An upcoming episode of Doctor Who is set to feature The Beatles… but with absolutely none of the 1960s band’s iconic songs.
However, there’s an important reason why Whovians won’t be jamming along to Yellow Submarine or Let It Be when they tune in to watch.
In mere days, the Fifteenth Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa) and new companion Ruby Sunday (Millie Gibson) will reunite for season 14 of the BBC series, which is helmed by returning showrunner Russell T Davies.
Metro.co.uk recently attended the London premiere of the next outing, where the golden trio spoke about the first two episodes – Space Babies and The Devil’s Chord.
When asked during a Q&A where the inspirations for the instalments came from, Russell, 61, began by explaining that when it came to Space Babies, he ‘must have seen something about baby farms, and just thought what if a baby farm was run by babies’.
As for The Devil’s Chord – which stars four actors as the legendary Beatles – the idea came from a friend who said that if he had the power to travel in the Tardis, he’d want to meet the group.
‘With the Beatles, I can pin that down a bit more clearly, because a friend of mine, a director called Sam Arbor. He said, “If I had the Tardis, I’d go back and meet the Beatles,”’ Russell recalled.
‘And I thought, “Well that’s a good idea.”’
However, including the Beatles in the story meant having to overcome a big obstacle.
The It’s A Sin creator continued: ‘But at the same time, I knew that the Beatles music was so expensive under copyright, even with the Disney budget, we couldn’t afford that. You literally can’t afford to do it.’
At the London premiere of season 14 of Doctor Who – which is also being referred to as ‘season one’, after Disney Plus acquired the series for international distribution – Ncuti, 31, and Millie, 19, opened up about working with another new companion for season 15.
That mystery companion will be played by Andor actress Varada Sethu, 31, who will ‘save the universe’ with the duo in the ‘hottest’ adventure, they teased.
It was previously rumoured that former Coronation Street star Millie had been dropped from Doctor Who, before it was confirmed that she would definitely be appearing in at least two seasons.
Russell told Metro.co.uk how ‘tricky’ it can be to field axe rumours and supposed script leaks in today’s day and age, when speculation is rife on social media.
‘It’s tricky because you can’t answer online rumours. Sometimes they’re lies, sometimes they’re true. Sometimes they’re false, sometimes they’re just exaggerations,’ he stated.
‘You cannot answer them all – by the time you’ve answered one rumour, it’s gone and mutated, and actually then you discover you’re actually answering someone in Saskatchewan with 79 followers. It’s what you thought was a rumour was just someone making it up in their shed. So you can’t, you simply can’t.’
The writer added that Doctor Who is a ‘victim of its own success’, and the rumours can be ‘rough’ on the cast.
‘When you watch the show, all that nonsense goes away, it falls away. That’s not what Doctor Who is about. All our lives are not about that underlying voice – we think it is, we fall into the trap of thinking whatever is being said online is our life. It’s not,’ he added.
The new season of Doctor Who premieres on May 11 on BBC One and BBC iPlayer.
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