First broadcast 12 April 2025.

Doctor Who returns for a second season in its current BBC/Disney arrangement, which means BBC streaming and television for the UK and Disney+ for everybody else. For viewers in Australia it continues to feel instinctively wrong, after literally decades of free-to-air broadcasts, but 21st century television is a complicated business.

Nurse Belinda Chandra (Verada Sethu) finds herself abducted by robots and taken to a distant world, where not only is she feted as queen but she is the literal namesake of planet Missbelindachandra. Rescued by alien time traveller the Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa), she must join him to overthrow a rogue AI regime that dominates the planet’s living population.

In broad terms, any viewer who watched the first season of the Gatwa era knows what to expect. This is a version of Doctor Who similar to executive producer Russell T Davies’ original four-season run – fast pacing, a focus on character over plot, lots of gushing emotion and music – only quite a bit more queer. Something that marked out Davies’ new era last year was a shift away from science fiction into a free-forming sort of whimsical fantasy. I was not enamoured with this approach at all, and so it was something of a relief to find this new season opener (written by Davies himself) strongly based in alien planets, robots and space rockets, and time travel shenanigans. For me the experience of last year’s episodes proved that, while Doctor Who‘s connection to science fiction can be remarkably loose, it is a mistake to shake it free entirely. “The Robot Revolution” does not present anything remarkably different from a run-of-the-mill example of the series post-2005, but it is funny, often quite smart, and feels nothing so much as slipping back into a comfortable suit. While there is a surfeit of CGI involved in this episode, director Peter Hoar keeps things clean and understandable. There is some engaging design work as well, particularly during the episode’s climax.

New companion Belinda Chandra feels like a refreshing change while at the same time harking back to a much older kind of companion: the unwilling kind. Kidnapped by robots, witness to murders, and identifying the Doctor’s modus operandi within hours of meeting him, she wants no part of his travels at all. Add in a slightly more mature outlook than average and a capacity to learn quickly and adapt, and she has all of the ingredients for a genuinely great character. Verada Sethu does a tremendous and appealing job as well. This is, for lovers of trivia and progressive television, the first time in 62 years that nobody in Doctor Who‘s regular cast is white.

Ncuti Gatwa continues to be such a natural talent for playing the Doctor. The writing ensures that you can see former Doctors reflected back in his actions and cadence, but Gatwa brings a new and energetic perspective on the character. He is a far more emotional Doctor than most of his predecessors, and I continue to adore this iteration of the character.

This is a solid and enjoyable start for the season. There are another seven episodes to go, and based on the previous year the quality could honestly go in any direction. For this week at least, it seemed a lot of fun.