Bold, cinematic, full of frights, and very much made in Sheffield, Jodie Whittaker’s debut episode in the new series of Doctor Who premiered this week in the Yorkshire city for fans and the media. The Tardis had materialised outside Primark for the occasion, and hundreds of fans, many in costume, queued to see the main cast and crew on the red carpet.

The Woman Who Fell to Earth, written by new showrunner and executive producer Chris Chibnall, will be broadcast on BBC One on Sunday 7 October at 6.45pm. It has been keenly anticipated, as a woman takes on the title role in Doctor Who for the first time.

The director, Jamie Childs, says Whittaker’s Doctor is “utterly delighted, utterly curious, and just fizzes with energy” and he is not wrong. She’s constantly in motion, and Whittaker is notably proud that she did all her own stunts in the episode.

Traditionally it takes each actor that plays the Doctor a story or two to settle into their character, with the Time Lord being confused and disorientated after regenerating. Whittaker’s Doctor is no different. After observing, in a nod to previous incumbent Peter Capaldi, that half-an-hour ago she was “a white-haired Scotsman”, at key moments she finds bits of her brand new body – nose, legs – unreliable.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Jodie Whittaker outside the Tardis for the Doctor Who premiere in Sheffield.

The change of the character’s gender, so much of a focus for the last year after her casting was announced, barely gets a look-in. As Whittaker explains it, there are periods of history and worlds where gender is “relevant” and has an impact on the way people people react to her, but present-day Sheffield isn’t one of them.

She also spends a lot of the episode wearing Peter Capaldi’s old costume, rather than the new look that was much imitated by fans attending the screening. Whittaker says that this was helpful, as she was literally filming her first scenes “in somebody else’s shoes”. She feels that the moment that she gets her own costume on is the moment that the new incarnation completely clicks together.

Yorkshire-born Whittaker is using her natural accent to play the part, having concluded during the three auditions she did for the role that it “felt right”. It does. She’s able to switch effortlessly between the jargon-heavy technobabble so often required in the role, to asking for a fried egg sandwich.

She has deliberately avoided watching too much of the show’s 55-year history, saying “I wanted to know that walking into any environment, or any world that the Doctor is presented with, it was my instinct, and it wasn’t potentially trying to replicate something that’s gone before”. Comparisons to previous incarnations of the Doctor, of course, will be inevitable. Of the actors in the role in recent years, she is much closer in tone to Matt Smith or David Tennant than she is to Peter Capaldi or Chris Eccleston.

SheffieldCityCouncil (@SheffCouncil) Who’s Who? Huge excitement, some amazing cosplay, and the Blue Box on The Moor today for the #DoctorWhoPremiere in #Sheffield #DoctorWho pic.twitter.com/wmzLbJoxxo

The episode introduces the viewer not just to the new Doctor, but to companions Ryan (Tosin Cole), Yasmin (Mandip Gill) and Graham (Bradley Walsh), who will be accompanying Whittaker through the series. Their camaraderie as a team of actors was much in evidence on the red carpet, and in the question panel after the screening, with Walsh in particular the source of many outbreaks of laughter.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The Doctor Who cast (from L-R: Tosin Cole, Mandip Gill, Jodie Whittaker, Bradley Walsh) Photograph: MCPIX/REX/Shutterstock

The sheer number of new characters, alongside guest star Sharon D Clarke, necessarily means that the alien menace is more of a low-key device to bring the characters together and introduce them to us, than a world-ending threat. That’s not to say that the creatures’ appearance won’t give children nightmares. And Sheffield is a star of the episode in its own right, with both the surrounding Peak District and the city’s industrial heritage featuring heavily.

The look of Doctor Who has taken on a more cinematic edge. The production team say they are conscious that they are making the show in the Netflix age, where people are used to watching lavishly expensive movies and TV shows across all their devices, without necessarily appreciating the huge gap in budget that a British domestic terrestrial TV production is afforded compared to series like Game of Thrones or Black Mirror.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Segun Akinola has soundtracked the new series of Doctor Who.

New series composer Segun Akinola brings a more urgent electronic-tinged soundtrack to the show than the generally lush Murray Gold orchestrations that have accompanied Doctor Who since it was revived in 2005. He has also used original elements from Delia Derbyshire’s 1963 version of the theme to create a new version; but with the episode opening in an unconventional fashion, Chibnall says it won’t be until the second episode that fans get to see the show’s new opening titles and hear the theme ‘in situ’.

Chibnall has insisted that the series will feature all new monsters, with no recurring old faces from the 55 years of the show’s history. He didn’t rule out returns in the future though, suggesting that as a lifelong fan himself, there were plenty of things he was potentially interested in bringing back in future series. Certainly how they cope with an encounter with the Daleks is a true test of any new Doctor’s mettle.

Not everybody was impressed that the BBC publicity machine had descended on Sheffield though. “What’s wrong with these people?” muttered one person out loud as the walked past a queue of attendees decked out in multi-coloured scarves and fezzes and carrying sonic screwdrivers. “It’s something to do with Star Wars I’ve been told,” said an elderly woman to her friend as they walked behind the iconic police box prop that has whisked the Doctor through time and space since 1963.

“It’s great to be able to show support for something you love,” said Jenny Keery, 27, who travelled from Manchester to watch the red carpet event. The BBC had offered fans tickets in a ballot, and the winners were rewarded with selfies with the show’s stars.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Mandip Gill, who plays Yasmin, posing with fans outside the premiere. Photograph: Anthony Devlin/Getty Images

Chibnall has repeatedly said of the new series that it’s a great point to jump into the show for the first time, and the episode manages to deftly introduce concepts like the Doctor having two hearts, or what the sonic screwdriver does, without getting bogged down in exposition and continuity. The episode is keen to show, not tell, what Doctor Who is all about, and is a solid start to the new era.

At just over an hour it wraps together peril, sadness, laughter and some ingenious solutions from the Doctor. Towards the end of the episode, as Whittaker confronts the alien menace, viewers are left in no doubt that she is very much the Doctor. She delivers a speech which could have been written for any of her predecessors, and which outlines the very DNA which has kept the show running for 55 years – about embracing change while respecting the past, and always trying to do the right thing.

The woman who fell to earth has very much landed on her feet.