Doctor Who, on BBC One (UK) / Disney+ (USA)
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Caution: spoilers!

The original Doctor Who TV show ran from 1963 to 1989, for 26 seasons. It was followed by a new show that began in 2005, in the U.K., but I didn't see it until 2006, when it aired in the U.S., on Sci-Fi Channel. That network would air the first four series, before American rights were picked up by BBC America, which had already been airing reruns of series 1-4, and then became the primary American distributor of the show from series five through thirteen. After that, the American rights were picked up by Disney+, and the show started over at season one (at least in the US; I'm not sure if that's the case in the UK), though many people even in the US still think of it as series 14. I think of it as the start of a new show, which I consider "Doctor Who mark III". However, from the classic series through the present, it's all part of a single continuity, and the new season one starts with the fifteenth Doctor.

So... Quick recap of the old show: there's this human-looking alien called "the Doctor," who is a Time Lord from the planet Gallifrey. He has a time machine/spaceship called the TARDIS (Time and Relative Dimension In Space). The tardis is disguised as a 1950s British police box (which is like a phone booth), but it's bigger on the inside. He uses it to travel throughout time and space, and has lots of strange and exciting adventures, sometimes even on Earth. Sometimes he travels alone, and sometimes with one or more Companions. The Doctor is centuries old, and occasionally regenerates a new body, so he can be played by different actors. But it's not just his appearance that changes, he also gets a new personality when he regenerates... but the one constant is that he's always a hero (and kind of a rebel). But Time Lords can only regenerate twelve times (under normal circumstances), for a total of thirteen lives. And the second show began with the ninth Doctor. (Well, we'll call him the ninth Doctor, anyway. He might technically be the tenth, but that's a story for another time. Same rule applies to all subsequent regenerations in the current revival of the franchise.) And as I said before, the third series starts with the fifteenth Doctor.

Fifteenth Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa)
Season One (2024)
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streaming sites: Disney+

The fifteenth Doctor was introduced at the end of a 2023 special called The Giggle. His first full adventure was in the Christmas movie The Church on Ruby Road, in which he met his new Companion, Ruby Sunday (Millie Gibson). Russell T Davies, who was showrunner for the first four revival series, returns to that position for season one. More details to come after I've seen the whole season.