Good thing the TARDIS is bigger on the inside because the new Doctor’s companion group keeps expanding. According to Deadline, fourteen-year-old BAFTA-winner Lenny Rush (Dodger, The Dumping Ground) has joined the cast for the new season of Doctor Who. Rush will be playing Morris, a new companion of the Doctor. See the Instagram announcement below.
According to Deadline, Rush won the BAFTA for Best Male Performance in Comedy for his role in Am I Being Unreasonable? last month. Russell T. Davies (It’s a Sin, Torchwood), the new showrunner, said, “This is what Doctor Who’s all about, brand new talent from the next generation, and no one’s more talented than Lenny. He joins the TARDIS team just in time for the Doctor’s greatest nightmare, so hold on tight.”
The BBC recently released first-look images for Doctor Who protagonists Ncuti Gatwa (Sex Education, The Last Letter from Your Lover) as the Fifteenth Doctor and Millie Gibson (Coronation Street, Jamie Johnson) as his companion Ruby Sunday. RuPaul’s Drag Race winner Jinkx Monsoon (Happiest Season, AJ and the Queen); Jonathan Groff (Frozen, Hamilton); Indira Varma (Game of Thrones, Obi-Wan Kenobi) as The Duchess; and Bonnie Langford (EastEnders, 42nd Street: The Musical) who will be reprising her role as Melanie ‘Mel’ Bush, will also be joining the cast for the upcoming season.
The new season is already being filmed with Davies at the helm again. Davies is working as the showrunner for the fourteenth season of the British classic Doctor Who. The new season is being co-produced with Bad Wolf. With the return of Davies, the Whoniverse spin-offs are also back. According to Deadline, a spinoff is currently in the works with actress Jemma Redgrave (Holby City, Grantchester) returning as Kate Lethbridge-Stewart. This spinoff will follow a storyline involving UNIT, a military research organization, that has been present in previous seasons.
A 60th anniversary special will air in November 2023 and will reintroduce David Tennant (Good Omens, Broadchurch) as the Fourteenth Doctor, who was last seen when The Thirteenth Doctor, played by Jodie Whittaker (Broadchurch, Journeyman), regenerated in the last episode of season thirteen. Catherine Tate (Hard Cell, The Nan Movie) is also said to be returning to her role as Donna Noble in the 60th special. Gatwa is set to make his first appearance as the Fifteenth Doctor during the anniversary special. Other cast members set to appear in the special include Yasmin Finney (Heartstopper) as Rose Temple-Noble and Neil Patrick Harris (How I Met Your Mother, A Series of Unfortunate Events).
It has been announced that Doctor Who has found a new streaming home with Disney+ and the BBC announcing a new partnership. New Doctor Who episodes will stream on Disney+ worldwide while remaining on the BBC channel in the United Kingdom and Ireland.
Doctor Who is a sci-fi show about an alien called The Doctor that travels through time and space in the TARDIS. The Doctor spends quite a bit of time saving the Earth from alien attacks and Earth is where they usually meet their companions. The show has been airing since 1963 with William Hartnell (Carry On Sergeant, Escape) playing the Doctor back then. Since that first episode, fifteen different actors have interpreted the Doctor, with Gatwa being the latest to star in this iconic role.
New episodes of Doctor Who will premiere during the show’s 60th anniversary in November 2023. Older seasons of Doctor Who starring Christopher Eccleston (Thor: The Dark World, The A Word), Tennant, Matt Smith (House of the Dragon, Morbius), Peter Capaldi (Suicide Squad, The Thick of It), and Whittaker are available to stream on Max and Prime Video.