Jodie Whittaker in explosive new Doctor Who trailer

With just over a fortnight to go before Doctor Who returns to television screens, a new trailer for series 11 has been released and Jodie Whittaker leaves no doubt who (pun intended) is in charge.



Wrote this post for my Whovians Facebook group, but thought it worth sharing here as autumn’s reign begins and in the wake of seeing the new trailer with my dad.

Doctor Who has been a part of my life for as long as I can remember.

As I’ve written previously. My earliest memory of watching television is The Sontaran Experiment, aged 2/3. The time travel series would become synonymous with watching Saturday evening television with my dad during the Tom Baker era - igniting an enduring passion for gothic storytelling - I’ll never forget seeing Sutekh overpower our beloved Time Lord, a Zygon shape-shift or a disembodied Morbius threaten Sarah Jane. The latter almost saw the series banned from the Hood household.

In the wake of a life-changing childhood trauma, a collection of Denys Fisher Doctor Who toys and Mr Men books (now featuring the good Doctor), with thanks to family and friends, sustained me until I was lucky to be discharged from children’s hospital following weeks of rehabilitation. Alas, not all the children, I’d befriended, got to go home. Combined with a school setting, Remembrance of the Daleks tapped into my PTSD 11 years later.

Friendships forged in the playground in the wake of Earthshock E1 and thereafter. Target novelisations kindled a love of reading in middle school - so much so, I was compelled to write to DWM and was humbled to see it printed - there really was no other way to ‘see’ The Tomb of the Cybermen or The Web of Fear in the seventies and eighties.

Visited Longleat's exhibition on more than one occasion. However, my most cherished memory is of the 20th anniversary convention in 1983. All tickets had been sold, but mum worked her considerable charm and we were admitted as VIP guests. Saw so many Doctors, companions and Terror of the Autons.

The wilderness years, following the series' cancellation in 1989, saw Twin Peaks, Star Trek: The Next Generation, The X-Files and more try to fill the (impossible) void left by the crew of the TARDIS. The Anglo-American TV Movie came and went whilst I was an undergraduate. Then, in the midst of a family tragedy, the Doctor made a timely return to television screens in the mid-noughties.

The series was, on the very rare occasion, displaced by transient thrills such as glossy US imports and teenage crushes. However, the TARDIS was always lurking in the background, ready to whisk me away on another adventure in infinity...