'Doctor Who' Releases New 60th Anniversary Specials Trailer

Destiny isn't done with the Doctor and Donna just yet

The BBC released the official trailer for Doctor Who’s three 60th anniversary specials on Saturday evening (morning to afternoon US time), revealing more of what’s to come and at stake. November releases were also confirmed for all three specials. It’s two months exactly until the show’s November 23 anniversary date. The specials star David Tennant as the Fourteenth Doctor and the returning Catherine Tate as companion Donna Noble.

The trailer features two major returning characters. First, Neil Patrick Harris’s character, after 15 long months, was finally confirmed to be the Celestial Toymaker. The Toymaker is a First Doctor foe from a single 1966 serial that’s mostly lost, and he was originally played by Michael Gough, who would go on to play Alfred in the Tim Burton and Joel Schumacher Batman movies. The shop visit previously seen, as well as his watching, waving from afar. dancing with himself in the street is all here, for the “WORLD PREMIERE!” but now we’ll see he’ll appear big enough to remove the roof of a building and reach for the Doctor. Whether it’s physical or illusory is unclear. He’s in everyone’s heads though, now they’re his playthings.

Fan-favorite Kate Lethbridge-Stewart, played by Jemma Redgrave and UNIT were also revealed by the trailer, marking what could be consecutive appearances for the character. It seems that the military organization has recovered very swiftly from being undercut by the Grand Serpent since the end of Flux as the Doctor is helicoptered to a UNIT skyscraper. Which means they’re truly back, having appeared in “The Power of the Doctor”, been confirmed for series 14 and reportedly a spinoff. Heck, we see the back of Kate’s head well before she’s actually revealed.

This trailer is definitely looser in structure than the title revealer, as while it is mostly sequential, some “Wild Blue Yonder” and “The Giggle” scenes do seem to come out of sequence. As for more new stuff, it seems the exposition about the condition Ten left Donna in in “Journey’s End” with her suppressed Time Lord mind and memories of her Doctor era is still very much a focal point of the conflict, as he tells Ruth Madeley’s Shirley Anne Bingham. By “Wild Blue Yonder” she definitely has her memories back (she mentions the TARDIS has run away at one point too) and that’s a problem as if she’s back at full capacity, she’ll die. And so it becomes an explosive, aggressive journey to dodge her destiny. From “The Star Beast”, we get Beep the Meep’s ship crash and hiding in the plushes (to Donna’s horror), but we also get to hear them beep and tell Donna’s daughter Rose (played by Yasmin Finney) about the “monsters”, thus hearing Miriam Margolyes’s performance for the first time. Oh, and there’s another glimpse of Ncuti Gatwa’s Fifteenth Doctor, but there isn’t enough context to it to be sure it’s part of any episode or just something shot for the trailer.

Returning showrunner Russell T. Davies put out an accompanying statement that read “This is just the start, as the fever starts to burn. We’re heading for a November full of Doctor Who surprises, for fans and new viewers alike. Stay alert!”. While the all-November schedule was likely, if November is going to be “full” of Doctor Who surprises, it’s at least less likely that all three specials air on the anniversary day. Ditto being aired over three nights, November 21 to 23. It still could be the two Thursdays preceding the date, or in keeping with typical show timeslots, the two Saturdays or Sundays before and then the 23rd. The specials are also set to feature Donna’s other family members, namely Jacqueline King as her mother Sylvia, Karl Collins as her husband Shaun Temple, and the late Bernard Cribbins as granddad Wilfred Mott.

Doctor Who will continue to air on the BBC domestically, but air on Disney+ everywhere else, including the United States. Reportedly, it will be accompanied by a Doctor Who Confidential successor companion series, Doctor Who Unleashed.

Source: Doctor Who