Season 14 of Doctor Who covered a wide variety of styles, from a Welsh folk-inspired horror to a Bridgerton-style adventure. However, we’ve only got one episode of this year’s instalment left.
Spoilers for Doctor Who season 14 below
The penultimate episode brought back a classic villain from the Tom Baker days called Sutekh, the God of Death. It also brought us one step closer to finding out who is Ruby Sunday’s mysterious mum, who left her outside of a church all those years ago.
The final episode will likely give us lots of answers, and perhaps some teasers of what’s to come. Read on for everything we know so far.
You can also read up on the best episodes to watch before the finale, and the new Netflix adaptation starring David Tennant.
When does the Doctor Who season 14 finale air?
Empire of Death is scheduled to release on Friday 21 June 2024 in the US. The episode will debut on Disney+ at 7pm ET / 4pm PT. UK viewers can stream it on BBC iPlayer on Saturday, 22 June 2024 at 12am BST.
It will then air on BBC One on the same day at 6:40pm BST.
If you want to catch it earlier, than some cinemas across the UK are screening the episode today, Friday 21 June.
When will Doctor Who season 15 be released?
According to showrunner Russell T Davies, the next season of Doctor Who will most likely air in May 2025 with eight episodes.
Note that the BBC and Disney+ are calling the next instalment ‘season 2’, but most fans of new Who will know it as season 15.
Filming kicked off back in October, so it’d be surprising if it was delayed for some reason.
If you can’t wait until next Spring, then we’ve got good news. Doctor Who will return for another Christmas special, with Penelope Fetherington herself, Nicola Coughlan, joining the Doctor in the TARDIS.
Who is the fifteenth Doctor and the companion in the next season?
Ncuti Gatwa will return to play the Doctor. Prior to the show, he was best known for his role as Eric Effiong on the hit Netflix series, Sex Education.
Millie Gibson is also expected to return as Ruby Sunday, though we don’t yet know the character’s fate this season.
Their will be a new addition to the pair, as Varada Sethu will be stepping into the Tardis for season 15. She played a minor role as soldier Mundy Flynn in the Stephen Moffat episode, Boom, but we don’t know if she’ll be playing a different character when she returns.
Jonah Hauer-King has been cast in season two, but in an unnamed role. Set photos obtained by the Radio Times suggest that he may be a villain.
Russell T Davies returned to helm of the show just in time for the series’ 60th birthday. The showrunner originally brought back new Who with Christopher Eccleston in the leading role until 2009, and then led the show with David Tennant as the Doctor. Bad Wolf is producing the series.
No other actors have yet been confirmed, but here are some characters that may appear again:
- Michelle Greenidge as Carla Sunday
- Angela Wynter as Cherry Sunday
- Anita Dobson as Mrs Flood
- Jemma Redgrave as Kate Stewart
- Bonnie Langford as Mel Bush
- Yasmin Finney as Rose Noble
- Lenny Rush as Morris
While you wait for the new season, you can always catch up on older episodes. The BBC added every single episode of the show from the very beginning to the iPlayer streaming service. That means you get every episode from every Doctor from William Hartnell to David Tennant’s second run, without paying a penny.
What could the plot of Doctor Who season 15 be about?
Without knowing the end of season 14, it’s hard to predict what comes next.
We expect there may be more supernatural threats, considering the gods that we’ve seen the Doctor fight so far. The mystery of Mrs Flood may also remain, so she may play a biggest part in the next season.
We’ll update this article after Empire of Death has aired.
What does the bigeneration mean for Doctor Who?
Major spoilers for The Giggle below
In the final 60th Anniversary Special, the fourteenth Doctor (David Tennant) was mortally wounded by the Toymaker, a powerful figure who defies the laws of time and space. Because of this, the Doctor’s typical regeneration was disrupted, and something rather remarkable happened.
The fifteenth Doctor regenerated out of the fourteenth, leaving two fully formed Doctors with the same memories to work together to put an end to the Toymaker’s twisted games.
The pair succeeded, and even managed to materialise a second Tardis so neither Time Lord was left without a vessel – though the fifteenth Doctor was left without a pair of trousers.
Following the bigeneration, the fifteenth Doctor was eager to set out on a brand new adventure, and leave the troubles of his past behind – quite literally. The fourteenth Doctor was left with the Noble-Temple family to live a quiet, happy life and heal from the trauma of losing his past companions and bearing the burden of destroying parts of the universe during the Flux.
While the main series will be following Ncuti Gatwa as the Doctor, David Tennant’s character is still alive and well. He may not be travelling around time and space as much, but keeping him on-side for cameos and potential spin-offs is an interesting idea.
However, the bigeneration has even bigger ramifications, according to Davies. In the commentary for the The Giggle (available on BBC iPlayer), he says the following:
I think all of the Doctors came back to life with their individual Tardises, the gift of the Toymaker, and they’re all out there travelling round in what I’m calling a Doctor verse… Sylvester McCoy woke up in a drawer, in a morgue, in San Francisco… and Jon Pertwee woke up on the floor of the laboratory
Bigeneration was apparently seen as a myth by the Time Lords prior to this event, but now that it’s been brought to fruition, anything is possible.
How can you watch Doctor Who in the US?
Disney+ is now the home for new episodes in the US. This was revealed alongside the new logo for the show. Accounts for this service start from $7.99 per month.
If you’d rather watch episodes from the BBC, you can use a VPN to stream episodes on iPlayer as if you were in the UK. Bear in mind that this is a breach of the iPlayer terms of use since you won’t be paying the licence fee, but it will let you watch every episode of the show since the very beginning.
Warner Bros. used to have US streaming rights to the series for Max, so that’s where you’ll need to go to watch any and all Doctor Who from 2005 up until the end of Jodie’s era. Classic Who episodes are available on BritBox.