The day may well have only recently set on the last time-hopping set of adventures, but Doctor Who Series 10 filming didn’t take too long to get into full swing from he Roath Lock studios in Cardiff. However, things were a little different this time around because we had a longer wait than usual for the latest flight of the TARDIS navigator, which premiered on the 15th April 2017, nearly 19-months after Series 9.
If that wasn’t tough enough to take in all by itself, we’ve also had the fact that it is inevitably without Jenna Coleman as Clara Oswald following her departure towards the end of the last sereis. News from the BBC added further hard knocks to the situation as it has also confirmed that it will be Steven Moffat’s final series as the writer and executive producer of the show and Peter Capaldi will be leaving his Sonic Screwdriver behind once and for all. With a new lead both in front of the cameras and behind it planned for what comes next, there’s a lot of pressure on Series 10 to set things up well.
Christmas special
Luckily, the Beeb threw in the Doctor Who 2016 Christmas special (The Return Of Doctor Mysterio) to keep fans entertained inbetween the series. With the hilarious hijinks of previous outings, The Husbands Of River Song and Last Christmas, the seasonal sojourn just wouldn’t have been complete without the Doctor in the mix, so it was pretty good news to get yet another brilliant post-turkey sofa time adventure.
Air date
The air date for Doctor Who: Series 10 took a while to be confirmed by the BBC, although the news that it would be arriving in Sprint 2017 was revealed back in January 2016. The first episode went on to debut on BBC1 on Saturday the 15th April 2017 with the remaining 11 episodes going out weekly from then on. All of which will be available to view on BBC iPlayer. The longer break left fans with the need to go old school and revisit some of the magic of fish fingers and custard, a Rose by any other name and maybe even the autonomous return that kick started the new wave of Doctor Who.
Clara and Ashildr’s splinter odyssey seems like a dead cert for greatness, but there’s been nothing concrete on the possibility of a spin-off series and the longer things go the less likely it will be, which is a bit of a shame. The more likely candidate for the shifting time is the fact that there’s a young adult audience targeted spin-off that will be making its debut in 2016. It’s called Class and it will centre around Coal Hill School, which will need to work hard to impress fans who might be disgruntled at it undercutting the potential of Clara and Ashildr’s TARDIS adventures, as well as possible adding to the push back of the tenth series into 2017.
Returning to the future of the main Doctor Who show, the BBC has also announced the replacement for Steven Moffatt as the Broadchurch, Torchwood and previous Who writer, Chris Chibnall. He’s written a total of seven episodes for the show previously, but he hasn’t contributed anything since P.S., his last outing back in 2012, which was a mini episode in Series 7 that strung the Williams family time loop together. There’s no word on when he’ll be writing his first episode for the show, but we’ll be very surprised if it doesn’t arrive during Series 10 instead of waiting for his full tenure to start in 2018.
