When BBC’s Doctor Who returned in 2005, the series had been off the air for 15 years, save for the 1996 American-made TV movie starring Paul McGann as the titular character’s eighth incarnation. In that time, Doctor Who lived a second life through expanded materials and dedicated fan communities, with some of those contributors even going on to write for the revival series. This continued adoration put revival showrunner Russell T Davies in the challenging position of introducing Doctor Who to a whole new generation. At the same time, the existing fanbase needed something fresh and exciting — a goal he achieved largely by bringing the show down to earth.
The 2005 season of Doctor Who, starring Christopher Eccleston as the Ninth Doctor and Billie Piper as his companion Rose Tyler, focused more heavily on real people with problems, providing a backbone of realism through which to reintroduce the show’s more fantastical elements. This approach proved incredibly successful and established the formula that would persist for much of the revived series, dubbed NuWho by fans. But showrunner Russell T Davies was faced with a similar challenge upon his return to Doctor Who for this latest season, which can be referred to as Doctor Who Series 14 or Season One (2024). While the show had run consistently for over 15 years, viewing numbers were steadily dropping and NuWho’s 13 seasons became an increasingly intimidating barrier for new fans to overcome.
The question of Doctor Who Series 14 seems to be how anyone can revive a show that didn’t go anywhere, a project that Russell T Davies began with last year’s 60th Anniversary specials. Bringing back the fan-favorite Tenth Doctor (David Tennant) didn’t initially seem like a clear statement of intent to move forward, yet the three specials concluded with a beat that promised exactly that. The 15th Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa), having symbolically shaken off the baggage of the darker version of the show that Davies had introduced, flies off into the future with a new spring in his step.
Courtesy of BBC Studios
Doctor Who Series 14, following on from the 2023 Christmas Special The Church on Ruby Road, very much continues in this mode. Ncuti Gatwa’s 15 Doctor, alongside new companion Ruby Sunday (Millie Gibson), is starting fresh with no clear goal beyond seeking adventure in the TARDIS. This is a status quo that Doctor Who has returned to in the past, but the plainness with which Gatwa’s Fifteenth Doctor states this feels like a fairly direct statement of this new era’s priorities. In some ways, this is a familiar pattern across this 8-episode season as the show has to present the things it’s always done in a way that will still appeal to new audiences.
Watching these new episodes, it becomes clear that Season 14 is not an attempt to dumb down Doctor Who for unfamiliar audiences. It’s more of a crash course designed to highlight what the show has always been. The series opener Space Babies is, in many ways, a strange place to start, with a simple plot and gross-out humor that is a million miles from the rest of the prestige TV landscape. It’s an episode that would have felt at home partway through a later Steven Moffat season and may strike fans as a strange choice in an already shortened episode order. However, the first episode succeeds at showing an audience just how weird and experimental Doctor Who has always been, while also foregrounding its origins as a series for families.
Contrarily, the second episode of Doctor Who Series 14, titled The Devil’s Chord, is a peculiar fable seemingly taking aim at Tory cuts to arts education. It’s a pretty significant departure from how the show has previously handled historical episodes. This feels like a given as soon as drag queen superstar Jinkx Monsoon is introduced as the chaotic villain Maestro (no relation to The Master). This episode utilizes a more magical, unscientific approach to the representation of time travel that creates a newly dynamic sense of story progression when compared to the familiar setup of The Doctor being stranded in the past until the day is saved. This sense of leaning further into magical storytelling has been a consistent thread of Russell T Davies’ return to Doctor Who, and it not only opens up a lot of potential for new stories but for new ways of telling them as well.
Unfortunately, the downside of writing a season designed to ease people into what Doctor Who has always been, is that it briefly cannot be anything else. There are a few points where this is felt in Doctor Who Series 14. Despite two incredibly charismatic lead performances from Ncuti Gatwa (Sex Education, Barbie) and Millie Gibson (Coronation Street, Butterfly), it very occasionally feels as if the 15th Doctor and Ruby are written more as the abstract idea of The Doctor and their companion than being given their own unique traits. They are still each provided plenty of really great beats throughout the new season, though. The first episode suffers from a similar problem, where it’s less designed to challenge our leads and more built like a loose framework for The Doctor and their companion to do simple Doctor and companion stuff.
Having already made a splash in the climactic 60th Anniversary special before leading 2023’s Christmas episode, Ncuti Gatwa slips into the role of The Doctor like an old pro here. His Doctor is more outwardly confident than many of his recent talented predecessors, such as Jodie Whittaker and Peter Capaldi. Gatwa’s Doctor flaunts an easy openness that suggests that this Doctor has either processed much of his trauma or perhaps buried it even deeper. Even though he isn’t immediately provided with a grand “I am The Doctor” moment, Gatwa gives a performance that couldn’t be anyone else.
On the other hand, Ruby Sunday feels like an interesting spin on the well-known formula that writer Russell T Davies has implemented with Doctor Who companions. She still serves as an audience surrogate for much of these episodes, quickly creating an entertaining back-and-forth with The Doctor. However, there is an enigmatic quality to her that feels like the familiar Russell T Davies long game, perhaps at the expense of a fully fleshed-out character. While this remains to be seen as the season goes on, there is immediately no doubt that Millie Gibson completely gets Ruby Sunday. Her performance is charming, with a curiosity that makes it very clear why The Doctor wants to see things through her eyes. Gatwa and Gibson together are similarly magical, with a rapport that could power seasons of television if The Doctor’s companion wasn’t a job with an incredibly short life expectancy.
Doctor Who Series 14 doesn’t cater to the fans who yearn for the show to pretend like 2008 never ended and become an endless series of lore-heavy season finales. Instead, these new episodes offer the kind of storytelling that sat between the premieres and season finales. This undoubtedly feels like a far more sustainable future for the show. There are definite growing pains, of course. Yet, Doctor Who Series 14 operates like a precisely pitched reminder of why the show has lasted so long. It’s a confident promise that Doctor Who isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. Doctor Who Series 14 isn’t a radical reinvention of the formula, but it’s a strong case that one isn’t needed.
Doctor Who Series 14 premieres with two episodes on Disney+ and BBC iPlayer on May 11!
Release Date: May 11, 2024.
Showrunner: Russell T Davies.
Series 14 Writers: Russell T Davies, Steven Moffat, Kate Herron, & Briony Redman.
Series 14 Directors: Julie Anne Robinson, Ben Chessell, Dylan Holmes Williams, & Jamie Donoughue.
Main Cast: Ncuti Gatwa, Millie Gibson, Michelle Greenidge, Angela Wynter, Anita Dobson, Jemma Redgrave, Bonnie Langford, Yasmin Finney, Alexander Devrient, Aneurin Barnard, Indira Varma, Lenny Rush, Jinkx Monsoon, Jonathan Groff, Golda Rosheuvel, Callie Cooke, Siân Phillips, Bhav Joshi, Majid Mehdizadeh-Valoujerdy, Tachia Newall, Caoilinn Springall, George Caple, James Hoyles, Phillip Davies, Chris Mason, & Paul Forman.
Production Companies: BBC Studios & Bad Wolf.
Episode Count: 8.
