After the shocking cliffhanger ending of Doctor Who’s series 12 finale, Jodie Whittaker and her TARDIS team will once again take on the deadly Daleks in an upcoming festive episode, with series boss Chris Chibnall promising “thrills, laughter and tears.”


Called Revolution of the Daleks, the special (which will probably air in late 2020 or early 2021) will reunite Whittaker’s Time Lord with her companions Ryan, Yaz and Graham (Tosin Cole, Mandip Gill and Bradley Walsh), and follow on directly from the ending of series 12 which saw the Doctor captured by the Judoon.

“We can’t leave the Doctor there! On that cliffhanger! Well, we did,” Chibnall said.

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“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.”

“I can’t wait for the Doctor to go into battle with the ultimate enemy in this year’s Daleks festive special,” BBC Content Director Charlotte Moore added.

Exactly how or why the Daleks will return and how the Doctor will escape her Judoon incarceration remains unknown, though Doctor Who filming in late 2019 on Bristol’s Clifton Suspension Bridge (as filmed by fans) did apparently see different models of Dalek battling for supremacy.

This could suggest some sort of inter-Dalek struggle (hence, “Revolution”) that the Doctor and her friends will get caught up in, also hinted at by the episode title’s similarity to classic series episode Revelation of the Daleks, which saw two different factions of the evil aliens locked in a civil war.

Of course, for now this is all speculation. All we know for sure is that after barely managing to defeat one battered Dalek in 2019 special Resolution, the Doctor and her TARDIS team will now have a whole gang of them to contend with. Merry Christmas…


Doctor Who returns to BBC One in late 2020/early 2021