Cybermen! Judoon! And the Racnoss? The first trailer for Doctor Who season 12 has just materialized, and it’s full of familiar adversaries, including what looks to be one creature last seen during the David Tennant era. Let’s get a shift on!
On Saturday, the BBC and BBC America released a 1-minute trailer for the new season of Doctor Who. The 13th Doctor is in a tux, traveling to Paris in the 1940s, plus facing down against several very familiar Who monsters including
- The Cybermen
- The Judoon (Previously confirmed)
- And, most surprisingly, an alien that looks exactly like the spider-ish Racnoss from the David Tennant episode “The Runaway Bride.”
Watch the full trailer right here.
Right now, the release date for the new season of Doctor Who has not been confirmed, but according to some rumors, the new season will launch on January 1, 2020, with a two-part episode, and the new season will pretty much continue from there. If true, this would check with what the trailer says at the very end: “Coming In Early 2020.”
Will the Doctor be crossing into her own past? The addition of the Racnoss-ish alien and the badly-damaged Cyberman clearly makes it seem like this season — unlike season 11 — will rely on the rich mythology of the entire beloved series. And if that’s true, who knows, the Racnoss could just be the tip of a very wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey iceberg. With this trailer, Jodie Whittaker’s Doctor feels very much like something we remember from the Tennant or Matt Smith years. Which, if we’re being honest, makes us feel very warm and safe. Jodie Whittaker was our favorite version of the Doctor in season 11, and now, the Doctor is really back!
“With this trailer, Jodie Whittaker’s Doctor feels very much like something we remember from the Tennant or Matt Smith years. Which, if we’re being honest, makes us feel very warm and safe. The Doctor is back!”
Interesting comment. I’d love to see that thought expanded further, perhaps as its own column. What was it about last season’s Doctor Who which didn’t make you feel warm and safe? And was that a good thing or a bad thing?
20202?
I don’t want to wait over 18,000 years!
I like Jodie but her scripts have been very preachy, dull and predictable.
Chibnall did say in one of his interviews from this week that having started with a clean slate last year they’d be diving back into the series past again this time.
Oh and Goran is so playing Tesla.
It’s hard to believe that Stephen Fry had never been in the main Doctor Who show. All I could find until now is his role in Death Comes To Time, and his unused script for series 2, The 1920s (and of course, he was one of the husbands of Rive Song)
I’m looking forward to the Judoon.
Judoon dialogue:
“Hi di, hi di, hi di, hi!”
“Ho di, ho di, ho di, ho!”
Warm and safe isn’t what I want to be feeling when I watch Doctor Who. I should be repressing an urge to get behind the sofa, not cozying up in it.
I just noticed that this trailer came out on November 23. Makes sense for a series that aims to return closer to its roots! (only 4 years left before the 60th anniversary special!)
One thing annoys me about the Judoon.
Every OTHER species gets translated by the TARDIS. The Judoon use their own translator machines. Why is that? (Other than “sko-po-cho-no-fro-jo-ko-fo-to-doh” being amusing for children?)
Is that the beach where the Doctor said goodbye to Rose, near the end of the trailer?
@5 = Stephen Fry was not in the Husbands of River Song. You may be thinking of comedian and presenter Greg Davis.
Great trailer, left we wanting more. Looks like lots of fun, mysteries and scary stuff are in store for us.
@10 Maybe their spoken sounds have no information, and the actual communication is by gestures or smell or telepathy, or something like that.
@10: I think the reason for the Judoon language not being translated in “Smith and Jones” was because we were seeing it from Martha’s perspective and she hadn’t been in the TARDIS yet. But that doesn’t explain why they kept the language untranslated in subsequent stories.
Okay, according to the TARDIS Wiki, one of the Big Finish audios explained that the Judoon language is too basic for the TARDIS to translate. But that doesn’t really make sense, given that the Doctor can understand the “speech” of babies, horses, etc.
@12 Philippa Chapman
Stephen Fry was mentioned in the banter about The Doctor’s and River’s marriages/relationships:
DOCTOR: So, King Hydroflax?
RIVER: Oh, how many times? I married the diamond.
DOCTOR: So you say.
RIVER: Elizabeth the First.
DOCTOR: Ramone.
RIVER: Marilyn Monroe.
DOCTOR: Stephen Fry.
RIVER: Cleopatra.
DOCTOR: Same thing.
@15: Exactly, Stephen Fry wasn’t IN The Husbands Of River Song: he’s one of them!
can’t get enough of this![.](//s04.flagcounter.com/mini/Jkzv/bg_FFFFFF/txt_DEDEDE/border_FFFFFF/flags_0/" width="1"/>)
In my head that vineyard that the Tardis lands at is Chateau Picard, and I refuse to hear any evidence to the contrary.
While it’s true the stories and scripts for Jodie Whittaker’s debut season were only ok for the most part (I did think all the historical episodes were quite strong), I don’t think the alternative is to dive back feet-first into the series’ past. I was a little disappointed, actually, that the trailer had so much I could recognize. Nothing against the Judoon, they haven’t really been used all that much… and, ok, Cybermen are classics… but who’s clamoring for the Racnaross to return? Surely with “all of time and space, everything that ever happened or ever will” to play with, the show can do better. Hire different writers, hire different directors, whatever… but they’ve got a great cast and strong characters.
I suppose the one caveat is that they do still owe us an explanation of that “Timeless Child” reference in last series’ “The Ghost Monument.” So some revisiting of the Doctor’s long and colorful personal past may well be in order. But I hope we don’t return to the maddeningly intricate, all-connected, series-long stories of the Moffat era (of which only the first, series 5, really worked on all cylinders).
I thought the historical episodes were dreck. Take’Rosa’. I mean no disrespect to Rosa Parks intended but the idea that preventing her protest would somehow unhinge the entire national civil rights movement is garbage. And the idea of James I wandering England in disguise had me laughing hysterically. King Jamie was a total physical coward.
@20/roxana: Well, lots of historical fiction takes liberties with the facts of history for the sake of an entertaining story. Certainly that’s true of lots of Who‘s classic historicals, some more than others.
As for “Rosa,” I tend to interpret it as just that the bad guy assumed stopping Rosa Parks would scuttle the civil rights movement, not that it actually would. So as I see it, the TARDIS crew making sure the event stayed on track was more just about their admiration for Parks and their refusal to let some future racist mess with her life.
She’s great, but Tennant is my Doctor. I’m looking forward to the next inevitable crossover with the recent Doctors so Whittaker can be involved.
@19: I’m still waiting for the Minister of War (as for the Nightmare Child, the Skaro Degradations and the Horde of Travesties, or the Could’ve Been King and his Army of Meanwhiles and Neverweres, I don’t think we’ll ever see them in the main series)
Looks good. A good trailer is easier than a good series, but I have a modicum of hope.
I love Whitaker as the Doctor, so I’m very much looking forward to this season.
Your READ MORE link goes to another article but the header link is fine FYI
Let us hope for better stories this year. The new Doctor has such life but last year had such dead stories.
The characters and the new Doctor deserved much more than tired, woke, heavy handed preaching week after week.
“Jodie Whittaker was our favorite version of the Doctor in season 11,” … she was the ONLY version of the Doctor in season 11.