Historical ‘Doctor Who’ Is My Favorite ‘Doctor Who’—and the New Season Is Set To Deliver
Even though we’ve just experienced three fantastic 60th anniversary Doctor Who specials and a magical Christmas episode, most of us are already anxiously awaiting the new season, in which we’ll finally see Ncuti Gatwa’s Fifteenth Doctor and his new companion Ruby Sunday (Millie Gibson) traverse the universe in a little blue box.
Thankfully, we’ve already been given a glimpse of what awaits us when the new season—which is being dubbed as “season 1” by veteran showrunner Russell T Davies and the BBC—airs later this year. It looks like Ruby and the Doctor are set to go on quite a few historical adventures, including one set in the ’60s, where our new favorite duo will get to meet the Beatles (can you sense my jealousy?) and another set in what looks to be the Regency period—don’t quote me on that, though, because I am in no way an expert. Surely, they are hiding a few more historical sojourns from us, too. I can’t wait to find out what they are.
Doctor Who‘s historical episodes have always been my favorites. I love it when big moments in history are fictionalized. It can be such a fun yet informative way to explore the past and learn from the people who lived through those stories—stories that feel so very far removed from our everyday lives.
Some of my favorites include “The Shakespeare Code,” in which David Tennant’s Tenth Doctor and Martha Jones (Freema Agyeman) meet the one and only William Shakespeare; “The Fires of Pompeii,” in which the Doctor and Donna Noble (Catherine Tate) land in Pompeii a mere few hours before Mount Vesuvius was set to erupt, and “The Unicorn and the Wasp,” when Donna and Ten meet Agatha Christie just days before she mysteriously went missing. Who can forget the masterpiece that was “Vincent and the Doctor” when Matt Smith’s Eleventh Doctor and his companion Amy Pond (Karen Gillan) meet the brilliant yet tortured Dutch artist Vincent van Gogh? Or when Jodie Whittaker’s Thirteenth Doctor met civil rights activist Rosa Parks in the episode “Rosa” and later experienced the partition of India in “Demons of the Punjab”?
There’s something about a time-traveling alien, one who’s (presumably) well over a thousand years old, finding something new and exciting to learn about humanity in our brief yet jam-packed history. It makes me excited to learn more about history despite history never being my favorite subject at school. The future episodes and the alien invasion episodes can be just as poignant, impressive, and fun, certainly, and I love those, too. But after a few of those, I always long for a story set in the past, one in which the Doctor and their companion get to blend in and wear cool outfits, discovering things about themselves and humanity’s past they never thought they’d get a chance to experience.
The Doctor meeting the Beatles is a dream come true—is it strange that I now kind of want an ABBA episode, too? Imagine the clothes, the hair, the drama! How about more pirate-centric stories? What if the show were to explore the Renaissance artists of Venice, Rome, or Florence? What about the impressive histories of countries like Japan, Brazil, or Egypt? The universe may be the Doctor’s oyster, but I’m always happiest when they stick to Earth, and I can’t wait to see what historical adventures await us next.
(featured image: BBC)
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