There’s a very subtle Doctor Who Easter Egg in Jodie Whittaker’s first teaser trailer
Did you spot the Matt Smith callback?
The first trailer for Jodie Whittaker’s era of Doctor Who has arrived, and it’s fair to say that fans are pretty excited for the short teaser, which introduces the new Time Lord and her Tardis team in a specially-filmed sequence.
However, if you thought there wasn’t that much to the new footage, think again – because hidden within it was a VERY subtle Doctor Who Easter Egg that few fans would have been likely to notice on their first watch.
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Not sure what we mean? Well, during the footage the Doctor’s golden regeneration energy sweeps through the lives of new companions Graham, Ryan and Yasmin (Bradley Walsh, Tosin Cole and Mandip Gill), subtly changing their lives in small and fun ways.
For Graham, that means replacing his newspaper with a copy of the Beano – but it’s not just any copy of the Beano. You see, it’s actually the 1981 Summer Special issue which, believe it or not, has a bit of a Doctor Who pedigree, making it a VERY sneaky Easter Egg for new Who boss Chris Chibnall to sneak in.
Specifically, as BBC journalist Lizo Mzimba pointed out on Twitter, that issue of the Beano cropped up in 2013 episode The Rings of Akhaten, when Matt Smith’s Eleventh Doctor went back in time to the 1980s to spy on the parents of then-companion Clara Oswald (Jenna Coleman) and used the comic to hide behind.
Clearly, the Doctor managed to hold onto that issue of the Beano for a few more years (and a couple of regenerations), and it’s a great callback for the series to include even at this early stage of its promotion.
Still, it also has us wondering – what other subtle Doctor Who references might be hidden in the new teaser footage? We might just have to watch it another dozen times….just for research purposes, you understand.
Doctor Who returns to BBC1 this autumn
Authors
Huw Fullerton is a Commissioning Editor for Radio Times magazine, covering Entertainment, Comedy and Specialist Drama.
