Doctor Who - Series 12 Trailer Breakdown

Months of speculation, rumours, false 'leaks' and overabundance of secrets. We finally have the first trailer for Doctor Who Series 12. Lets break it down!

"The name's Doctor, The Doctor"

The first shots of the Series 12 trailer feature the TARDIS herself as well as the team dressed rather sparingly in tuxedos, we don't know much about these scenes yet but its possible they're from the premiere episode. A 50's style filter seems to have been applied to the shot of the team but whether this is actually an editing mistake or purpose done feature is yet to be answered.

A Soyuz Capsule?!

We know literally nothing about this.

The Doctor and her trusty sonic!

Again, we know literally nothing about what's going on here.

A big space laser.

Because it wouldn't be Doctor Who without a big space laser threatening to destroy the planet. We don't have anything to go on about this but instinct says this is from the premiere episode.

That is....an monster.

Is that a hoix?! Hide your doner sticks. (Torchwood fans will get that)

Last time she wore these goggles, she built her sonic.

There's no context here really but Jodie looks good in those goggles, lets not pretend otherwise.

I'm guessing he isn't playing the Minster Of Chance.

Finally, something we have details on. Stephen Fry's character will appear in the series premiere. We don't know who he's playing. His casting press release revealed that he'll be a big part of the first episode where he'll star alongside Lenny Henry. 

The Doctor and Noor Inayat Khan

We don't know anything about this episode other than it is the second of the series and stars Aurora Marion as Noor Inayat Khan and takes place in Paris, 1943 during the french resistance. Its speculated that this episode will be pivotal for Yaz.

Spaceship.

What more do you want, its a spaceship?

Team TARDIS minus Yaz.

There's no real context to go on here but i think its very likely that this is from the Judoon episode.

Bo Sko No Fo Jo To No Mo

One rhino boi. Could just be a normal Judoon but i'm thinking this might be the Judoon commander (the one with the cool arse Mohawk).

Graham and Yaz running enthusiastically. 

There's absolutely nothing to really garner from this. The only thing i've picked up is Graham is wearing the same clothes from 'Resolution'. 

Anjli Mohindra as the Skithra Queen

Anjli Mohindra will return to the whoniverse in Series 12 but this time she'll portray the Queen of the Skithra, a scorpion like species and i can tell you, their resemblance to the Racnoss is no coincidence. This explains the rumours that she'd be in heavy prosthetics earlier this year.

What is The Doctor running from?

Again, there's nothing really to extract from this shot. Could be anything, anywhere. She's running from something though.

Goran Višnjić is another big guest star this series.

The second episode of Series 12 will feature 'ER' and  'Timeless' alum Goran Višnjić as accomplished inventor Nikola Tesla. He'll have a substantial part in this episode and given that the episode itself takes place in 1943, it might be worth keeping your tissues at hand.

LAMP

This shot seems to also be from the second episode. The Doctor is probably talking to Tesla.

That's a dome.

I mean....it's a dome.  A building of significance, another spaceship?

She probably just told him about Elon Musk turning the Tesla name into a car company.

In all seriousness, we don't really know what's going on here. Tesla doesn't seem happy about something though.

Yaz running from a one of the Skithra.

Given that Yaz appears to be dressed in period clothing, it could indicate that the episode featuring the scorpion like Skithra is one of a historical setting. We know there's at least two episodes this series with a period setting. 

"Graham if you don't slow down, i'll pull you over for speeding"

This episode definitely takes place in present day and could well be the series premiere. 

Nicely lit TARDIS, much brighter than last series.

This could be from literally any episode.

That's the same tunnel used in 2009's Planet Of The Dead.

Same Ryan, same.

These two shots are definitely from the same scene and feature a car being driven in reverse towards oncoming traffic coming out of the tunnel. Almost definitely from the premiere again.

Is that...some kind of Dalek....thing?

Whatever that contraption Graham is wearing, it certainly seems to resemble the basic outline of a Dalek dome. The eye piece, the ear bolts. Could just be me though?

Lenny Henry's character certainly seems trigger happy....get it?

There's absolutely no doubting the fact that these shots are from the premiere and they seem to be in the exact same location as the first shots meaning ALL of them are definitely from the premiere. Tuxedo thirteen in episode one folks.

The Doctor meets Noor Inayat Khan

Episode two again. Not much more to say than that. 

"Something's coming for me, i can feel it..."

That something is The Master. Played by Sacha Dhawan. He'll be a big part of the whole 'timeless child' plot which is rumoured to be the central character arc for The Doctor in Series 12. That's all i can say for now. They'll likely keep him out of any of the promotion between now and whenever the series ends up premiering. 

The Cybermen are back.....and they're scarier than ever before.

We know a tiny, tiny bit about this episode. Its set in the Medieval period though the specific century remains a mystery. Anywhere between the 1400s and 1600s is most likely. Nothing is known about the new model of Cybermen but this is the very best look at them so far. It's fair to say though, this is the creepiest design we've ever had for the silver monsters. 

Yaz and Ryan in the present day. Will we finally see some character development?

There's nothing much known about the episodes set in present day Sheffield. What i can tell you is we'll see Shobna Gulati and Daniel Adeboyega again in these episodes.

The fam in the TARDIS...what does The Doctor look so traumatised about?

Given that these are TARDIS scenes, they could take place during any episode at any point in the series. Little point speculating.

Giant....bats?

Perhaps the most unknown and out of the blue thing to come from the trailer, an episode apparently featuring a swarm of giant bats of all things. There is a much clearer shot later on in the trailer.

The Gunpower Plotters

I have it on good authority that these mysterious figures are the six Gunpowder Plotters lead by Guy Fawkes himself. Quite where and when and more importantly, HOW they fit into Series 12 remains a mystery. I can only imagine there'll be part of the Skithra episode. 

Scronch.

No context here. No way of understanding what's going on or what episode this is.

Are you my mummy?

Gas masks and alien guns. Your guess is as good as mine. 

The TARDIS isn't safe anymore.....

The Doctor seems to be in shock as something is able to breach the TARDIS defenses and force its way into the console room. The trailer doesn't definitively show us what it is but the bit that we do see looks kind of like a Judoon helmet but it could just be a trick of the light.

Bats and a beach.

Last time Jodie was runing on a beach, there was a body there too. Yes, i hate myself too. These shots appear to connect back to the shot of a lab earlier in the trailer that was being overrun with giant bats. Lets hope that body that's washed up isn't one of our team.

Yaz is crying. Ryan is crying. Should we be worried?

With Bradley Walsh's schedule seemingly getting busier outside of Doctor Who, could Series 12 deal us a hell of a blow by killing off the legendary character that is Graham O'Brien? I certainly hope not but i honestly can't rule it out as a possibility. His death could be a huge opportunity for some real character centric development for both the younger companions and The Doctor herself.

Doctor Who has a bad history with planes is all i'm saying.

I can tell you with 100% certainty that this shot is from the premiere and will be a big part of that episode. Beyond that, my lips are sealed.

Yaz and Graham in danger?

I'm not entirely sure what's going on here but it looks like Yaz and Graham could get into some serious heat. I'm also not sure what episode its from but i'd guess present day. Episode one?

What has shocked The Doctor?

The final shot of the trailer shows a shocked Doctor looking up at something that clearly has her attention and fear. What it is and which episode its from is unknown.

New Years Day?

Strangely, the trailer didn't give a definitive air date which is why i personally don't hang too much on the tabloids reporting that Series 12 will be premiering on New Years Day. It could still be New Years Day or January in general but for now, we're still left with "Early 2020". 

With that, our Series 12 trailer breakdown is complete! 

If another trailer is released anytime soon, you can expect another full breakdown! 

Star Wars : The Mandalorian Review - Chapter 3

Advanced note : This review is a day late with the episode having aired yesterday but this won't become the normal routine. I've just been busy getting to grips with Jedi Fallen Order and forgot all about it yesterday. Apologies and yes, a review of the game will be coming once I've finished the story and can form a full assessment. So more on that soon! 

The Review

I think it's safe to say that waiting an entire week for a new episode of The Mandalorian was absolutely worth it. The one major issue i had with chapter 2 seems to no longer be an issue as this episode came in at thirty-seven minutes, only a minute shorter than the series premiere itself and an entire seven minutes longer than the previous episode. The remaining five episodes will likely also be between thirty five to forty minutes, particularly the season finale which could end up being even longer.

Chapter 3 definitely upped the stakes and seemed to be setting up the major story for the remainder of the first season and featured what i think was one of the greatest moments in Star Wars history with the final fight between the tribe of Mandalorians and our Mando himself against the other bounty hunters as a result of Mando rescuing "Baby Yoda" from the Stormtroopers and Werner Herzog's mysterious character. Not only that but getting more flashbacks of young Mando during the Clone Wars by way of character origin explanation was nice and seeing super battle droids for the first time since 'Revenge Of The Sith' really was a killer easter egg. I absolutely have to give props to Dave and Jon again for the story they're putting together and Deborah Chow for giving us the strongest episode of the show so far, being the first woman ever to direct a live action Star Wars feature. The recent announcement that she'll be directing all six episodes of the upcoming Obi-Wan series on Disney+ is hugely exciting after seeing what she's capable of in the directors chair.

Overall

There's not much i can really say that isn't exactly what i said in last week's review of Chapter 2. The show remains incredible, its visually stunning, Ludwig Goransson's score seems to get better and better each week and i'm glad he's releasing the album for each chapter each week alongside the episode itself. There's a huge value to listening to those themes over and over, especially when you're writing blog posts! I hope though that next week will introduce Gina carano and Giancarlo Esposito's respective characters as we're now almost at the halfway point and we still haven't met them yet. All in all though, another top notch chapter!

Chapter 4 review coming Friday!

Joker 2 : Sequel & Shared Universe?

After approximately six weeks and an incredibly rocky debut in cinemas & theatres in domestic and selected international territories, it's fair to say that Todd Phillips 'Joker' has had an incredible journey so far, dominating the box office every week since release, already becoming the highest earning R-Rated movie...ever! Currently standing at a grand total of $1,018,729,655 worldwide. As well as earning the title of highest earning R-Rated movie, Joker has also taken the title of being the first R-Rated movie to break $1 Billion at the box office and the most profitable comic book movie of all time, raking in a humongous $950 million in profits against its minuscule $65 million budget.

So a sequel was always going to be inevitable. Not really. 

Both director Todd Phillips and star Joaquin Phoenix have both been extremely vocal about how Joker was always a "one off" and wouldn't become any kind of franchise but money talks and a small budget movie with an iconic character like the crown prince breaking a billion has surely given Warner Bros and Todd Phillips the confidence to return to the story of Arthur Fleck, giving fans in turn another opportunity to see Joaquin Phoenix put on a happy face once more. Its no secret that there's been a few bumps in the road for Warner Bros and DC Comics in recent years with the ultimate failure of movies such as Batman v Superman and 2017's Justice League (more on that in another blog post - coming shortly) but it seems like exploring existing DC rogues in an R-Rated character study format and Todd Phillips is said to now be working on another origin movie as well as returning to directorial duties on Joker's sequel. So could this potentially be setting up an R-Rated universe under the DC label?

After watching and digesting Joker last month, i began to hypothesise about the potential for Joker setting up a new movie universe for Warner Bros under the DC Black Label banner that focuses on gritty, dark subject matter origin stories for some famous and lesser known rogues from across the DC Universe that share subtle synchronicity by existing in the same universe but set during different periods and referencing anything significant from other movies. Now that we know that at least one other character is set to be adapted by Todd Phillips, it may not be a far stretch to suggest that DC and Warner Bros could well be gearing up for the development of a new franchise for the big screen under the vision of Todd Phillips and fellow Joker screenwriter, Scott Silver. There's plenty of characters that i think fans would love to see given the Joker style treatment on the big screen and if the Joker sequel and the other Todd Phillips DC project can bring in the kind of budget to profit ratio's that Joker itself has, you can bet we'll be seeing more of these characters having their origin stories given a dark adaptation. 

I'll take a Reverse Flash movie with Nikolaj Coster-Waldau as Eobard Thawne at your earliest convenience, Mr Phillips. 

Star Wars : The Mandalorian Review - Chapter 2

Advanced Note : Ordinarily, i would've gotten straight down to writing up a review within the same day of having watched a new episode but sadly by the time i'd managed to watch episode two, i had to dash out as i'd booked movie tickets for the afternoon and evening showings of a couple of opening day releases. 

The Review

i'll be totally honest, i was expecting a little more after the season premiere. It was still very enjoyable and maybe my expectations were just a bit too high but i felt a bit disappointed when those gorgeous credits came up again. One of my major pickings about the premiere was that being only forty(ish) minutes didn't seem long enough for a show that has a $12.8 million dollar budget per singular episode so when the run-time for episode two ended up being only half an hour, that disappointment only heightened. If The Mandalorian had your typical american season episode count of 20+, i could understand but we're talking about an eight episode season with double the budget of most sci-fi shows on TV with twice as many episodes to boot. Again, maybe its just my own perspective but i feel like a show of this standard should be at least matched with cable TV runtimes. 

Onto the good stuff - Chapter 2 had some seriously great moments, throwbacks to the original and prequel trilogies and the swift return of Nick Nolte as Kuill, i have spoken. While the overall arc of this season remains a pretty big mystery, hints have started to be dropped and it definitely seems to revolve around the so called 'Baby Yoda' and our lovable rogue taking on the role of his/her protector. A rather unexpected moment was the return of those annoying little Jawa's and the iconic Sandcrawler first seen in the original trilogy all the way back in 1977. Of course, they were up to their usual antics, stripping down the Razor Crest for parts, presumably to sell somewhere in the outer rim. Part of this included what i can only describe as a "holy shit!" moment for 'Baby Yoda' when the little one seemed to be revealed as being intelligent and force sensitive. This is a pretty big moment for not only this series but for Star Wars canon in all and maybe, just maybe hints at the baby being the progeny of Yoda himself and former Jedi council member Yaddle (also of the...yoda species?)

Overall

In terms of story & pacing, the show seems to be heading in a generally strong direction but it's never going to feel particularly fulfilling with such a short run-time every episode. An increase of even 10-15 minutes (which would essentially match the majority of current sci-fi shows) would help heighten the narrative flow and give a little more depth where its perhaps lacking but that's really something that will be determined a little later into the season. I'm still very much enticed and i think really my only hope is that it'll be worth the wait each week now and hopefully at some point, we'll get some longer episodes. Considering we don't get any "Next Time" trailers or segments, we've no real idea what's coming at us next so there's going to be some intrigue there for the next bunch of episodes which is definitely refreshing. Lets hope the third episode delivers. I have spoken.

Chapter 3 review coming Friday!

Star Wars : The Mandalorian Review - Chapter 1

November 12th 2019 will be a date long remembered in years to come as a historic day that bought with it something truly unique and special for Lucasfilm and Star Wars fans as The Mandalorian made its debut as the first live action Star Wars television series ever and bought the galaxy far, far away to the small screen. With the launch of Disney+ in the Netherlands, US and Canada came the first of the eight episode series and introduced us to the mysterious Mandalorian as well as some of the side characters including Carl Weathers as Greef Karga and Nick Nolte as Kuill. How much of them we'll see going forward has yet to be determined. 

Unfortunately, Disney+ for now is only available in the above listed regions and will be launching in Australia and New Zealand on November 19th. The rest of us have to wait until the first quarter of 2020 for the service to launch in our respective locations (mine being the UK, obviously). However that hasn't stopped many of us watching the series premiere and won't stop us from continuing to enjoy the show until we get Disney+ and that is thanks to the wonderful folks who go to great effort to make the episodes available though...less than conventional methods, shall we say?

i will include a link and instructions at the end of the review for those who want to torrent the premiere and future episodes. 

The Review

Well it's safe to say that The Mandalorian absolutely gets mine and i'd think many others approval. It sets an immediate standard for both Disney+ and Lucasfilm alike on any future series such as the Obi-Wan Kenobi series that is currently in development. From the get go, it feels like you've been pulled straight back into the world of Star Wars and carries the tone of the Original Trilogy well with elements of both the Prequel and Sequel trilogy thrown into the mix. The Mandalorian is incredibly cinematic in scale, it genuinely feels like it should be viewed on the big screen & it's very obvious that both Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni have poured their utter devotion and love for the Star Wars universe into the creation of this show and the final product couldn't better reflect that in my eyes. It doesn't spend any time at all in giving Mando any kind of origin or beginnings and chooses instead to just jump straight into the swing of things which is incredibly refreshing. Star Wars generally spends the first hour or so setting up plot elements and new characters in the movies and that's totally skipped here and the show is probably better for it.

The cast between the likes of Pedro Pascal,, Nick Nolte, Werner Herzog, Carl Weathers and a certain Taika Waititi as IG-11 really shine in this episode, especially Taika who is positively hilarious as the witty bounty hunting droid. One would certainly hope we see more of him in character but he is also on directing duties for the season finale at the very least. 

Overall

I'm already a fan of The Mandalorian. Its dark, its funny, its action packed and its Star Wars on TV. That really is all i can say without spoiling too much (which i'll be trying to avoid at least for a little bit). What i will say is that there's definitely an interesting story set up with the premiere as you'd expect but i don't think anyone who's not yet seen it will see it coming at all, i know i didn't. It's already in safe hands with Jon and Dave who are both lifelong Star Wars fans and its off to a fantastic start. Hell, its already the most downloaded show on PirateBay. 

Downloading instructions

1. Make sure you have a torrent client i.e BitTorrent or uTorrent (you can find installation instructions on the relevant website - use the free download).

2. Click this link to navigate to the same torrent that i mentioned earlier.

3. Click 'Get Torrent'.

4. Click 'OK' on the torrent client when prompted.

5. Let the torrent download to 100%, wait for the bar to appear green and 'seeding'

6. Navigate to your downloads folder on your computer, find the relevant folder, open it and double click the video file and open it with your choice of media player (i use VLC Media Player)

7. Sit back, relax, enjoy.

Chapter 2 review coming this Friday!

Doctor Who : Animating Missing Episodes.

Years ago, it might well have been considered an impossibility to have a "complete" Doctor Who collection for good reason. The early black and white years of television as a whole were overlooked as not being profitable beyond their original transmission both at home in the UK and in overseas territories where Doctor Who was screened, having purchased several serials at once from the BBC. A lot of the tapes sent overseas were either destroyed or wiped after their use had expired, were lost in one way or another or were returned to the BBC where sadly, they also met their end.

It became standard practise in the 1970's to wipe programmes from the archives in which they were stored and it was unfortunately no different for the BBC who wiped a plethora of content, including a huge amount of Doctor Who from the 1960's and original master tapes of serials from the early 70's, leaving only tele-recordings for those wiped from the latter and telesnaps, clips and off air recordings for the former.

Over the years that passed, recoveries were made in a number of unexpected places that bought a whole heap of missing Doctor Who episodes back to life and thus, back into the archive for permanent preservation. Sadly though, some serials are still either partly or entirely missing and may well never be found, as the time between recoveries passes, the world moves on and the chances of finding those rare tapes and film reels decreases.

The last recovery effort bought home the full serial 'The Enemy Of The World' and five out of the six episodes of 'The Web Of Fear'. All six of the latter were found but during negotiations for the return of the film cans, the third episode mysteriously "went missing" and is believed to have been poached by a private collector who was aware of it being found by the restoration team which means sadly, another episode that was once thought lost is almost certainly lost to the general public and Doctor Who fans alike for the foreseeable future. 

Some serials, although returned in majority part have lacked an episode or two in order to stand as a complete set and some of those have received animation treatment over the years. 'The Reign Of Terror', 'The Tenth Planet', 'The Moonbase' and 'The Invasion' are examples of mostly existing serials, having had most episodes recovered but still missing at least one. These serials were completed via animation efforts from Planet 55 (Now Big Finish Creative) and released on DVD. However, in recent years, concentration has turned from completing partly existing serials to those that are completely missing. 

Through a collaboration between the BBC Studios animation team and Sun & Moon Studios, with use of original off air audio recordings, 2016 saw the release of the completely missing serial 'The Power Of The Daleks' which featured the debut of the Second Doctor, Patrick Troughton. This was the first time ever that a completely missing story was restored entirely through the efforts of extensive animation and set a new standard for just what can now be achieved in regards to finally bringing back television once thought lost forever. Since then, we've received a complete animation of another missing story in 'The Macra Terror' which was released on DVD back in March. 

2020 will see the release of TWO serials that until now have been mostly ('The Faceless Ones') and entirely ('Fury From The Deep') missing from the BBC Archive. Both of these releases will be worked on for the first time by two teams : Sun & Moon Studios with the BBC Studios Animation team and Big Finish Creative (formerly Planet 55). Despite the two existing episodes of 'The Faceless Ones', all episodes of both serials will be fully animated but will also feature reconstructions that will use the existing episodes.

So what can we expect going forward?

Well it's clear that the BBC is building its budget and confidence with these animations by having two being worked on at once, both for release in the same year. So whilst it may be futile to guess and make assumptions, i would imagine that we're potentially looking at potential double releases going forward, whether it be two releases a year or two releases every two year. Again, i imagine they'll plan to try and do two releases a year, starting with 2020. Given that Troughton's missing serials seems to be the current focus, i think its unlikely we'll see anymore Hartnell animations since the animation workload on his era would basically be double as he has six entirely missing serials yet to be done and four that are mostly missing. See here.

So if i had to guess something of a rough schedule for potential releases it would probably look like this :

The Faceless Ones - 2020

Fury From The Deep - 2020

The Evil Of The Daleks - 2021

The Highlanders - 2021

The Abominable Snowmen - 2022

The Wheel In Space - 2022

Should the schedule look anything like that, it would leave only 'The Space Pirates' to be animated in which case, it could get a 2023 release either by itself or very possibly, another Hartnell animation for which my guess would be The Smugglers but we're doing some serious hopeful guessing now. I could be entirely wrong and heck, we could even get some Hartnell goodness in 2021 but i do think Troughton's era will be the focus for now. Either way, the future looks bright for Doctor Who's missing episodes being given a new lease of life through the power of animation which i think we can all agree, is a positive.

Doctor Who - Series 12 : Everything We Know So Far.

It goes without saying that in this era of Doctor Who, secrecy is particularly abundant around pretty much everything when it comes to the show's production. Rumours rife and the occasional fragments of info scoured from sources close to set and articles related to bits of information coming from passersby whenever Doctor Who shoots on location in and around Cardiff, Sheffield or the city that I've called home for the last few years, Bristol.

So naturally, we simply don't know as much about the upcoming series as we would do if we were still in the Steven Moffat era of the show when secrecy was rather sparse compared to now. However, like any show that's in the public eye like Doctor Who has continued to be, not everything, much to Chris Chibnall's chagrin, can be kept totally secret. 

So what do we know about Series 12?

Truthfully, we still don't know very much, certainly not as much as we did about Series 11 when it had wrapped principal photography. By that time, there'd been huge leaks involving its premiere episode having a fifty-two second clip from the post production office shared around the internet which caused something of a meltdown from the BBC. On top of that, there'd been a fair amount of low quality photos taken inside Roath Lock Studios that were incredibly spoilery, including the first and incredibly bad look at the Arwel Jones TARDIS interior that lacked any of the finesse provided by the full lighting in the show as well as various recording & sound equipment which provided slight looks at monsters and various characters.

Series 12 has been without anything quite as bad as that. Our first official look at the upcoming series came with the announcement that the Judoon would be returning to do battle with the Thirteenth Doctor and Team Tardis, a little over five months ago. Since then we've had no more official announcements of any kind from official figures involved with the show. However, unofficially, there's a few things we do know. Thanks to the CV's of selected writers, we know that the Series 12 writers room will be made up of Chris Chibnall, Ed Hime, Prasanna Puwanarajah, Victoria Asare-Archer and Maxine Alderton. Vinay Patel is also rumoured to return for an episode but this hasn't been confirmed yet.

The list of this series' directors also seems to be confirmed with Jamie Stone helming Blocks 1 and 5, Lee Haven-Jones on Block 2, Nida Manzoor on Block 3 and Emma Sullivan on Block 4. Lee Haven-Jones is also credited for a sixth block which is rumoured to be two additional special episodes to be broadcast in the festive 2019 and 2020 slot respectively. 

We know very little about the cast for the upcoming series with the only cast members actually confirmed being Jodie Whittaker as The Doctor with Bradley Walsh, Mandip Gill and Tosin Cole reprising their roles as Graham, Yasmin and Ryan. Guest stars for this series (again, thanks to online CV's) include Stephen Fry, Maxim Baldry, James Buckley, Jo Martin and Neil Stuke. Also said to be appearing in Series 12 are Shobna Gulati and Daniel Adeboyega as Najia Khan and Aaron Sinclair respectively. A recent rumour however has suggested quite the casting for a big character as Line Of Duty & Marvel's Iron Fist actor Sacha Dhawan is reportedly taking on the role of The Master, taking over the role from both John Simm and Michelle Gomez who played the last incarnations of the character and as yet, we've seen no regeneration for either of them. 

SPOILER WARNING

MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD - DO NOT SCROLL ANY FURTHER IF YOU DON'T WISH TO BE SPOILED.

Series 12 will feature two more big monster returns as revealed by leaked photos from location shooting, the latest of which has revealed that one of the specials that was filmed as part of Block 6 will see the return of the Daleks in their instantly recognisable Russell T Davies bronze design along with what appears to be a full scale, black battle armoured version of the Reconnaissance Scout Dalek in a story that i'm told is written as a direct sequel to 'Resolution' and will reveal that the new black Dalek is in fact engineered by MDZ research and will face off against the bronze Skaro Daleks akin to 1988's 'Remembrance Of The Daleks'. This episode is believed to air in the 2020 Christmas/New Year 2021 slot.

Seemingly destined to also return to face the Thirteenth Doctor this series is none other the silver handle head foes, The Cybermen. Originally suspected to just be actors in knights armour, as more set photos came out (it was a closed set but filming on a mountain will attract some attention), we learned that the "knights" were in fact Cybermen with something of a redesign for the first time since 2013. The new design as you can see appears to be a unique mashup of models from 'The Invasion', 'Earthshock' and 'Rise Of The Cybermen' to create a new variant that seems to borrow a steampunk-esque aesthetic. It should be noted however that there WERE actors on location that were dressed as knights with swords, horses and such alike which suggests this episode does take place in the 1400-1600's.

The Sea Devils

This feels like an opportune time to address the elephant in the room as it were. There's been rumours for months that the Sea Devils would be returning for the first time since 1984. I unintentionally started this rumour when i was asked by somebody on Twitter to disclose spoilers about Series 12 and i knew this person wouldn't keep it to themselves as they'd previously mass shared the leaked clip to their friends after i told that person to not send it to anybody else and so gave them a completely false spoiler stating that The Sea Devils would appear in the fifth episode of Series 12. 

The same person then listed a random actor as being a Sea Devil in that episode on the Internet Movie Database. Any rumours of Sea Devils that you see should be treated as absolutely false and i apologise that its gotten so out of whack but it proves that people will believe anything without a shred of actual evidence.

The Sea Devils aren't in Series 12, sorry. 

What Next?

We still know very little given how close we potentially are to the premiere of Series 12. Doctor Who opted to skip SDCC this year as well as NYCC and didn't bother to utilise the opportunity of BAFTA Cymru to launch a trailer or any kind of actual marketing. However there is Children In Need coming up in a few weeks time which given its a BBC event that broadcasts live to millions of people, would be a perfect time for the BBC to launch a trailer for a festive special for either Christmas Day or New Years Day and it in turn could carry the full series 12 trailer at the end of it (see : 'The Return Of Doctor Mysterio') and an official series premiere date with it. We'll see what happens!

If there's any news in the coming weeks, i'll be sure to leave an update!

Update : Doctor Who will have a presence at Children In Need and a Series trailer will premiere on November 23rd 2019.