Good news, everyone – we’re getting even more Doctor Who than we thought this year! It’s been revealed that Jodie Whittaker’s very first episode in the BBC sci-fi series will be a whopping 65 minutes long, properly introducing the Thirteenth Doctor and her Tardis team (played by Bradley Walsh, Mandip Gill and Tosin Cole) before reverting to a shorter 50-minute format for the series’ nine subsequent instalments.


The episode running time was unveiled yesterday as part of a listing for the BBC Worldwide Showcase in Liverpool later this month.

But if you’re wondering why some of this sounds familiar, it’s because we did know for a while that the series premiere would be longer than the rest of series 11. However, the initial announcement suggested that episode one would be “a feature-length hour”, so that’s a whole extra five minutes we’re getting!

Think that doesn’t sound very long? Well then, I guess you’re not a fan of these classic modern Doctor Who moments, all of which clock in at under five minutes apiece.

Yep – in Doctor Who terms (and, frankly, TV terms) five minutes is a lot longer than you’d think. And with all the new and exciting adventures coming this autumn, we’ll take every extra second we can get.


Doctor Who returns to BBC1 this autumn