Season 55 (Doctor Who)

Season 55 of Doctor Who, also known as Series 3 premiered in October 2021 and ran for a run of 8 episodes. It returned to the more episodic format, prevalent between 1998 and 2018, rather than the serial format, the previous two seasons had employed. It featured Ace Bhatti as The Doctor, Alex Jennings as Bertie Reynolds and Jayd Johnson as Chrissie Finch.

Overview

Hiatus and COVID-19

After the longest hiatus between seasons since Season 50 into Season 51, Doctor Who returned for its 55th Season, and 3rd Series of Chapter Four, on 3 October 2021. After the previous two seasons had employed an experimental new format, whereby the season was spread out entirely throughout the year, it was decided by the BBC and ViacomCBS that for Season 55 the show would return to a more traditional run of episodes, all a week after each other. Originally intended to run for 13 episodes, the season was cut down to just 8 due to COVID-19 and the restrictions in place while shooting.

Mal Young

This would be the first season with direct influence, from the beginning, from new Franchise Executive, Mal Young. Young was keen to change the tone and direction of the show, as in the past five years, he felt the show had become ever much darker in tone and wanted to shy away from this, seeing it as the cause behind Doctor Who’s dwindling viewership and reputation.

This season was an attempt by Young to dramatically “sell” Doctor Who to the audience. He made the decision back in 2020, when he took over, to shift the entirety of Jane Espenson and Adrian Hodges’ story arc about The Second Generation and Faith over to Doctor Who: The New Renegade so Doctor Who could do its own thing this season. Young encouraged Hodges to write a story arc within the series, as this was a big draw for modern viewing audiences, to instructed him for the story arc to be self-contained to just these 8 episodes, and be easy enough to follow for the casual viewer.

In addition, while the logo had been standardised across the franchise, to a redesigned version of the 1970 logo, part way through the run of Season 54, Mal Young used this opportunity to really push the fact Doctor Who now had a new lick of paint to the audience. As part of this, beginning with Doctor Who: Adventures’ second season, Young introduced the unified episode title card, whereby every Doctor Who show had the same style title card, which displayed the episode title and writer credit.

To go alongside this, Young commissioned a brand new title sequence and theme tune arrangement for the programme. The sequence was designed and realised by Prologue, who were also behind The New Renegade’s title sequence. It lasted a shorter 40 seconds, and saw the TARDIS rapidly flying through the vortex, as the main cast names appeared, before leaving the vortex as it passed over a bunch of alien planets as Producer, Director and Senior Executive Producer credits appeared, before the camera followed the TARDIS very quickly rushing into the vortex again, the logo appears and then we cut to black and land on the title card. The theme tune was once again composed by Jeff Russo, although Ruth Barrett stayed on as composer in general.

Marketing

With a fresh lick of paint firmly applied, all that was left was to get the show marketed. Young was clearly aware of the issues with Doctor Who’s marketing over the past few years, however, he did appreciate that due to recent split seasons or the previous serial format, Doctor Who had been marketing a lot, at several different points, throughout it’s run, in order to get viewers on board. Young collaborated with Nicki Sheard in order to produce a strong campaign for the show. They decided that while they can market a lot and get a very successful launch for Episode 1, they should learn from the last few years, and carry out two more big marketing pushes throughout it’s run, firstly after Episode 4, and secondly just before Episode 7, as the finale begins. Both of these pushes would include entirely new posters, and trailers, following in the style of the originals, but showing more based upon the upcoming episodes. These posters, billboard ads, social media ads, trailers etc all were tagged with “Continues this Sunday”. In addition, Sheard came up with a master tagline for the season “The Hero We All Need” to develop the brand of the Doctor as a “hero”, and to entice the audience in.

Crew

Adrian Hodges returned yet again as the Executive Producer and showrunner of the series, but all was not well behind the scenes, as Young was keen to give Hodges the push if possible. It was announced on the morning of Episode 1’s broadcast, that Adrian Hodges would not be returning for Season 56, and a new showrunner will take his place. Season 55 was not written with the knowledge, by Hodges, that it would be his last. Along with Hodges, both Jane Espenson and Gaynor Holmes remained as executive producers.

The writers for this season, saw a few more slots open up, due to the higher serial number. Both Chris Chibnall and Simon Allen were promised episode slots due to their previous stories only being either partially made or entirely unmade. Chris Chibnall’s episode originally was to be entirely written by him, but Hodges was forced to make extensive rewrites. In addition, Hodges decided to bring back Sarah Dollard, to write Episode 3, after being impressed by her work on Doctor Who: Adventures, and she also came onboard as a Co-Executive Producer. The other 5 slots were filled up by him and Jane Espenson. Hodges would write a mid-season tent-pole Dalek story, and the finale, while Espenson would write the two-part opening story. The reason for Espenson writing this instead of Hodges was that Mal Young thought that Hodges’ opening stories weren’t very good to act as an Episode 1, and asked Espenson to write Season 55’s instead. This opener, would contain the only reference to Season 54’s story arc, in the season.

The director’s remained in the same pool as the previous season, expect that Mal Young hired frequent collaborator and former Doctor Who director, James Strong, to direct the action packed opening adventure. The season was shot in three blocks, with three directors and producers.

Cast

Regular

Recurring

Guest

Television Stories

Main Season

#	Title	Writer	Director	Air Date
1	Rebirth, Part One	Jane Espenson	James Strong	3 October 2021
2	Rebirth, Part Two	Jane Espenson	James Strong	10 October 2021
3	The Highland Beast	Sarah Dollard	Metin Hüseyin	17 October 2021
4	The Diaries of Time	Chris Chibnall & Adrian Hodges	James Strong	24 October 2021
5	Terror of the Daleks	Adrian Hodges	Lee Haven Jones	31 October 2021
6	To Win Them All	Simon Allen	Metin Hüseyin	7 November 2021
7	Journey into the Unknown, Part One	Adrian Hodges	Lee Haven Jones	14 November 2021
8	Journey into the Unknown, Part Two	Adrian Hodges	Lee Haven Jones	21 November 2021

Production

Crew

To be added.

Shooting Blocks

Block	Serials	Director	Producer	DOP	Editor
1	3/A, 3/C	James Strong	Colin Wratten	Matt Gray	Steven Worsley
2	3/B, 3/E	Metin Hüseyin	Alex Mercer	Edward J. Pei	Christopher Cooke
3	3/D, 3/F	Lee Haven Jones	Ella Kelly	Luke Bryant	Joel Skinner

Filming

To be added.

Aliens and Enemies

Viewing Figures

To be added.

Physical Media

To be added.