Filming is now well underway on the new season of Doctor Who.
Peter Capaldi is back for a third year of adventures as the Twelfth Doctor, with Pearl Mackie joining the TARDIS as new companion Bill and a surprise returnee in the form of Matt Lucas’s Nardole from ‘The Husbands of River Song’.
Buy the complete Season 9 box set on DVD on Amazon.
Buy the complete Season 9 box set on Blu-ray on Amazon.
Season 10 isn’t due to arrive on our screens until next spring – we have BBC Three’s Class and some very exciting projects from Big Finish to look forward to in the meantime – but let’s consider some of the things we hope to see when Doctor Who returns…
The fate of Rassilon
To recap, Rassillon – the once powerful President of Gallifrey and co-founder of Time Lord Society – is exiled by the Doctor in ‘Hell Bent’, henceforth making The Doctor the President of Gallifrey (yet again).
But the real question is… where did Rassilon go after leaving the Citadel? Did he stay on a hidden part of Gallifrey, or indeed go to another planet to form a deadly alliance?
These are questions which have been supposedly swept aside by a few lines courtesy of writer Steven Moffat, but hopefully the character has a new lease continuing into Season 10.
‘The End of Time’ proved that Rassilon would destroy everything in his path (including the Doctor) in a desperate attempt to remain alive and reign supreme, so we can’t imagine that he’ll take recent events lightly.
In terms of character expansion, Rassilon should appear in Series 10 more as a central character rather than just a cameo. Ever since his ‘introduction’ in 1983’s ‘The Five Doctors’, Rassilon has been perhaps a more mysterious character than The Doctor himself.
There is very limited information about Rassilon in television and spin-off media, apart from everything on ‘70s and ‘80s Gallifrey mythology was named after him. Perhaps Rassilon needs to regenerate into a more brutal, younger incarnation to beat the Doctor into defeat?
A proper conclusion to the Hybrid story arc
This plot was hinting at throughout Season 9 and there was an attempt to resolve it in the season finale.
However, we can’t be the only fans who felt it was a muddle of various intriguing possible explanations, none of which felt like a final resolution. Nobody, from the Doctor to the Time Lord to Ashildr, seemed entirely convinced they’d reached the answer.
Rather than being left as a frustrating loose end, could the Hybrid arc instead be part of a bigger plan?
Incidentally, we’re basically fine with the idea of the Doctor being half human. It’s 20 years since the notion was first suggested in 1996’s ‘TV Movie’ and, as Ashildr pointed out, it’s a great explanation for the Doctor’s fondness of Earth and its people when he has literally all of time and space to explore.
Earlier broadcast time
It’s fair to say that nobody was happy with Season 9’s later broadcast times, airing inconsistently between about 8pm and 9pm; from younger fans who needed to get to bed, to older fans who like to watch the show before going out on a Saturday night, and even Peter Capaldi, Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss.
Of course, it meant Season 9 could get away with some scarier, gorier moments than usual, but everyone seems to be in agreement that it wasn’t really the right time slot and the ratings undeniably suffered (although going up against the Rugby World Cup coverage on ITV didn’t help).
One key benefit of Season 10’s spring 2017 start would be that BBC One hasn’t got to squeeze an hour and a half of Strictly into the Saturday evening schedule, freeing up space for Doctor Who in a more traditional, stable 7pm slot where it belongs.
Continued on next page…