Guide:Crash Course
Interested in Doctor Who? Want to jump in completely blind with the minimum possible information? This is the place for you.
Doctor Who is a British science-fantasy show spanning 60 years focusing on an alien, the Doctor, who travels through space and time in a time machine (the TARDIS) that takes the form of a police box and that's bigger on the inside than the outside, often accompanied by humans in their adventures. When the Doctor dies or is about to die, they can avert death by changing their face (and slightly altering their personality), allowing the show to continue onwards as actors and writers change.
This is really a great time for you to start, because the show has just done a bit of a soft reboot, sort of tidying away a bunch of long running ideas and themes in the metaphorical corner to approach things from a new angle, to let new viewers not have to feel like they need to catch up with everything that had gone before. And in line with this new ethos, they've reset the numbering from scratch. We're starting over at Season 1.
The current iteration of the Doctor, played by Ncuti Gatwa, has only headlined one episode prior to this upcoming season, a Christmas Special, The Church on Ruby Road. If you want to watch it to get the full background on his portrayal of the character, it's available on iPlayer in the UK and on Disney+ elsewhere in the world.
If you skip the episode, the bare minimum you need to know about it going in to the next season is that the Doctor has met a new traveling companion, Ruby Sunday, played by Millie Gibson, a foundling who was left at a church on Christmas Eve, with no record of her parents.
And that's it! That's all you need to know for now. Doctor Who returns at Midnight UTC on the 11th of May 2024 on BBC iPlayer in the UK, and Disney+ outside of the UK, with a two episode premier. It will also be broadcast at a primetime slot not yet determined that same day on BBC One in the UK.
