Doctor Who Social Club

Steffan Powell will host special edition of Doctor Who: Unleashed celebrating the last twenty years since Doctor Who returned.

Powell will be joined by a host of cast and creatives that have played a part in bringing the show back, including past Doctors David Tennant and Jodie Whittaker, former companions Billie Piper, Pearl Mackie, and Mandip Gill, ex-showrunners Steven Moffat and Chris Chibnall, the current Doctor Ncuti Gatwa alongside his newest companion Varada Sethu, as well as the current showrunner and the man who brought the show back in 2005, Russell T Davies.

On Thursday, the BBC tweeted:

Due to unforeseen circumstances, unfortunately Ncuti Gatwa is no longer able to participate as Spokesperson during the Grand Final this weekend.

Instead, Sophie Ellis-Bextor will be calling out the UK's points.

According to Scottish newspaper The national,

The BBC's announcement came during the second semi-final, reportedly just minutes after Israel's entrant Yuval Raphael qualified for the final.

We haven't even had the Interstellar song contest yet, but CultBox has already assembled details for the episode after that. Synopsis, cast as well as a smattering of rumours and speculation.

There are certain tells that this week's episode will lead straight into the two-part finale, so I'll just park this here for those who might want to fuel their excitement as soon as they watched tomorrow's show.

Spoilers! </River Song voice>

The Great Day is coming, the most important date in history — 24 May 2025. The clock is ticking and everyone is preparing for a joyous tomorrow, when the whole world will change forever.

Welcome to a strange new world in which the old saying “There’s many a slip ‘twixt cup and lip” is gaining a terrifying new power. Even when a good outcome seems certain, things can still go wrong.

What are the Bone Beasts? Why is Mrs Flood hiding in the sky? What secrets do the Dispossessed keep? And why is a mysterious message echoing across time and space, saying, “Tables don’t do that”?

Traps are sprung and old enemies unite as the Doctor and Belinda finally arrive home to find a very different world. Can the Doctor see the truth before midnight arrives?

[Oh, Midnight again? So soon?]

• Space Baby Poppy returns after a brief appearance in The Story & The Engine
• Millie Gibson returns as Season One companion Ruby Sunday
• Bonnie Langford reprises her role as former companion and UNIT operative Melanie Bush
• Susan Triad, the tech mogul who offered service to UNIT, is back
• Conrad Clark, having been released from prison by Mrs Flood, is back to foment his version of reality
• Lakshmi Chandra is possibly a relative of Belinda, perhaps her mother
• Not only are there Bone Beasts but there is also a Bone Palace
• Archie Panjabi, heavily rumoured to play a villain in the series, is not on the cast list

[I would also add that we have two characters in the cast list called Otto and Violett Zufall. "Zufall" is German for "coincidence", and... not actually used as a last name. I'll just put it out here that the goblins in "Church on Ruby Road" fed on coincidence, and let you all run with that]

Doctor Who meets Eurovision in this high-octane episode

This is another BBC media package where everybody interviewed is gushing over everything else. Interviewees are guest stars ~~Mark~~ Rylan Clark and Freddie Fox, plus writer Juno Dawson and director Ben A Williams (no relation to Rory, presumably).

A few things stand out from the enthusiastic politeness, though. The following are things I hadn't gleaned from trailers.

Freddie Fox:

Kid is a charismatic, devious, revolutionary leader of a group. They are trying to get justice for wrongs that he wants to tell the galaxy and the universe about.

What you're saying then is, Israel is still part of this 900 years later? 😬 I'm slightly worried where the show's sympathies would fall on this, but it would be a gutsy move either way.

Juno Dawson:

Russell initially pitched the bare bones concept of Eurovision meets Die Hard, which were two things I knew really well. […] What would happen if an enemy faction planned an attack on the Eurovision Song Contest in space?

I think people are certainly going to expect it to be … let’s just say camp. I mean of course it is, it’s the Interstellar Song Contest. But also, it’s action-packed. It doesn’t let up for a second. It’s a really high-octane episode.

In places it’s quite harrowing. I think the best science fiction and fantasy should always have something to say about the world.

And finally, something for the Murray Gold fans out there:

Ben A Williams:

Murray (Gold) has created a song that is weapons-grade catchy. I played it once to my 2-year-old. He hasn’t stopped singing it since.

So, in a nutshell — hitting that shared target segment between Eurovision and Doctor Who 🤣 Plus potentially controversial terrorism. Should be fun!

Edit: got Rylan Clark's name really wrong because I'm not really big on British ESC traditions.

Some different looks at the making of "The story & the engine" than you may have seen in DW unleashed (and a couple of repeats).

There are some nice behind the scenes footage, especially of the camaraderie between the barbershop actors; an art department interview, and short sitdowns with Gatwa, Sethu, and Martin.

Stick around for another cheeky cameo in the "don't forget to click and subscribe" part, too 🙂

Random fact I just realised about this episode — the "spooky kid" Belinda saw in the alley as she was running through Lagos? She's played by Sienna-Robyn Mavanga-Phipps, who was Captain Poppy in "Space babies". The character is even credited as "Poppy" in "The story & the engine".

Please don't @ me about your great intense love (or otherwise) for "Space babies"... but let's just sit for a second with what a deep, weird cut this is. I have no idea how or if it's going to tie in with anything, ever.

Written by: Inua Ellams

Directed by: Makalla McPherson

While Lucky Day came to a kind of resolution, it also left viewers with a feeling of unease as Anita Dobson's enigmatic Mrs Flood freed Conrad from incarceration for reasons that are as-yet unclear – but will be explained soon.

"I can say that Jonah comes back – the battle is not won," teased Gibson on last night's episode of The One Show.

"He comes back and Russell [T Davies] has written an amazing script, as always. I come back as well and I'm reunited with the Doctor and Belinda, played by Varada Sethu."

In Dot and Bubble, the Doctor is a victim of racism, while in The Story and the Engine, the "colour of his skin is part of how he interacts with people".

Ellams added: "I just want to see more stories like that, that are deeply nuanced and personable and rich, but don't get in the way of the Doctor’s primary objectives, which is to save the day, regardless of who's in front of him."

—From Radio Times: Doctor Who writer reveals why next episode is a companion piece to Dot and Bubble

The moral of the story is to give credit where it’s due. And I took that little idea and expanded it, and really drew it out. It is a huge story, but also a very simple that sits on a lot of social history. It’s one location, a lot of fun, a lot of mythology written into it, but a new myth too.

I guess what I’m trying to show is a little bit of the magic of Lagos, a little bit of the sparkles that exist when you choose to discover it. Doctor Who is full of incredible stories, and this is what happens in barber shops. Incredible stories are told. So, I was trying to unite them all.

—From Cult Box: Doctor Who ‘The Story & The Engine’: always give credit where it’s due

It’s strange, in many ways, to be back, or at least back under these circumstances, watching Doctor Who tick down to the first time since Time of the Doctor [2013] that an episode will air when the next episode hasn’t been shot. And that was a two week period towards a commissioned episode—Deep Breath shot in January [2014]. Here we head towards the great unknown, perhaps even the wilderness. It’s faintly unsettling—I’ve not written about Doctor Who in a moment where it might not come back before.

— Elisabeth Sandifer, in her review of "The robot revolution"

I'm not going to wallow in predictions of doom and gloom here, just note that what Sandifer outlines here is fairly out of the ordinary. It certainly shows that the joint venture with Disney hasn't played out as expected.

To rewind a little, when Russell T Davies returned as a showrunner, he announced that an initially two-season distribution deal with Disney+ would guarantee a steady pace of one season plus a christmas special per year, no gap years.

The part of this not spoke out loud was the implied expectation that Disney would be blown away by the first new season and just set up a recurring allowance. In that case, the BBC, Davies, and Bad Wolf Productions would get to work on season 3 and 4 before the second one had even aired. It seems everybody expected to start shooting early this year; Ncuti Gatwa said as much on a talk show.

Well... that didn't happen, in part because the streaming market has gotten ever tighter, but presumably also due to the show not quite performing to Disney's expectations — Gatwa's live remarks were edited out in the streaming version. Instead, the House of the Mouse has decided to remain undecided on future funding until season 2 has aired. So you see that planned production buffer that ensured yearly seasons without gaps? Yeah, no. That's because it isn't there anymore.

Even if Disney agree to distribute another season or two, we should definitely expect a gap year until we see new Who episodes again (not counting the upcoming War between the land and the sea spin-off). First hitch is, if the BBC doesn't secure another deal with Disney, they'll have to find a new funding partner. The Beeb is in fairly dire financial straits, certainly in terms of producing a costly, effects-heavy show like Doctor Who.

Second hitch — leaving an in-demand young star like Ncuti Gatwa hanging when he expected to be working through the first half of the year could turn out to cost Doctor Who its lead. Gatwa will be playing on stage during fall, so that's pretty much any slim hope of a christmas special for 2025 shot down. The rumour mill has it he has checked out of the show entirely by now, but that remains unconfirmed.

Overall it seems we need to acknowledge that Davies' grand plan has suffered a severe setback. Maybe a new season will appear in 2027 at the earliest? But then. with what international partner? And featuring which actor in the lead? We're in for interesting times, I suppose.

Note: I didn't source all information in the above beside the Sandifer quote, but I'm 99% certain I can dig up references to support everything without resorting to pure speculation. Or, a quick online search could get you similar results without me having to :)

Also, I know our mod @[email protected] isn't keen on speculation and Fantasy Football-esque media analyses, so give me a heads up if this is completely OT for this community.