Season two of Doctor Who will premiere on Disney Plus on Saturday, April 12 (12 a.m. PDT / 3 a.m. EDT) where available, and on the BBC and BBC iPlayer in the UK.
In this eight-episode season, Ncuti Gatwa returns as the Doctor with a new companion, Belinda Chandra, played by Varada Sethu.
“Like many a companion before her, Belinda doesn’t seem to have chosen to take a trip in the TARDIS – asking the Doctor to ‘get me home.’ And, as is often the case, the Doctor doesn’t appear to be in control, telling her that it may be ‘the long way round,’ according to the BBC. A mysterious force is stopping their return, and the time-traveling TARDIS team must face great dangers, bigger enemies, and wider terrors than ever before across new alien worlds, universes, and, of course, planet Earth. Anti-gravity explorers, flying saucers and real-life cartoon characters climbing out of cinema screens are all part of the adventure.
In the second episode, Emmy Award winner Alan Cumming (“The Traitors”) portrays Mr. Ring-a-Ding, a cheerful cartoon character from Sunny Town in 1952, with his friend Sunshine Sally. After years of repeats in cinemas across the land, Mr Ring-a-Ding suddenly looks beyond the screen and sees the real world outside — and the consequences are terrifying.
“Only Alan Cumming could give a runaway cartoon so much wit, malice, danger and fun. He makes the whole universe of ‘Doctor Who’ wilder and madder than ever, and it’s an absolute honour to welcome him on board the TARDIS,” showrunner, executive producer and writer Russell T Davies said.
And yes, Cumming has appeared in “Doctor Who”
once already in the 2018 episode “The Witchfinders” where he played King James I.
Also returning for this season is Anita Dobson as Mrs. Flood. She’s ditched the snowy outfit and umbrella for opera glasses and coolly appears amongst a crowd of panicked people. According to the BBC, she seems to have abandoned her fourth-wall-breaking ways for the moment, but as we last saw her warning the audience that the Doctor’s story ends ‘in absolute terror,’ we’ve got a feeling we’ll be seeing even more of her this season.
For all the Doctor Who fans out there, you may be wondering why this show has been called Season 2 when it has been on since 1963. The answer is a little complicated because it all depends on how things are counted. The original show was on from 1963 to 1989 and had 26 seasons. When revived in 2005, it was called a series, not a season, and there were 14 series. This will make it the 15th series for a total of 41 seasons/series. However, when “Doctor Who” started appearing on Disney Plus, the last season was just called Season 1. Now in its second year, it’s called Season 2.
This counting issue is not unusual for Doctor Who. Let’s look at the Doctor. There are 15 official doctors, with David Tenant listed as the 10th Doctor and the 14th Doctor because that was the 10th and 14th regeneration. But it was the same doctor, just at different points on the timeline. This list does not include the War Doctor who came about from a controlled regeneration during the Time War. Because he didn’t use the name The Doctor he was not officially counted as a doctor, just known as the War Doctor.
Considering we are talking about an alien being that goes forward and back in time, we probably could excuse some minor accounting errors.
