Time and space hasn’t stopped him: according to Russell T Davies, some episodes of Doctor Who’s brand new 14th season have been knocking around in his head for decades.
“Oh yes… episode five was, I remember talking to Steven Moffat about that in 2010 and we couldn’t have afforded it, it was just a vague idea,” he said at a recent Q&A.
“We needed money which, when you see it, you’ll go, ‘Oh I get what you mean.’ Visually, there’s more special effects than any other episode… and the finale, there’s stuff in the finale I must have been thinking of for 40, 50 years.”
The series follows Ncuti Gatwa and Millie Gibson on their first adventures as the Doctor and his companion Ruby Sunday – and Davies’ return as the showrunner, having first left in 2011 as David Tennant departed the role.
From the sounds of it, there is plenty in store, including an episode called The Devil’s Chord where the pair run into the Beatles.
“A friend of mine… he said, ‘Oh, if I had the Tardis I’d go back and meet the Beatles. And I thought ‘Well, that's a good idea,’” Davies said.
“But at the same time, I knew that the Beatles’ music was so expensive with the copyright that even with the Disney budget, we couldn’t afford it.”
The end result, as he says, is an attempt to figure out what would happen if the Beatles were present but the Beatles’ music wasn’t. And the end result is a caper with “almost no plot”, featuring Jinkx Monsoon – a drag queen made famous by Ru Paul’s Drag Race – as an uber-baddie called Maestro.
And then there’s Space Babies, the first episode. Davies calls it a “good old fashioned monster story,” bit it does also feature actual babies on a spaceship.
“Space Babies just seemed mad,” Gatwa recalled. “I was like, ‘What is going on?’ And working with 10 babies. Babies are divas!”
As might be guessed, these first two episodes of Who are not the usual fare. As Davies said, “I’ve seen them 50 times each and [thought] ‘God that’s bonkers.’ And that’s what I love about it. There’s no other show doing that.”
There’s also the tantalising prospect of a whole lot of guest appearances – including Golda Rosheuvel (aka Queen Charlotte from the Bridgerton series) and Jinkx Monsoon.
“Golda was simply a straight offer. She did Torchwood many years ago, so there’s kind of a link there,” Davies said.
“Jinkx was kind of an obvious choice. I mean, who else could have played that? I was kind of lucky because I know Jinkx’s husband… and I knew that Jinkx Monsoon spent the lockdown watching Doctor Who.”
From the sounds of it, there’s also plenty coming up in the rest of the series. “I think there's some great monsters coming up,” Davies said. “You want those tension and those old fashioned horror scares.”
There is tension aplenty in episode three, called Boom, which takes place on a war-torn planet. “At the very start of that [the Doctor] stands on a landmine. And can't move for the entire episode. It’s a masterpiece performance and the tension is just incredible. People will be talking about that for years to come.”
“Then we’ve got a landing on the Welsh coast: Welsh folk horror. Or just a normal day in Cardiff. And then we’ve got episode five… which is on an alien planet.
“And then the Regency story, and coming back to modern day for the great big finale” – which will see the return of alien taskforce UNIT. We can’t wait.
