‘Doctor Who’ Is Bringing Back the Daleks in the Next Holiday Special

Meredith Jacobs March 2, 2020, 10:45 am

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Jodie Whitaker Returns Doctor Who Holiday Special Daleks — James Pardon/BBC Studios/BBC America

[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for the Season 12 finale of Doctor Who, “The Timeless Children.”]

Doctor Who left its fans with quite the cliffhanger at the end of Season 12, and while the Doctor (Jodie Whittaker) and her companions Ryan (Tosin Cole), Graham (), and Yaz (Mandip Gill) will be back for another holiday special, that cliffhanger won’t be resolved then.

Instead, “Revolution of the Daleks” is a one-off that sees the Doctor’s biggest and most feared enemies, the Daleks, return.

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“We can’t leave the Doctor there! On that cliffhanger! Well, we did,” showrunner Chris Chibnall said. “But rest assured, the Doctor and her friends will be back for a one-off extended special around Christmas and New Year. (I don’t know when they’re going to put it on yet, otherwise we’d tell you!). There will be Daleks. There will be exterminations. Thrills, laughter, tears. You know. The usual. See you at the end of the year.”

“The Timeless Children” saw the Master (Sacha Dhawan) fill the Doctor in on her history: she was the first Time Lord. While traveling through space, a woman from Gallifrey found a child next to a gateway to another dimension or universe, on the far edge of another galaxy. She brought that child home, and when the child fell to her death while playing, she regenerated. The traveller spliced that genetic ability to regenerate into herself and then into future generations, creating the Time Lords. That child was the Doctor.

As she was still processing all of that before picking up her companions, a Judoon Cold Case Unit showed up on the TARDIS to arrest the Doctor. She was immediately transported to a “maximum-security facility” in space for her sentence: “whole of life imprisonment.” We’ll have to wait to find out when and how that plays out since it won’t be part of the holiday special.

Doctor Who, Holiday Special 2020/2021, BBC America