First Black ‘Doctor Who’ Ncuti Gatwa Injects Life Into Flagging Series

The latest season of Doctor Who—the BBC show’s debut on Disney+, with its first-ever simultaneous worldwide release—comes with a lofty goal. Can it generate a new audience for this decades-old series, now on its fifteenth iteration? A charming new lead in Barbie’s Ncuti Gatwa, a celebrated showrunner, and guest stars like Jonathan Groff and RuPaul's Drag Race’s Jinkx Monsoon go a long way toward achieving that aim. But for viewers not already onboard with the TARDIS-hopping Time Lord (or sure what that even means), the newly anointed Season 1 might not immediately convince you to come along.

Premiering May 10, Episode 1 picks up right after December’s Christmas special, in which Gatwa was introduced as the newest Doctor. (There have been 16 actors in this role over the years; Gatwa is the 16th, but canonically referred to as the Fifteenth Doctor.) But a quick recap will bring newbies up to speed: The Doctor is the last being of his kind, an alien from a now-extinct faraway galaxy in the future who can “regenerate” into new forms upon death. They are, in that way, immortal—although with each regeneration, they lose the memories of their recent past. Unmoored without a home planet, the Doctor travels through time at their leisure, with the help of a classic blue police box that doubles as a spaceship.

But to combat the obvious loneliness of a life spent on the road across space and time, the Doctor traditionally recruits a different human companion or three to come along for the ride. This season, the Doctor has partnered up with Ruby Sunday (Millie Gibson), a spunky teen whose life he saved from dancing aliens in the special. Together, Ruby and the Doctor jet set into the past, present, and future, meeting and helping people—Ruby conveniently has few Earthly responsibilities to hold her back, plus the blessing of her adoptive mother.

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