As Doctor Who’s 60th anniversary series begins, David Tennant reveals what to expect when his Time Lord becomes the first to rise from the dead…

• The first of the three episodes, The Star Beast, begins in modern-day London
• READ MORE:  Who is Ncuti Gatwa? Meet the breakout Sex Education star set to play the titular Time Lord in Doctor Who

As his famous blue suit was placed on a hanger in his dressing room on 20 May 2009, David Tennant never imagined he’d wear it again in a new series of Doctor Who. 

Leaving the BBC’s studios near Cardiff after four years as the tenth Doctor, he knew there was an appearance in spin-off show The Sarah Jane Adventures to look forward to. 

He’d also get to reprise his role in the 50th anniversary special, The Day Of The Doctor, in 2013.

But a return to the screen as a ‘new’ version of the Doctor? Surely that couldn’t happen when the Doctor always regenerates, at the end of each incarnation’s time, into someone different for a new era of intergalactic adventures. 

Yet 14 years later, the new three-part Doctor Who series starting tonight will see David back in the Tardis as the 14th Doctor (the character was introduced briefly last year when Jodie Whittaker’s Doctor transformed into David’s at the end of the BBC Centenary Special, bridging the gap between Jodie’s incarnation of the role and the next one, to be played by Ncuti Gatwa, who takes over at Christmas).

The new three-part Doctor Who series starting tonight will see David Tennant back in the Tardis as the 14th Doctor and Catherine Tate back as the Doctor’s best friend Donna 

The series marks the programme’s 60th anniversary, a major milestone for a show that had transmission troubles from the start. 

Just 24 hours before the first episode was due to broadcast on 23 November 1963, the BBC’s TV schedules were up in the air following the assassination of John F Kennedy, but after much discussion it went out as planned. 

Twice shelved and twice regenerated since then to even greater acclaim, the show is now celebrating its Diamond Jubilee in style.

And David’s not the only one returning. Catherine Tate, who played his Doctor’s best friend Donna, is also back – and Russell T Davies, who scripted the series when David played the character, is once again in creative control.

David says he leapt at the chance to reprise the role. ‘It’s wonderful to be part of Doctor Who again – Catherine and I said yes even before we saw a script.’ 

And Catherine reveals the project has snowballed since. ‘We’re doing more than we thought we were going to be doing,’ she says. ‘The initial conversation was about filming just one episode, not three.’

The first of the three, The Star Beast, begins in modern-day London, with the Doctor watching in horror as a spaceship plummets towards Earth. 

Elsewhere in the city, Donna is oblivious when a survivor from the crashed spaceship takes up residence in her garden shed. The Meep, a cuddly little creature voiced by Miriam Margolyes, provides light relief in an episode that has a sinister tone.

The first of the three episodes, The Star Beast, begins in modern-day London, with the Doctor watching in horror as a spaceship plummets towards Earth

‘Donna has been rebuilding her life since her days with the Doctor, and has no memory of those times,’ reveals Catherine. 

‘The Doctor wiped her mind, but the gap in her memories manifested itself in what she believes was a nervous breakdown.’ If those memories return, it could fry her brain. As the Doctor says during the episode, ‘If she remembers me, she will die.’

The reasoning behind David’s return to the show and precise details about his new Doctor are yet to be revealed. But in an episode from 2008 his Time Lord left behind a half-human clone of himself in a parallel world, so might that be who we’ll see over these three new episodes?

Russell T Davies cryptically suggests the 14th Doctor is the same one as the tenth, just older. ‘Fourteen years older, with older eyes and an older mind,’ he says. ‘The character says and does things he’d never have said and done before. There is something subtler going on and that does get revealed.’ 

David adds, ‘The changes are there if you can spot them. The Doctor’s suit, for example. It’s just that bit more distressed than it was before.’

A GALAXY OF STARS 

Kylie Minogue appeared as Astrid Peth in the 2007 Christmas episode 

Doctor Who has featured lots of guest stars over its 60 years. 

Kylie Minogue appeared as Astrid Peth in the 2007 Christmas episode; also that year future Spider-Man Andrew Garfield played Frank, a character the Doctor rescued from the New York sewers; and Peter Kay was villain The Abzorbaloff in a 2006 episode. 

The show also made stars – Peter Purves, the Doctor’s companion Steven in the 60s, became a Blue Peter presenter; and the Tardis, rumoured to have been a prop first used in police drama Dixon Of Dock Green, became an icon.

In the second episode, Wild Blue Yonder, the Doctor and Donna are abandoned by the Tardis when its Hostile Action Displacement System activates. 

Believing itself in danger, the Tardis leaves the planet it’s carried the pair to and will only return when the threat has passed.

The final episode, The Giggle, will centre on an iconic figure from the show’s past, The Celestial Toymaker. 

Now played by Neil Patrick Harris – star of US sitcom Doogie Howser, MD – the character’s return means the revival of a conflict with the Doctor going back to 1966.

As for the future, it was announced last year that Disney has invested a significant sum into the brand, making Disney+ the exclusive home for new seasons of Doctor Who outside the UK and Ireland and promising bigger budgets and potential spin-offs. 

A new BBC3 companion show, Doctor Who: Unleashed, will follow each new episode, with ex-Radio 1 Newsbeat presenter Steffan Powell going behind the scenes to find out how the drama is made.

As his Doctor transforms for the last time into Ncuti Gatwa’s, nobody is more aware of the significance of that moment than David Tennant, a lifelong fan who was inspired to become an actor through watching the show as a child. 

‘Jodie Whittaker and I texted constantly when her character was regenerating as mine last year – I wanted to share the moment,’ he says. ‘I remember as a child those scenes when the Doctor changed were mind-blowingly exciting, the beginning of a new chapter for a show I loved.

‘You need to remember that when you’re on the other side of the TV equation, telling the story rather than watching it. It’s of huge significance to many people and it will be again.’

• Doctor Who, Saturday, 6.30pm, BBC1 and BBC iPlayer.

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