Happy Easter Doctor Who?

A return to Easter might be on the cards for the new series of Doctor Who

Will Doctor Who be returning to an Easter weekend slot for the season premiere? While scheduling details are yet to be confirmed, signs are that Ncuti Gatwa’s Doctor may well be dropping in to living rooms around the world alongside chocolate eggs and bunny ears. An article on the BBC Culture page has given us our biggest hint yet of when the new series arrives. And that Doctor Who Series Fourteen will appear earlier next year rather than later.

Included among the details of Ncuti Gatwa’s casting, the Disney+ deal and other bits and pieces, it claimed “Three hour-long special episodes of Doctor Who will be available from November 2023, with a Christmas special dropping in December and a new season in Spring 2024.”

However, it’s important to note that this was quickly removed from the piece. That’s likely because Russell T Davies’ team and the BBC are simply not ready to announce it. On the other hand, it’s not impossible the information was actually wrong.

But a Spring 2024 broadcast would make sense. Filming on the series wrapped in July, with pre-production already underway on Series Fifteen. So holding over the episodes until next Autumn never seemed particularly probable. After all, the following series may well have finished filming my then!

All Davies’ previous series of the show kicked off on, or close to, Easter

If we assume for a moment that the Doctor and Ruby will return to our screens in Spring, we might be in for an Easter premiere. Back in 2005, Davies’ first run on Doctor Who exploded on to our screens on Easter Saturday. It then went on to dominate Saturday nights right up until the start of the summer holidays. Series Two launched on Easter Saturday too, while RTD’s remaining two series never premiered more than a week away from Easter. Finally, of course, the Easter bank holiday weekend slot was still considered valuable enough in 2009 that one of that year’s specials was scheduled then.

Easter Saturday next year will be the 30th of March. That’s not only Easter, but it’s within a couple of days of the median date for all Davies’ previous Who premieres: the 2nd of April. So could we be looking at the eight episodes running from the 30th of March to the 18th of May? Well, Blogtor Who wouldn’t bet against it…

Doctor Who returns in November with three 60th Anniversary specials on BBC One in the UK and Ireland, and Disney+ worldwide