The 2023 specials of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who are three special episodes that aired between 25 November and 9 December 2023, to celebrate the programme's 60th anniversary. They were written by Russell T Davies and marked the start of his second tenure as showrunner, having served in the role from the start of Doctor Whos revival in 2005 until leaving in 2010. The specials were broadcast on BBC One in the United Kingdom and Ireland, and on Disney+ internationally.
David Tennant and Catherine Tate returned to the series as part of the 60th anniversary. Tennant starred as the Fourteenth Doctor for the first time, having previously portrayed the Tenth Doctor, while Tate reprised her role as Donna Noble. Miriam Margolyes and Neil Patrick Harris guest starred as the voice of the Meep and the Toymaker, respectively, alongside returning cast members Jacqueline King, Karl Collins, Bernard Cribbins (in his final role), Jemma Redgrave, and Bonnie Langford, as well as newcomers Ruth Madeley, Yasmin Finney, and Ncuti Gatwa, the latter of whom making his debut as the Fifteenth Doctor, who would star in the fourteenth series.
The specials were led by Davies as head writer and executive producer in his first episodes since his return to the programme. They preceded and were announced alongside the fourteenth series; both were announced with Davies's return to the programme for its 60th anniversary and "series beyond". The three specials were directed by Rachel Talalay, Tom Kingsley, and Chanya Button, respectively. Filming occurred between May and July 2022, the first episodes to be filmed at Wolf Studios Wales after production moved from Roath Lock Studios when Bad Wolf became a co-producer of the series. A multitude of new Doctor Who media and re-releases accompanied the specials for the occasion of the anniversary.
Episodes
Supplemental episode
Casting
Main characters
David Tennant and Catherine Tate both returned to the show as part of the 60th anniversary specials. Tennant starred as the Fourteenth Doctor, a new incarnation who shares a similar appearance to the Tenth Doctor, while Tate reprised her role as Donna Noble. Ncuti Gatwa made his debut as the Fifteenth Doctor.
Guest characters "The Star Beast" saw Jacqueline King and Karl Collins reprise their roles as Donna's mother Sylvia Noble and husband Shaun Temple, respectively, having last appeared in the final story of Tennant's tenure as the Tenth Doctor, "The End of Time". Yasmin Finney appeared as Rose Noble, Donna and Shaun's daughter; Miriam Margolyes voiced the Meep; and Ruth Madeley appeared as Shirley Anne Bingham.
"Wild Blue Yonder" saw Bernard Cribbins make his final television appearance in the role as Wilfred Mott, while Nathaniel Curtis briefly appeared as Isaac Newton.
"The Giggle" saw Neil Patrick Harris play the Toymaker, a character last seen in The Celestial Toymaker (1966), portrayed then by Michael Gough. Jemma Redgrave and Bonnie Langford reprised their respective roles as Kate Lethbridge-Stewart and Mel Bush. King, Collins, Finney, and Madeley all reprised their roles from "The Star Beast". Other cast members for this episode included Charlie De Melo as Charles Banerjee, John MacKay as John Logie Baird, and Alexander Devrient as Colonel Christopher Ibrahim. Lachele Carl briefly reprised her role as Trinity Wells, an American news anchor who appeared frequently during Davies's first era.
Production
Development
On 29 July 2021, the BBC announced that Chris Chibnall, who served as executive producer and showrunner of Doctor Who since 2018, would quit the show after a run of specials in 2022, alongside Thirteenth Doctor star Jodie Whittaker. In the BBC press release, Chibnall is quoted as saying: "I wish our successors - whoever the BBC and BBC Studios choose - as much fun as we've had. They're in for a treat!" The future of the programme was first teased by Piers Wenger on 25 August 2021, when he said an upcoming change for Doctor Who would be "radical".
On 24 September 2021, the BBC announced Russell T Davies would return to Doctor Who as showrunner, after having acted as showrunner from 2005 to 2010 for the Ninth and Tenth Doctors. He succeeds Chibnall for the show's 60th anniversary in 2023 and beyond. Davies was joined by the Bad Wolf production company, which was founded by fellow former Doctor Who executive producer Julie Gardner and former BBC head of drama Jane Tranter. In October 2021, it was announced that Sony would acquire a majority of Bad Wolf. Bad Wolf took over creative control of Doctor Who beginning with the specials, with BBC Studios focusing on establishing Doctor Who as a global brand.
Phil Collinson, Gardner, and Tranter all returned to the show as executive producers, alongside newcomer Joel Collins. Davies confirmed by March 2022 that pre-production had begun at Bad Wolf Studios in Cardiff. Will Oswald edited "The Star Beast", Tim Hodges edited "Wild Blue Yonder", and Mark Trend edited "The Giggle".
Will Cohen, VFX producer, said that the production team's objective was "to craft a series of specials that not only honoured the rich tapestry of Doctor Whos history but also reignited the passion of its global fanbase", coupled with a plan "to elevate the series to a cinematic echelon, aspiring to meet the lofty standards of global entertainment giants".
Writing Russell T Davies wrote all three specials, plus the additional mini-episode for Children in Need 2023. In December 2021, around two years ahead of broadcast, Davies confirmed that he had "already written some of the episodes", and told the Radio Times in February 2022 that he was finding "brand new ways of telling stories that have never been done before". Scott Handcock acted as script editor for the specials, having previously worked on Doctor Who Confidential, The Sarah Jane Adventures, and most notably written, produced, directed and acted in numerous Doctor Who audio dramas for Big Finish Productions.
The idea of bringing back David Tennant and Catherine Tate originated during a Doctor Who Tweetalong for "The Runaway Bride" in December 2020, in which Tate told Davies that she would love to come back to do some more "Doctor and Donna", and Tennant agreed. After Davies approached the BBC and was later appointed as succeeding showrunner, plans were set in motion for how Tennant and Tate would return. Rather than bringing back the Tenth Doctor, Davies decided to cast Tennant as the next Doctor for a number of specials. In doing so, he stated in Doctor Who: Unleashed that he thought it was a "fascinating" concept for the Doctor to get their old face back, and that "there's no rules... you can do absolutely everything you want".
Davies was reluctant to bring back Tennant and Tate for a singular special, as he believed that would have been "a disappointment", and opted for three specials as "it was simply as many episodes as David [Tennant] and Catherine [Tate] could do". Davies emphasised that the three specials were "three separate stories", whilst having "a little link between them", and compared the trilogy to a "mini-season".
At a press screening of "The Star Beast", Davies described the first special as "a great big Pixar family film, like a bank holiday film – all the family watching, lots of laughs, a funny monster". He then described "Wild Blue Yonder" as "darker... not scary – it's genuinely weird", and "The Giggle" as "nuts, completely mad, frightening... that one will scare you". The specials were designed as a "bridge" between two eras.
The first special is based on the 1980 comic strip Doctor Who and the Star Beast, written by Pat Mills and John Wagner, with art by Dave Gibbons. "The Star Beast" features the first live-action appearances of Beep the Meep and the Wrarth Warriors. Davies told Empire in October 2023 that he "needed to bring Donna back into the story... which meant setting it in London, which meant something alien landing on top of London, and I automatically thought of Star Beast as the best way to tell that story". Davies chose to adapt from the comic due to it being "an enormously fun adventure, with an edge and a serious threat", and believed it was time "to take one of the best Doctor Who stories from another medium... and show that to millions of people". Davies wanted the threat to be quite simple and singular, and did not want Donna to "come across an invading army, that's going to ruin the story", which was another reason for why The Star Beast comic worked. He likened the story to E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, in which a young character befriends a lost alien on Earth, describing it as "traditional". Adapting an already-existing story in the franchise "never bothered" Davies as "it's [like] how there are two different versions of Human Nature", and said that "we're in an age of comic book adaptations". Davies maintained the main plot of the comic but entwined plot threads about the meta-crisis storyline and transgender themes.
Davies wanted the second special to primarily focus on the Doctor and Donna, aiming to "push them to areas they haven't been, and say things they haven't said before". This led to the concept of a two-hander, which meant that excluding the first and last scenes, this story only featured the two main characters. The special serves as a character study of the Doctor and Donna. Davies described "Wild Blue Yonder" as simply having the Doctor and Donna arrive "on a spaceship, and they meet evil versions of themselves". The simplicity of this plot led to them keeping it as secret as possible prior to transmission. Davies admitted in The Official Doctor Who Podcast that this approach could have "had an unfortunate effect", and that the audience might have been "expecting Matt Smith and Peter Capaldi and the ghost of William Hartnell riding on the back of the Garm on board this spaceship". Davies also wanted this story to utilise the bigger budget, and "make the production team break out into a cold sweat"; this was applied with the use of body horror by the Not-Things and the virtual spaceship corridor. The story features references to the Flux and the Timeless Child, plot threads from the Thirteenth Doctor's era, as Davies was keen on acknowledging "the brilliant work [Chibnall] did and to say that's absolutely part of our history as well".
The third special reintroduces the Celestial Toymaker, last seen in the 1966 serial of the same name. Davies described the Toymaker as "an unashamedly supernatural character", and the fantasy elements of this villain create "a whole new world for Doctor Who... a very big step the whole programme is about to take". Originally, Davies intended for the villain of this story to be Stooky Bill, a real-life puppet used by John Logie Baird in 1925, whom Davies was researching at the time of writing Nolly. Davies said he thought that the puppet was "such a perfect Doctor Who monster", and wanted this special to be "the story of a puppet who wanted to be a man". One of the original ideas included Stooky becoming "a great big puppet version" of the Fourteenth Doctor. However, Davies realised that it would be hard to portray Stooky Bill as such an intimidating threat for the whole episode, and therefore opted to give Stooky a puppeteer, which he said was "a small step to a toymaker". This story also reintroduces Melanie Bush, a former companion of the Sixth and Seventh Doctors, who now works at UNIT HQ. Davies said he chose to bring Mel back partly to "right a wrong", as he believes that the character was poorly remembered in her original run, and wanted to "put that right and have a better Mel and a proper Mel, a Mel that [former producer] John Nathan-Turner would be proud of".