'Doctor Who' Simultaneous Release On Disney+ Confirmed

At least for the United States but I imagine for the rest of the world too. It was the most sensible thing to do.

Image: BBC

Well folks, it’s official. Doctor Who will be releasing its episodes on Disney+ simultaneously to its domestic UK airings on the BBC. This is at least according to TVLine.

Recently, it was confirmed that the first 60th anniversary special “The Star Beast”, premiering Saturday, November 25, would air on the BBC in its UK home at 6:30 PM. But it was taking honestly forever for Disney+, the new international home for the show, to reveal their plans. So much that in their “The TVLine-Up: What’s New, Returning and Leaving the Week of Nov. 19” article, it was originally published with the streamer’s default content traffic time of 3AM Eastern. However, it’s recently been updated to 1:30 PM Eastern, which matches the 6:30 UK time the episode airs.

If you’ve been around here long enough, you might have noticed that I pled for this back in September, practically immediately after the BBC released the trailer. Ahsoka was in the midst of primetime premieres on Tuesday nights instead of Wednesday mornings, and Loki was getting ready to do the same on Thursday nights starting October 5. If they were to deploy same-day premieres without moving its release time, the episodes, semi-assuming this will be the regular time slot going forward, would air ten and a half hours before the UK, and the UK would be the last to get it. And that just wouldn’t be right. Even better, the option that it be released upon the conclusion of the UK airing is defeated too. The 50th anniversary special “Day of the Doctor” and the premiere episode of Jodie Whittaker’s Thirteenth Doctor “The Woman Who Fell to Earth” also received simulcasts.

The 60th anniversary specials star Tenth Doctor David Tennant as the Fourteenth Doctor in a story that revisits the condition he left his companion Donna Noble, played by Catherine Tate in 15 years ago with erased memories of their time together in order to suppress the Time Lord mind within her. The specials will also bring Beep the Meep from the comics to the screen, voiced by Miriam Margolyes, Neil Patrick Harris as the Celestial Toymaker, as well as the usually-reliable UNIT, led by Jemma Redgrave’s Kate Lethbridge-Stewart. After Tennant’s Fourteen regenerates into Ncuti Gatwa’s Fifteenth Doctor at the end of the third special, Fifteen’s first adventure will be the Christmas special “The Church on Ruby Road” airing right on Christmas Day. An eight-episode 14th series is still set for spring 2024, and several spinoffs are in development.

Source: TVLine