Does this new Class picture reveal a secret connection to Doctor Who?

Take a close look at the image below. Behind the fleeing cast (Katherine Kelly, Vivian Oparah, Greg Austin, Sophie Hopkins and Fady Elsayed) you can just about make out something in the background, tearing through the air and emitting a lot of light like a static bolt of lightning.

Yes, it’s a sort of crack in the air. So far, so vaguely sci-fi, and nothing a bit of intergalactic polyfiller couldn’t fix.

But cast your mind back to Matt Smith’s 2010 series of Doctor Who, and the main series arc. Remember the recurring problem he, Amy and Rory faced? Do you remember what it looked like?

And then again, a slightly clearer look at that crack from Class...

That’s right – this new threat that our heroes are running away from is a crack that bears an uncanny resemblance to the deadly cracks in time from a recent period of Doctor Who, caused when the Tardis blew up at every point in history thanks to some aliens the Doctor hadn’t met yet. Look, it made sense at the time, OK?

Anyway, that threat seemed to have been dealt with by the end of the 2010 series, only for a version of the crack to reappear in Smith’s final episode The Time of the Doctor in 2013 and then vanish from the series again – until now.

Now, obviously this crack looks a little different than the ones we’re used to – it’s at a different angle and has a slightly different (though similar) shape – so it’s possible that it comes from a different source. Perhaps this crack, while having similar dangers (which basically involved erasing things near to it from time and letting nasty aliens through) has a different origin to the exploding Tardis of the 2010 series.

After all, we’ve already learned that the premise of Class revolves around time and space being damaged by frequent time travel at Coal Hill School, allowing alien baddies to arrive in a way similar to original Doctor Who spin-off Torchwood.

Could it be that the multiple Tardis trips have put strain on the fabric of time and space, causing new cracks similar to the ones caused by its previous explosion? Is this just what happens when Tardis energy builds up in one location for too long? Or did the Doctor forgot to check the oil levels and blow up the Tardis all over again?

Sadly, we’ll have to wait to find out for sure if it’s the universe or our speculative skills that are cracked, but hey – at least we now know it’s only a month to go…

The first two episodes of Class will be available on BBC3 on Saturday 22nd October