Doctor Who Recap: Everything You Need To Know Before Season 13
Here's everything you need to know ahead of Doctor Who season 13. The classic series of Doctor Who was famed for its cheap productions, but current showrunner Chris Chibnall has worked hard to create something more visually appealing than ever before - but at a cost. Recent seasons have been shorter, with longer gaps between them. The coronavirus pandemic added further complications to the production of Doctor Who season 13; "Doctor Who is one of the most difficult shows to produce, and we were aware that [the pandemic] would make it even more difficult," Chibnall admitted in an interview in Doctor Who Magazine. "We've tried to keep pushing the show every year, and we didn't want to let the ambition of the show down. But to continue with the previous number of episodes was financially, logistically, and operationally impossible."
All this means Doctor Who season 13 will be just six episodes in length, to be followed by three specials that will air through 2022. What's more, season 13 will follow a rather more traditional approach; all six episodes will tell a single story, with each episode ending on a cliffhanger that leads into the next. It will be Jodie Whittaker's final season as the Doctor, with the actress and Chibnall himself apparently deciding they were something of a package deal when they started out. Called Doctor Who: Flux, season 13 promises to see Whittaker go up against several classic monsters - the Weeping Angels, the Sontarans, and even the Ood.
Doctor Who season 12 finished in March 2020, and there's only been a single Holiday Special since then. So viewers can be forgiven for forgetting some of the major changes in the Doctor's status quo that took place in that season - and here's a reminder of all the key takeaways, some of which could potentially change the show forever.
Doctor Who season 12 revealed the Doctor is in fact the Timeless Child, a being who predates Time Lord civilization and became the base genetic code for every Gallifreyan living within the Citadel. The Timeless Child was found a billion years ago by the Gallifreyan explorer Tecteun, a little girl who had been left at the foot of a mysterious "Boundary" to another dimension or universe. Essentially a cosmic refugee, the Timeless Child was adopted by Tecteun as her daughter, and the two traveled back to Gallifrey - where, in a tragic accident, the Timeless Child fell to her apparent death. Instead of dying, she regenerated - the first regeneration to happen on Gallifrey. A scientist as well as an explorer, Tecteun spent years experimenting on the Timeless Child, finally learning how to duplicate her power of regeneration. This was the beginning of the Time Lord race, although Tecteun chose to ensure Time Lords could only regenerate twelve times - unlike the Timeless Child.
The Timeless Child's memories were erased by the Time Lords at some point, and this new being was integrated into Gallifreyan society. This means William Hartnell's Doctor was not the first, but rather likely just the first since the memory wipe; there have been countless prior incarnations of the Doctor, many of whom served the Time Lords, with hints the erasure and forced regeneration was implemented when the Timeless Child became uncontrollable.
Doctor Who season 13 introduced actress Jo Martin as a previously unseen incarnation of the Doctor, a fugitive from the Judoon who had used the Chameleon Arch to hide among human society. Curiously, neither Whittaker's Thirteenth Doctor nor Martin's "new" Doctor, aka Ruth, have any memories of one another, making the timeline rather uncertain; Martin's TARDIS was already disguised as a police box, which suggests she should be post-Hartnell, but she had no knowledge of the sonic screwdriver, meaning she should be pre-Patrick Troughton. She's referred to by the production crew as the Forgotten Doctor or, more recently, the Fugitive Doctor.
Jo Martin's Forgotten Doctor apparently worked for a secretive group of Time Lords called the Division, possibly an organization destined to become the so-called "Celestial Intervention Agency" in the classic Doctor Who series. Having served loyally for years, she evidently became unhappy at the Time Lords' agenda, and abandoned her post in order to hide on Earth. The Judoon were hired to arrest the Doctor, but - in a rather "timey-wimey" twist - they seem to have caught up with Jodie Whittaker's incarnation instead, imprisoning her for a while.
The Doctor isn't going to learn any more from the Time Lords; Gallifrey has been destroyed (again), this time by the Master, who was outraged when he learned the secret of the Timeless Child. The Doctor and the Master faced off against one another in Doctor Who season 12, episode 10, with the Doctor left no choice but to sterilize the entire planet. Although the Master apparently died, the reality is that he's always been very good at surviving, so it wouldn't be much of a surprise to see the Master return in Doctor Who: Flux.
Meanwhile, the Doctor's fam has reduced in number after the 2021 Doctor Who Holiday Special. Graham and Ryan had been with the Thirteenth Doctor since shortly after her regeneration, but they decided it was time to move on, although they're still intent on serving as defenders of the Earth. Yaz is still enjoying the adventures through time and space, and she's still convinced she has a lot to learn, so she's stuck with the Doctor. Doctor Who showrunner Chris Chibnall has confirmed there's a time-gap between seasons 12 and 13, which means the Doctor and Yaz have been traveling together as a team of two for quite some time now - but in Doctor Who: Flux they'll find their team bolstered by the addition of a new companion, John Bishop's Dan Lewis. Little is known about the new companion, a Liverpuddlian who has been teased as being at a time of change and transition on his life when he meets the Doctor and winds up plunged into a world of chaos and confusion, monsters and mayhem, in Doctor Who season 13.