Disney+ and BBC treated Doctor Who fans around the world to a glimpse of what’s to come in 2025 with a teaser for Ncuti Gatwa’s second season of the long-running science-fiction series.
The trailer (below), which dropped during the annual Christmas Special “Joy to the World,” features a first look at the new batch of episodes starring Gatwa (Netflix’s Sex Education) as the Fifteenth Doctor and Varada Sethu as the new TARDIS companion.
Below, The Hollywood Reporter breaks down the brief first look to glean scene-by-scene reveals.
New Companion
British actress Sethu is already known to Doctor Who fans, as she appeared in the 2024 episode “Boom,” written by former showrunner Steven Moffat, who returned to write “Joy to the World.” Sethu played a character called Mundy Flynn. However this time, Sethu will be playing Belinda Chandra. Will the two be related? Only time will tell, as the preview keeps that secret.
Sethu was a familiar face on U.K. television before she became a regular in the Strike Back series for Cinemax and Sky One. She went on to star in Colin Trevorrow’s Jurassic World Dominion (2022) and memorably as rebel Cinta Kaz in the Star Wars Disney+ series Andor.
Season Two, What’s it All About?
The official synopsis states: “The Doctor meets Belinda Chandra 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.”
We do witness a “mysterious force” affecting the Doctor in the TARDIS during the teaser’s opening, while his voiceover says, “There are forces beyond this universe…” Business as usual, then!
Who’s Back?
The 30-second montage unveiled the return of companion Millie Gibson as Ruby Sunday (last seen, very briefly, in the closing moments of Christmas Special “Joy to the World”). She’s seen along with returning fan-favorite Kate Lethbridge-Stewart (Jemma Redgrave) and Shirley Anne Bingham (Ruth Madeley). This also tells us that the Unified Intelligence Taskforce are back. UNIT, as they like to be known, are an Earth-based military organization dealing with extra-terrestrial activities, and were last seen in the 2024 season finale, “Empire of Death.”
The Doctor Who season two trailer.
Disney+
These latter two characters will be seen in the forthcoming Disney+/BBC spinoff, The War Between The Land And The Sea, which recently wrapped filming.
Mrs. Flood, the enigmatic neighbor to Ruby Sunday, also returns. Unusually, for Doctor Who, she broke the fourth wall on more than one occasion. At the denouement of the 2024 season finale, she looked straight to camera and claimed that the Doctor’s story “ends in absolute terror.” So, she might know a thing or two.
Flood is played by Anita Dobson, something of a national treasure in the U.K. for her television and theatre work. On the London stage, among many other roles, Dobson portrayed Madame Morrible in Wicked (played by Michelle Yeoh in the 2024 movie adaptation).
Is that Donna Noble?
Eagle-eyed fans may have been a little surprised to spot a magazine containing a promotional picture for the Doctor Who 2023 specials featuring Noble actress Catherine Tate.
In a whirlwind couple of seconds, we see the Doctor and the occupants of what looks like a soccer-loving barbershop (in what’s certainly not the U.K.) sucked out into some kind of cosmic storm. If you look closely at the magazines fluttering by, you can spot a magazine with the aforementioned image.
(As hardcore Whovians will know, this is not the first time Doctor Who has referenced itself. In 2014’s “In the Forest of the Night” starring Peter Capaldi as the Time Lord, intentionally included a London bus with an advert for the show emblazoned on its side.)
The Doctor Who season two trailer.
“What the Hell Is This?”
As he’s being sucked out, the Time Lord can be heard shouting this question — a nice nod to the very first time we caught a glimpse of Gatwa (which was also in a trailer). After the 2022 special “The Power of the Doctor” aired, a teaser showed a brief snatch of him asking, similarly frustrated, “What the hell is going on here?” He’s a potty mouth for sure.
Flying Saucers, Robots and Deadly Cartoons
The rest of the teaser packs a in a lot for barely half-a-minute: a futuristic world being blasted by very retro-looking flying saucers (that wouldn’t look out of place in Ed Wood’s Plan 9 From Outer Space); two large, red robots with smiley and unsmiley faces (not dissimilar to the Emojibots of 2017 Doctor Who eisodep “Smile”); and a cartoon character jumping out of a cinema screen to terrify its audience in what could be Fifties America (showrunner Russell T Davies has stated there’s a story in Miami coming up).
The Doctor Who season two trailer.
Disney+
“This Might Be the Long Way ‘Round”
Fans’ collective ears may have pricked up at this phrase as, during the final moments of the 50th Anniversary Special, Matt Smith’s Eleventh Doctor talks about taking the “long way ’round” to go home (in that instance, to the planet Gallifrey).
Gatwa responds with this statement to his new companion’s plea, “Doctor, you need to get me home.” Coincidentally, this happens to the same effect that the “mysterious force” made while attacking the TARDIS in the opening seconds of the trailer.
So, when will season two come out?
Currently we don’t know exactly when Doctor Who season two will release on Disney+, aside from sometime in 2025. Season one launched in mid-May 2024, but don’t expect the next batch of episodes to debut so late next year. Recently, while promoting “Joy to the World,” Davies teased that the next season would be back “sooner than you think” during an interview on BBC’s The One Show. During Davies’ previous stint as showrunner, Doctor Who would regularly start late March/early April.
Doctor Who is produced by Bad Wolf with BBC Studios for Disney Branded Television and BBC One and BBC iPlayer. Davies is showrunner and executive producer. Additional executive producers are Joel Collins, Phil Collinson, Julie Gardner and Jane Tranter.
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