Doctor Who fans were left reeling as Jodie Whittaker made her final appearance - regenerating into David Tennant.
There had been months of speculation on how Jodie's exit as the Doctor would be handled ahead of Ncuti Gatwa joining in the lead role, previously held by the likes of Tom Baker, David Tennant, Colin Baker, Matt Smith and Christopher Eccleston. Fans have been sharing their theories on how the exit and regeneration would be handled in tonight's special feature length episode.
The Power of the Doctor follows Jodie's last adventure as the Doctor, where she faced multiple threats from Daleks, Cybermen and the Master. Fans were left stunned as her final scenes aired and she regenerated.
In the special episode, Peter Davison, Colin Baker, Sylvester McCoy and Paul McGann joined the 13th Doctor for her final battle with the Master. The actor David Bradley represented the first Doctor, originally played by William Hartnell, who died in 1975. Jo Martin also made a welcome return as one of the doctor's future incarnations.
As Jodie's version of the Doctor realised her fate, she bid a fond farewell to her companions before she decided to have time on her own as she accepted her fate. As the regeneration took place, Jodie's Doctor regenerated into David's Doctor.
Jodie had revealed that playing the Doctor made her feel like she was 25 again.
"Before I played the Doctor I spent quite a lot of time playing people who lost children, people whose husband had been disabled - you don’t realise how much that emotional trauma leaves you on the edge of upset when you’ve been doing it for 12-hour days," she said, "With Doctor Who, there was heartbreak, there was fear and there was loss, but my overriding emotion was excitement.
That really fed into my evening and my weekend and my year. I feel like it’s knocked 15 years off me because I’ve been so energised."
Her exit came tonight, five years after she joined the role with showrunner Chris Chibnall describing the special - which features guest roles for ’80s companions Tegan and Ace (Sophie Aldred and Janet Fielding) - as "epic".
"It was a chance to have the past, present and the future all in one episode and pack it full of surprises," he said, "The Doctor is really having to contain separate attacks on multiple fronts and it’s incredibly overwhelming.
"She’s running from pillar to post to try and sort all of these things out. And again, it was something I had in my mind for a long time, that it would be lovely to do the axis of evil, the triumvirate of evil in Jodie’s final episode."
And speaking about Jodie's exit, Chris praised Jodie for being "utterly magnificent" in the role.
He added: "I think she’s enriched the character of the Doctor, as all actors who play the Doctor do, but it’s an incredibly bold and brave performance. And she took responsibility for the Doctor being a woman, she took it on her shoulders and represented and that was not a given, that was her strength and decision and power. I think she has been utterly magnificent.
"She exceeded all of our expectations. She’s given a whole generation of young girls and women a chance to feel that they are the Doctor also and that was always the purpose from the start of this era, was to really widen that net."
Chris was on set for the final day of shooting and admitted it was very emotional.
"I was on set for the final day shoot, there were a lot of people on set and there was an outpouring of love. It was a very special and very fun-filled day, there was a lot of music being played, Jodie put on playlists," he said.
"There was a real sort of party atmosphere on the final day, and then we ended with these incredibly emotional final scenes. It was just a great way to finish, I have to say the last few days we had a shooting were just delightful and particularly after coming through quite a challenging year of filming, it felt like everything landed in the right place."
He added: The production team had done a great job in scheduling the final scenes of that Doctor as the final scenes we were going to film which isn’t always the case and it felt very appropriate, very right, very lovely. It didn’t feel like a sad day, it felt like a very happy day, a sense of job well done and there was so much love for Jodie and Mandip.
