[This article contains spoilers for the most recent Doctor Who special, “The Giggle.”]
Well, we’re finally there: After what feels like a full year of teasing, the third of David Tennant’s return engagements to the role of Doctor Who’s The Doctor has aired at last, and Ncuti Gatwa’s Fifteenth Doctor is finally here—complete with a new trailer that lets Gatwa strut his stuff a bit and even do a bit of swashbuckling, after spending the lead-up to his tenure largely confined to brief glimpses and photo shoots.
Of course, anyone who watched “The Giggle,” the third of Tennant’s between-season specials, will know that the topic is actually a bit more complicated than that, thanks to series showrunner Russell T. Davies cooking up the new concept of “bigeneration”—a.k.a., “The Doctor splits in two, so everybody gets a happy ending this time, and also we can keep Tennant on speed-dial for cameos”—to keep multiple version of the character alive. It’s an enormously complicated idea to throw at a series this old, and with this many loosely established rules—especially since Davies has suggested in the show’s official podcast that the concept is retroactive, meaning all the other formerly “dead” Doctors are out there now somewhere, too.
Thankfully, the new trailer doesn’t bother itself with that complicated ball of sci-fi silliness, instead focusing on letting everybody know that there’s a new Doctor in town, and he’s got some pretty killer moves. (Also, he’s rocking an undershirt and skirt combo that seems to be getting appreciation from all involved, including new companion Millie Gibson.) It also suggests that Gatwa’s first full installment of the series, the Christmas-dated “The Church On Ruby Road,” will be a pretty goofy affair, complete with a bunch of goblins apparently flying around in an airship, but, hey—if there’s one show on TV that can incorporate that kind of ridiculousness into its DNA, it’s gotta be Doctor Who.