As everyone spends more time indoors to mitigate the spread of the novel coronavirus, now more than ever people are looking for things to do and socialize over, even if from the comfort of their own homes rather than physically in person. So, frankly, what better time to start rewatching Doctor Who with the world?
Over the past weekend, Doctor Who fans came together for a live tweet of the 50th Anniversary special, “The Day of the Doctor,” even managing to get Steven Moffat to temporarily rejoin Twitter to join in. Moffat even wrote a special introduction featuring Strax the Sontaran, performed by actor Dan Starkey to celebrate. Coming together under the hashtag #SaveTheDay, the rewatch broke to the top of Twitter trends across the world, bringing together Whovians in a lovely moment of co-operation and multi-Doctor shenanigans.
They’re set to try this type of thing once more and are going back to the very beginning of Doctor Who’s revival. Radio Times reports that to mark the 15th anniversary of the show’s modern return this week, former showrunner Russell T. Davies will join Twitter for a live-tweeting of the very first episode of his time on the show, “Rose.”
Starting at 7 p.m. UK time (3 p.m. EST, yankee-doodles) on Thursday, March 26—15 years to the day since it first aired on BBC One—fans can follow along by watching the episode and tweeting with the hashtag #TripOfALifetime, a reference to the original teaser tag heralding the Ninth Doctor’s (Christopher Eccleston) explosive arrival after the show’s nearly-decade-long absence from TV.
Like Moffat before him, Davies will mark the occasion by penning some new material to share with fans while they rewatch, as well as tweeting his own insights into the episode and making Doctor Who as it all unfolds. He doesn’t appear to have the twitter account up and running yet but we’ll update when we find out where he’s tweeting from.
Maybe you need something to do Thursday afternoon to idle away the time. Maybe you want to use this period of social distancing to finally get into Doctor Who! Maybe you just wanna rewatch Rose Tyler (Billie Piper) and the Doctor blow up apartment stores and fight hordes of plastic alien shop dummies. Whatever your reason, you can guarantee one thing at least—it’s gonna be fantastic.
Update 3/24 11.30am EST: Russell T. Davies has confirmed just exactly what the surprise material is—and while it’s not techinically new, it is to many, many people: an unreleased prequel to “Rose” originally made for Doctor Who’s 50th Anniversary celebrations in 2013, but ultimately never shown to the public.
Davies also confirmed there will be “more surprise to come,” so what else could be in store for Who fans could be a real treat.
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