The first Doctor Who episode title for Jodie Whittaker’s new series has been revealed
And funnily enough, a few fans predicted it months ago
After months of waiting, fans finally know when they’ll get to see Jodie Whittaker’s Thirteenth Doctor in action this year, with the next series of Doctor Who officially confirming to be kicking off on Sunday 7 October.
However, that’s not the only piece of eagerly anticipated Doctor Who news to be revealed this week, with the BBC also sharing the title of the very first episode of the new series – The Woman Who Fell to Earth.
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Written by showrunner Chris Chibnall, the episode will be an extended hour-long introduction to Whittaker’s new Time Lord and her friends, and will follow on from the cliffhanger at the end of the 2017 Christmas special which saw the Doctor plummeting to Earth from an exploding Tardis.
“The last time viewers saw the Doctor, she was falling from her Tardis so it’s about time for the Doctor to land,” the BBC said in a release.
“The Thirteenth Doctor is falling from the sky and it’s going to be a blast,” added Chibnall.
Eagle-eyed viewers will note that the episode’s title (apart from being a fairly literal take on the events of the story) is a riff on 1960s British sci-fi novel The Man Who Fell to Earth, which was adapted into a film starring David Bowie in 1976 and as a TV movie in 1987.
Coincidentally, the book by Walter Tevis was published in 1963, the same year that Doctor Who’s first episode aired, and the story deals with themes familiar to fans of the series, including the intersection of alien life and futuristic technology with grounded human characters.
The first episode’s title is also notable in that it won’t be a complete surprise to some fans, with one or two Whovians actually having suggested the exact same name (or something similar) as a potential story for Whittaker (including in the above YouTube video, posted in April), or just as a title to bestow on the new Time Lord, as can be seen in this fan art from June.
Still, for those not involved in eerily prescient fan projects, it’s an exciting piece of new information to throw on to the pile of what we know about the increasingly intriguing Doctor Who series 11...
Doctor Who returns to BBC1 on Sunday 7 October
This article was originally published on 5 September 2018
Authors
Huw Fullerton is a Commissioning Editor for Radio Times magazine, covering Entertainment, Comedy and Specialist Drama.
