Our First Look At The Thirteenth Doctor – Doctor Who At SDCC 2018

By
Mary Helen Norris
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Ah, July. The time when geeks and nerds from all over the planet descend upon San Diego for San Diego Comic Con – the world’s biggest comic con. If you’re not there in person, you certainly are there in spirit – and via Twitter longing to get the latest news on comics, movies, and of course television shows.

Doctor Who has been noticeably quiet in the last year since the announcement of the first female Doctor, Jodie Whittaker. There was the announcement that she would be joined by three companions making it the largest TARDIS team since Classic Who. Then there was the announcement of her costume.

And of course there was her very short scene at the end of Twice Upon A Time.

Since then, getting solid information on what’s happening in Doctor Who has become extremely difficult. There’s speculation as stuff leaks and we are taking set photos and making speculation.

Thanks to a set photo, we know that one stop they’ll make is December 1, 1955. For those of you who don’t recognize that date, that is the day where Rosa Parks made her stand on the bus in Alabama.

I’m going to admit, I’m curious as to how the show will handle it. There is a lot of potential there, especially when you consider that Rosa Parks attended a rally four days earlier where she heard about how two men where acquitted even though there was a lot of evidence against them in the case of the murder of a civil rights activist. Sadly, I do not expect the show to take that angle.

Television and Film Star, Alan Cumming, gave us another puzzle in a podcast that he would be playing James I and that he was the main villain. He later admitted that he hadn’t been told to keep it in the bag in a Twitter Video.

Then, last week, Doctor Who teased that we were going to get a look at Series 11 during the World Cup final on Sunday. Fans anxiously waited for this teaser only to get a lackluster 40 second video that told us absolutely nothing.

 

The one thing this did do was give us a look at the three companions beyond the initial photo we got late last year.

First off, we have Yasmin “Yaz” Kahn played by Mandip Gill.  She had this to say about her character at yesterday’s panel.

Beyond that, we don’t know a whole lot. There was some leaked footage that indicated she’s a young police officer but not much could be told about her beyond that.

The next one is Ryan Sinclair played by Tosin Cole. He is best known for his role in Star Wars: The Force Awakens. He did say this about the experience of working on Doctor Who.

Not much was said about his character, we did learn that Tosin does not like eggs.

Even less was said about the third compaion, Graham O’Brien who is played by the wonderful Bradley Walsh. Walsh wasn’t at the panel and they didn’t get a pre-filmed video for him to say hello to the fans alongside his classmates so he is the one who remains a mystery.

This isn’t Walsh’s first venture into the Doctor Who universe. He also played Elijah Spellman/Odd Bob The Clown/The Pied Piper in the Sarah Jane Adventures serial, “The Day Of The Clown.”

Bradley Walsh has a previous Who connection in The Sarah Jane Adventures episode “The Day of the Clown”

I loved him in this. He played off of Elisabeth Sladen so well and just did a fantastic job in the role. As you noticed, I listed him as three different names and while they’re all the same person, they had their own unique aspects and he slipped into them wonderfully.

Honestly, he’s the one I’m most looking forward to getting to know.

This brings us to yesterday. What did we learn at Jodie Whittaker’s first ever SDCC appearance and her first-ever panel as The Doctor?

They kicked it off with a video featuring Jodie Whittaker running late for the panel. We see her run past a fan dressed as her Doctor stopping frantically to ask directions to the infamous Hall H.

Not too far into the panel, we got the first trailer, though I’m going to note that it’s extremely short (it’s the same length as what we got on Sunday – the extra ten seconds is the message inviting you to subscribe to the channel).

With this being the first real look we have at the newest Doctor, I wish we’d gotten a bit more. But that’s my general thoughts on the panel in general.

We did learn a couple of things.

Chris Chibnall wants to make this full a new era of the show and have it so people can come in. That means everything is going to be brand new. Including the monsters.

All new monsters and reportedly no Daleks. The exact phrase was that there is two weeks left in filming and they haven’t seen a Dalek yet.

There is one thing I want to call out here. It was tucked away in a comment by Mandip Gill.

Everything they’ve faced so far has been the set up for computer generated monsters. Which actually makes me sad. Even a run as recent as Moffat’s used real people whenever it could. Even if you throw a person in a green screen suit, it still lends some realism that’s lacking when it’s pure CG.

If you notice in the earlier trailer, there were no real teases as to what these new monsters/alien races were.

That’s anther note. They referred to them as monsters instead of aliens. Is that because we have to note the Doctor is alien as well and they didn’t want to share the term?

I’m not sure how I feel about that.

Also, we’ve got another change to terminology. We’re not using “companion” anymore, the doctor’s travelling companions are now called “friends.”

What else did we learn from the San Diego panel.

Oh! Here’s a big one!

We got to see the new sonic screwdriver. And it’s something…

There was talk about the panel about what Whittaker thought about taking over the TARDIS, what the first days on set were like, her audition and more. But as to what we can expect when Doctor Who returns this Fall, they were rather tight-lipped.

And that’s what blows my mind.

I almost can understand being tight-lipped to the extent they were. But what I don’t understand is why they didn’t announce a release date. While Hall H might not have been completely full (I saw a few tweets where people mentioned there were empty seats around the Hall, including full rows), there were lots of people watching on Twitter, hoping to get any and all information.

We have the names of companions, we know some of the times we’re visiting. We don’t know any of the planets, we don’t know the premise of modern adventures, and we know next to nothing about the current companions.

There’s chatter that Doctor Who will release in October of this year and I heard more chatter that we will in fact get a Christmas special but these two remain speculation that I will have to follow up on later.

Whittaker did give us this when asked what to expect from her Doctor.

It sounds like she’s taking notes from Matt Smith’s early days. There was speculation that they were drawing from the Matt Smith era after Sunday’s teaser showed Graham going from one magazine to an issue of Beano like Eleven was reading at one point in his run. Do with that speculation/fan theory what you will.

She also said this.

And that was the biggest news we got out of this year’s 2018 SDCC Doctor Who panel. I’ll keep an ear out for more news and let you know what I find!

Mary Helen Norris

Mary Helen Norris

Mary Helen first got hooked on time travel as a young girl watching the Back To The Future Movies. Since then, she has snagged Craig's time machine and gone back to see the Beatles as well as a few other stops. When she's not patrolling the space/time continuum, she's reading, writing, and learning something new.
Mary Helen Norris
Mary Helen Norris
maryhelen@timetravelnexus.com

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