It’s An Animation Escape In 'Doctor Who' Season 2 Teaser
Varada Sethu joins as new companion Belinda Chandra for “a brand new trip of a lifetime”
Merry Christmas everyone! Doctor Who has aired its starry Christmas special “Joy to the World”, a story starring Nicola Coughlan which saw writer and executive producer Steven Moffat claim it “the first Christmas special ever to take the credit for all of Christmas!”. Following it, international home Disney+ released the first teaser for Ncuti Gatwa’s second full series as the Fifteenth Doctor, set to premiere next year, possibly sooner than last year’s May and June span.
The trailer opens with a trippy moment for the Doctor before ships lay down an assault on the city, which Belinda Chandra, the newly-introduced companion played by “Boom” guest star and Andor actress Varada Sethu, watches from her window. Her coming upon the TARDIS doesn’t seem to have entirely been by choice, let alone one the Doctor is in control of, telling her that it may be “the long way round” after being told he needs to take her home. And she’s in quite contemporary fashions but we’ll see exactly where she comes from. As the official synopsis puts it “The Doctor meets Belinda Chandra and begins an epic quest to get her back to Earth. But a mysterious force is stopping their return and the time-traveling TARDIS team must face great dangers, bigger enemies and wider terrors than ever before.”
We see Millie Gibson as companion Ruby Sunday, who cameoed in “Joy to the World” seeing the star outside her window and prompting a call to the mother she reunited with (and left the TARDIS for) in last season’s finale “Empire of Death”. It’s been reported she has at least a few episodes this season to complete her story, but that hasn’t quite been confirmed. She’s witnessing a new threat back at UNIT, alongside Kate Lethbridge-Stewart (Jemma Redgrave), Shirley Anne Bingham (Ruth Madeley) back after an absence last season, and Colonel Ibrahim (Alexander Devrient), the three of whom up next year’s Whoniverse episode count starring in the 5-episode spinoff miniseries The War Between the Land and the Sea, which recently wrapped filming. The breakdown on the official website surmises that Ruby has been hired there like previous companions Donna Noble and Mel Bush before her.
A new model of emoting robots are also seen, evoking the emojibots of “Smile” but with bodies resembling that of Hydroflax’s from “The Husbands of River Song”. Mrs. Flood, last season’s mysterious recurring character who not only still needs to be figured out, but warned at the end of “Empire of Death” that the Doctor’s story ends “in absolute terror”, has brought opera glasses, possibly to the cinema where theatergoers are the target of rubberhose animated characters escaping the confines of the screen. But we still have months before Doctor Who returns for this new season in 2025, airing once again on BBC domestically and Disney+ internationally.
Source: Doctor Who