You can’t be on TV for 60 years without getting a little creative with the storytelling medium, and Doctor Who is no exception. Since 1963, it has sparked spinoffs, TV movies, tie-in novels, countless audio adventures, comics, stage plays, and everything in between. But Doctor Who the series has remained relatively the same, depicting the adventures of the millennium-old Time Lord and his companions.
But in April, that is all about to change, and fans only know about it from a trailer that was seemingly uploaded by mistake.
Earlier this week, Doctor Who fans were treated to a new trailer for the upcoming Season 2 of the series, starring Ncuti Gatwa as the Doctor and Varada Sethu as Belinda Chandra. But German fans saw something completely different. On the German version of Disney+, an extended trailer was released showing — among other things — the Doctor and Belinda being transformed into cartoons.
It’s easy to pin down exactly what episode this clip is from. Alan Cumming is currently set to star in an episode as the villainous Mr. Ring-A-Ding, “happy, funny, singalong cartoon, who lives in Sunny Town with his friend Sunshine Sally.”
His episode is set in 1952, when “after years of repeats in cinemas across the land, Mr Ring-a-Ding suddenly looks beyond the screen and sees the real world outside — and the consequences are terrifying.” In the trailer, the Doctor and Belinda are wearing ‘50s garb, so it’s clearly this episode that will bring Mr. Ring-A-Ding into the real world and, conversely, our heroes into the animated one.
This is actually the first time we’ve seen animation used in the main Doctor Who series. There have been plenty of animated spinoffs, like Doctor Who: Dreamland, and more than a dozen episodes of classic Doctor Who have been restored and completed using animation.
This definitely signals a more creative direction for Doctor Who going forward. The series has been attempting bigger and bigger swings since the 2023 reboot, from the return of David Tennant as the Doctor to “Dot and Bubble,” a Black-Mirror-esque adventure. This reveal just proves this ambition isn’t going anywhere. If anything, it’s only getting more audacious.
