Doctor Who, on BBC One (UK) / Disney+ (USA)
BBC; Council of Geeks; IMDb; official website; On Disney+; TV Tropes; Wikipedia
For more links see Doctor Who & Torchwood links.

Caution: spoilers!

The original Doctor Who TV show ran from 1963 to 1989, for 26 seasons. It was followed by a new show that began in 2005, in the U.K., but I didn't see it until 2006, when it aired in the U.S., on Sci-Fi Channel. That network would air the first four series, before American rights were picked up by BBC America, which had already been airing reruns of series 1-4, and then became the primary American distributor of the show from series five through thirteen. After that, the American rights were picked up by Disney+, and the show started over at season one (at least in the US; I'm not sure if that's the case in the UK), though many people even in the US still think of it as series 14. I think of it as the start of a new show, which I consider "Doctor Who mark III". However, from the classic series through the present, it's all part of a single continuity, and the new season one starts with the fifteenth Doctor.

So... Quick recap of the old show: there's this human-looking alien called "the Doctor," who is a Time Lord from the planet Gallifrey. He has a time machine/spaceship called the TARDIS (Time and Relative Dimension In Space). The tardis is disguised as a 1950s British police box (which is like a phone booth), but it's bigger on the inside. He uses it to travel throughout time and space, and has lots of strange and exciting adventures, sometimes even on Earth. Sometimes he travels alone, and sometimes with one or more Companions. The Doctor is centuries old, and occasionally regenerates a new body, so he can be played by different actors. But it's not just his appearance that changes, he also gets a new personality when he regenerates... but the one constant is that he's always a hero (and kind of a rebel). But Time Lords can only regenerate twelve times (under normal circumstances), for a total of thirteen lives. And the second show began with the ninth Doctor. (Well, we'll call him the ninth Doctor, anyway. He might technically be the tenth, but that's a story for another time. Same rule applies to all subsequent regenerations in the current revival of the franchise.) And as I said before, the third series starts with the fifteenth Doctor.

Fifteenth Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa)
Season One / Series 14 (2024)
BBC; IMDb; Wikia; Wikipedia
streaming sites: Disney+

The fifteenth Doctor was introduced at the end of a 2023 special called The Giggle. His first full adventure was in the Christmas movie The Church on Ruby Road, in which he met his new Companion, Ruby Sunday (Millie Gibson). Russell T Davies, who was showrunner for the first four revival series, returns to that position for season one. I must say, this season was too short, with only eight episodes, which wasn't enough time for me to love this Doctor (as I have to one degree or another with all the previous Doctors of the revival). But I did still like him, and Ruby, and the season as a whole, quite a bit. And I expect when I've seen more seasons, I'll raise my rating of the Gatwa era from four smileys to at least one heart.

Well, this Doctor is more in touch with his emotions than previous Doctors, which I think is a good thing. He and Ruby both seem pretty adventurous and fun-loving, and of course always quick to help people in any sort of problem they come across. I'm not sure how much I want to say about specific episodes, but the Doctor and Ruby face some pretty formidable foes, some of them more supernatural than sci-fi. Like, actual gods. One of the best episodes was "73 Yards", in which the Doctor disappears and Ruby is left living out her life, with a mysterious woman constantly standing 73 yards away from her, who causes anyone who talks to her to abandon Ruby and go a little mad, or something. Ruby manages to use this to her advantage against one very human villain, a politician who could start a nuclear war. But ultimately, the story comes full circle and apparently none of it happens, after all, so she doesn't remember any of it. The next story is another really good one, "Dot and Bubble", in which people on another planet are completely dependent upon social media to run their lives. But it's ultimately a condemnation of white supremacy. (Which I think was specifically directed at racist fans of the show who are upset that the new Doctor is played by a Black man.) Then there's a story where the Doctor meets a bounty hunter called Rogue (Jonathan Groff), who at first thinks the Doctor is a certain alien menace he'd been hired to capture. But the Doctor proves he's not, and they work together to stop the real aliens. (The episode is also a nod to the series "Bridgerton", which I've never seen.) Rogue was rather charming, in a way that kind of reminded me of Jack Harkness (a character seen in several earlier Doctor Who episodes, as well as the spinoff series Torchwood). He's not quite as charismatic as Jack, but I liked him, and so did the Doctor. They engage in some flirtation and a kiss (which I'm sure was at least partly intended to annoy homophobic fans, but is mostly just about normalizing gay representation in media, which is a good thing). Unfortunately, Rogue gets exiled to another dimension. He hopes the Doctor will find him, but for now the Doctor seems to consider it hopeless, because there are practically infinite dimensions. But I seriously doubt we've seen the last of Rogue. I do hope he'll return in another season. The season finale consists of two episodes, in which the Doctor and UNIT try to learn who Ruby's birth mother was, while also investigating he fact that a certain mysterious woman has been appearing wherever the Doctor and Ruby go, throughout the season, in vastly different times and places. I don't want to spoil how that turns out, but it leads to the (temporary) destruction of almost all life in the universe. So that was pretty thrilling. In the end, the Doctor manages to restore all the lives that had been taken by an ancient enemy (whom the Fourth Doctor had once faced in the classic series). I had kind of hoped it would be said that not only those lives, but all the ones that had been taken by The Flux, would be restored, but there's no indication that that happened, alas.

Wow, I ended up saying more than I expected to. But I did leave some things out. However, I do need to mention a neighbor of Ruby's named Mrs. Flood (Anita Dobson), who is pretty mysterious, herself, and will surely be a major threat to the Doctor sometime later on. Meanwhile, Ruby finally meets her birth mother. Also, we see the return of UNIT director Kate Stewart, and other people working for UNIT include Rose Noble (first seen in the 2023 specials), Mel Bush (who was previously a companion of the Sixth and Seventh Doctors), and a scientific advisor named Morris Gibbons. And... I guess I don't know what else to say. I just think the season was reasonably fun, and I look forward to seeing whatever comes next, and getting to know this Doctor better.

Between seasons 1 and 2, there was a Christmas special called Joy to the World.

Season Two / Series 15 (2025)
BBC; IMDb; Wikia; Wikipedia
streaming sites: Disney+

Robots from an alien planet abduct a nurse named Belinda Chandra (Varada Sethu, who had played a distant descendant of Belinda's in an episode of the previous season). The Doctor rescues her and tries to take her back home to May 24, 2025, on Earth. But that date is blocked, for some reason. So throughout the season, the Doctor and Belinda have a series of adventures while trying to find a way to get her home. Wherever they stop, the Doctor uses a device called a vortex indicator (or "vindicator") to, I dunno, like, gather data that will help him sort of triangulate on May 24, or whatever. Belinda is very anxious to get home, but does sometimes sort of enjoy their adventures (when they're not in mortal peril).

In the second episode, they battle Lux, the God of Light, who appears as an animated film character (voiced by Alan Cumming, who previously played a different character in an episode of series 11). In the third episode, they face a mysterious entity previously encountered by the Doctor in an episode of series 4. In the fourth episode, Ruby Sunday reappears, now dating a podcaster named Conrad Clark. He eventually turns out to be a bad guy, but I won't spoil the details of that. The fifth episode is set in Lagos in 2019, where we learn that the Doctor had at some point made friends with a barber named Omo, and returned there periodically as a place he could fit in now that he's Black. But there's a new Barber there who has taken over the shop, to use stories as fuel for a weapon he intends to use to destroy all the gods. So the Doctor must stop him. In the sixth episode, there's an interstellar song contest on a space station in the future, which had evolved from Eurovision, I guess. At the end of the episode, after the Doctor and Belinda have left, Mrs. Flood appears and bi-generates into a younger woman, who turns out to be the Rani (Archie Panjabi). The Rani is a renegade Time Lord whom the Doctor had previously faced in his sixth and seventh incarnations.

In episode seven, the Doctor and Belinda wake up on May 23, 2025, on Earth. They are apparently married, and have a young daughter named Poppy. They don't remember who they really are (the Doctor is called "John Smith"). In fact, no one in the world seems to remember who they really are, though Ruby seems to remember some things. She knows the world isn't right (apparently because she had lived through this time before, in the episode "73 Yards", though she still doesn't really remember the events of that episode). The changes are the work of the two Ranis (the younger one being the dominant of the two). They're using a baby named Desiderium, whom they had abducted from sometime in the past, because somehow kissing him allows one to have wishes come true. They're also using Conrad Clark to make most of the wishes, to maintain the new reality they've created. The Rani's plan is ultimately to release Omega, the founder of the Time Lords, from his prison beneath reality, in the Under-universe, or whatever. The Doctor begins to regain his memories after receiving a message via television from Rogue, somehow. He is later nearly killed by the Rani, but in the eighth and final episode of the season, he is rescued by his friend Anita (from the Christmas special "Joy to the World"), who now works at the Time Hotel. With her help, the Doctor restores the memories of Belinda and everyone who works for UNIT (as well as Ruby), and they all work together to stop the Ranis. I don't want to spoil too many details about that, but the Doctor is eventually forced to use the energy from regeneration to shift reality back to normal, and... it turns out that Poppy is now retroactively Belinda's daughter, but not the Doctor's. Desiderium is given to Ruby's foster mother, Carla, and renamed Joe Sunday, because the Doctor didn't know where and when he came from. And in the end, the Doctor regenerates into a familiar face, but I won't spoil who, for now.

And that is how the Fifteenth Doctor's time comes to an end. I think it's a shame Gatwa won't get at least one more season, but at this point I don't even know if there will be another season at all. I very much hope there will be. Anyway, I still don't quite love this era of "Doctor Who", but I have increased my rating my half a smiley. So it's very closed to loved. But honestly... while there were no episodes that I really particularly disliked, there have been a lot fewer than usual that I really particularly liked a great deal. There have been some. And as is usually the case with "Doctor Who", I liked the characters and the actors. But the stories were often weaker than usual for the show (much like in the Thirteenth Doctor's era). The two seasons we got with Gatwa were both too short, so there wasn't as much time for major character or plot development. But while I'm a bit disappointed overall, I remain a die-hard fan.