7 burning questions we have after watching the new Doctor Who series 10 trailer
Is Bill going to die? Did you spot that classic Doctor Who monster? And what do they have against light fittings?
A 30-second trailer for the new series of Doctor Who has arrived, but despite its short length it teases all sorts of details about the long-awaited new episodes of the BBC sci-fi series.
With that said, a few of the things we saw in the clip had us scratching our heads. Such as…
1. Why does Bill meet the Doctor three times?
In the trailer new companion Bill (Pearl Mackie) introduces the Doctor (Peter Capaldi) to the viewers, but mentions an odd detail – namely, that she apparently meets him a few different times.
“The first time you meet him, he’s funny,” she says in the new footage. “The second time he’s amazing.
“The third time, you realise he’s the most dangerous man in the universe.”
Unless this is just Bill’s extremely specific way of judging people, we’re guessing that this means we’ll see the pair cross paths a few different times in their first episode together (Steven Moffat’s A Star in her Eye), and that this description roughly lays out how their interactions will pan out – first he’ll be funny, then impressive, then sort of scary.
Basically your classic Doctor/companion meet-cute (or rather meet-cWhote), then.
2. Why are they walking in a library?
The trailer shows the Doctor and Bill with Matt Lucas’ Nardole walking in an atmospheric library while occasionally destroying light fittings (the absolute Whodlums), but it’s not clear whether this is just a cool setting for the teaser (which doesn’t include actual footage from the series) or whether it’s a location from a new episode.
Then again, we do know that the Doctor spends some time as a university professor in series 10’s first episode, so it could be that this library plays some sort of role in that episode. After all, as the Tenth Doctor would say…
3. Is war coming?
Elsewhere in her little speech Bill says the Doctor is “a man of peace, but he walks in war” and while this could just be a general observation it could also hint that the Doctor’s time in great battles didn’t end with the Time War.
After all, when we spoke to him last year Peter Capaldi suggested that he was “looking forward to taking the Doctor to the forefront of the cosmic battlefield”…
4. Who are the monsters on the wall?
Now here’s a tricky one. Towards the end of the trailer a sort of smoky collage of Doctor Who foes appears in the library before quickly dissolving, and due to their wispy nature it’s hard to identify too many of them.
Still, we’ve had a go and we reckon we can spot a few familiar faces.
On the top row you can clearly see a Cyberman and a Dalek, and just below the Cyberman you can also spot one of the series new Emoji monsters (below - so hip!)
At the bottom you can also see one of the Mars-dwelling Ice Warriors, who might be joined by another classic monster just above and to his right – one of the deadly Axons.
Just for reference, here's what those creatures normally look like:
As for the rest, we’re not entirely sure – the hooded figure in the middle looks a little like a Sycorax and the slightly wizened person to his top right bears resemblance to the human Pyrovile hosts from 2008's The Fires of Pompeii– but we could be easily mistaking a new aliens for older ones, and the other creatures (assuming they’re not all new foes anyway) are hard to make out.
A return for the Sycorax and the Pyroviles?
Feel free to let us know in the comments if you’ve recognised any we haven’t.
5. What’s that big monster at the end?
We reckon it’s a first look at the recently-announced new version of the Ice Warriors, as we explain in some more depth here.
6. Is Bill going to die?
“I’m having the time of my life – and I wouldn’t miss it for the world. Even if it kills me…”
So speaks Pearl Mackie’s Bill at the end of the new teaser, throwing our minds into overdrive as to whether she’s suggesting her character could actually be killed off this series.
We go into the idea in some more detail here, but the short answer is thatwe think the idea is plausible – if only to give a clean slate to new showrunner Chris Chibnall later this year.
7. And finally – how long do we have to wait for the new series again???
Don’t worry – after a long long wait for a new series of Doctor Who, we’re less than 2 months away now. Though we wouldn’t say no to a quick Tardis trip to April ourselves…
Doctor Who returns to BBC1 on Saturday 15th April
