Doctor run, the New Year’s special “Eve of the Daleks”, the Easter special “Legend of the Sea Devils”, and the BBC Centenary 2-part special “The Power of the Doctor”, were similarly placed in season 13, though soundtracks do call it part of it as well. The specials having aired in 2022 compound the general run of specials the show will have gone through since Fall 2021’s airing of season 13, subtitled Flux, before the expected spring debut of Fifteen’s first series.

It should most certainly be noted that Doctor Who is not the first Disney+ series to have this splintered listing treatment. Every single episode of launch title Forky Asks A Question was given its own page. For the behind-the-scenes docuseries Marvel Studios: Assembled used to be collected under a single banner, until after the episode for Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, if memory serves correctly, and started giving every subsequent edition their own pages. It was upon checking again for making this point that I learned that the collected episodes that were listed as episodes have since been broken up to make it uniform. Oh yeah, and the Phineas and Ferb specials “Mission: Marvel” and “Star Wars” are listed standalone and within the show’s fourth season.

While we’re at it, here are the synopses for the three 60th anniversary specials, the two following airing on Saturday nights at the same time (6:30 PM GMT/1:30 PM Eastern) on December 2 and 9 respectively. For “The Star Beast” it reads "The Doctor is caught in a fight to the death as a spaceship crash-lands in London. But as the battle wreaks havoc, destiny is converging on the Doctor's old friend, Donna." Disney+ also has this, but in the Details section, whereas the header reads “The Doctor lands in London to find an old friend, a new enemy, and aliens wreaking havoc”. For “Wild Blue Yonder” it reads "The TARDIS takes the Doctor and Donna to the furthest edge of adventure. To escape, they must face the most desperate fight of their lives, with the fate of the universe at stake." And finally the “The Giggle” synopsis says "The giggle of a mysterious puppet is driving the human race insane. When the Doctor discovers the return of the terrifying Toymaker, he faces a fight he can never win." There are probably other comparable examples, like maybe the classic shorts could be grouped by character instead of individually listed but alas. There is more Doctor Who coverage to come as the celebrations really kick in.