Doctor Who Season 15 Trailer: The Doctor Meets The Nurse, Insists He’s ‘Velma’ and Not Scooby-Doo
The Doctor meets “The Nurse” (aka his new Companion) in a new trailer, seen above, for the upcoming season of Doctor Who.
The new season of Doctor Who will premiere Saturday, April 12 (at 3 am ET), on Disney+ (where available) and the BBC and BBC iPlayer (in the UK). The eight-episode season will then do weekly drops each Saturday. (This marks a departure from the Ncuti Gatwa-led incarnation’s first season, which we yankees got on Fridays.)
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Also glimpsed in the trailer above are UK TV personality Rylan Clark (hosting the Interstellar Song Contest), robots, Mrs. Flood and Mr Ring-a-Ding, “a happy, funny, singalong cartoon who lives in Sunny Town with his friend Sunshine Sally” (and is voiced by Emmy winner Alan Cumming). “However, in 1952, after years of repeats in cinemas across the land, Mr Ring-a-Ding suddenly looks beyond the screen and sees the real world outside — and the consequences are terrifying.”
Cumming previously played Doctor Who‘s King James I in the 2018 episode “The Witchfinders.” (It’s worth noting that The Good WIfe‘s Archie Panjabi also is set to appear this season, though showrunner Russell T Davies has been firmly mum on her role.)
“Only Alan Cumming could give a runaway cartoon so much wit, malice, danger and fun,” Davies said in a statement. “He makes the whole universe of Doctor Who wilder and madder than ever, and it’s an absolute honour to welcome him on board the TARDIS.”
A first trailer for the new season (below), which was released at the end of the long-running serial’s latest Christmas episode, Joy to the World, brings back Gatwa as the Doctor, who soon enough will be joined in the TARDIS by new companion Belinda Chandra, played by Varada Sethu (of last season’s “Boom” episode and Disney+’s Andor).
In Season 2, the Doctor meets Belinda 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.
Millie Gibson’s Ruby Sunday, with whom Fifteen parted ways at the close of last season, can also be glimpsed in the trailer — as can Anita Dobson as the increasingly mysterious Mrs. Flood, Ruby’s Notting Hill neighbor.
At the very end of Gatwa’s first season as the Doctor, Mrs. Flood — clad in white and carrying a white parasol and travel bag — observed to the camera from a rooftop, “And what happens, you might wonder, to that mysterious traveler in time and space known as the Doctor?
“I’m sorry to say, his story ends in absolute terror,” the woman grinned, before bidding us, “Night-night!”
Other previously announced guest stars include Christopher Chung (Slow Horses) as Trooper One, Jonah Hauer-King (World on Fire) as the seemingly ominous “Conrad” and Rose Ayling-Ellis (EastEnders) as a lead in “our scariest episode,” Davies has said. Returning, meanwhile, are Ruth Madeley (as UNIT’s Shirley), Jemma Redgrave (UNIT’s Kate), Michelle Greenidge (as Ruby’s mum Carla) and Susan Twist (Susan Triad et al).
TVLine readers gave Doctor Who Season 14 (or, “Season 1” if you’re Disney+) an average grade of “B-.”
Davies serves as showrunner for Doctor Who, and executive-produces with Joel Collins, Phil Collinson, Julie Gardner and Jane Tranter.
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