The Woman Who Fell to Earth

The last time viewers saw the Doctor, she was falling from her TARDIS so it’s about time for the Doctor to land. This time it’s all change, as Doctor Who is moving to Sunday nights, launching on Sunday 7 October.

Never before in the show’s history has an entire series descended to earth on a Sunday. This year marks a brand new era with a new Showrunner, a new Doctor, new friends and a whole host of new monsters – so it’s only fitting that the new Time Lord will land in a new time zone on BBC One.

Chris Chibnall, Showrunner, says: “New Doctor, new home! Jodie Whittaker’s Doctor is about to burst into Sunday nights – and make the end of the weekend so much more exciting. Get everybody’s homework done, sort out your Monday clothes, then grab some special Sunday night popcorn, and settle down with all of the family for Sunday night adventures across space and time. (Also, move the sofa away from the wall so parents can hide behind it during the scary bits). The Thirteenth Doctor is falling from the sky and it’s going to be a blast.”

Charlotte Moore, Director of BBC Content, says: “With Chris Chibnall at the helm and Jodie Whittaker’s arrival as the new Doctor we are heralding a brand new era for the show and so it feels only right to give it a new home on Sunday nights at the heart of BBC One’s Autumn schedule. ”

Showrunner Chris Chibnall has written the first episode of the brand new series which is titled The Woman Who Fell to Earth. With the Doctor on her way it’s only a matter of time before viewers can enjoy being transported out of this world this autumn.

Massive change has characterised the upcoming series of Doctor Who ever since it was first announced, from its exciting new Doctor (played by Jodie Whittaker as the first female incarnation of the Time Lord) and its diverse cast all the way down to the writers and other behind-the-scenes staff.

However, one more change has now been unveiled which may be the biggest yet – Doctor Who is leaving its traditional Saturday evening slot and moving to Sundays, with the new ten-part series set to kick off on Sunday 7th October.

“New Doctor, new home!” showrunner Chris Chibnall said of the move.

“Jodie Whittaker’s Doctor is about to burst into Sunday nights — and make the end of the weekend so much more exciting. Get everybody’s homework done, sort out your Monday clothes, then grab some special Sunday night popcorn, and settle down with all of the family for Sunday night adventures across space and time. (Also, move the sofa away from the wall so parents can hide behind it during the scary bits).

“The Thirteenth Doctor is falling from the sky and it’s going to be a blast.”

While a time slot change could be seen as a fairly minor alteration it can’t be overstated what a big shift this is for Doctor Who, which has run on Saturdays for more or less every episode (bar specials) since it returned to TV in 2005, making it a stalwart part of BBC1’s Saturday-night schedule for 13 years. As noted by the BBC, “never before in the show’s history has an entire series descended to earth on a Sunday”.

In fact, even during its classic series years (1963-1989) Doctor Who went out on Saturdays for decades, and only later began to move around the schedules (see below).

So why is it changing now? Well, in recent years there have been some clues that Doctor Who has been struggling on Saturday nights, where it was increasingly forced to compete with popular entertainment and reality TV programmes on other channels.

And on Saturday itself, Doctor Who was repeatedly shifted to different time slots, often even within the same series, in an attempt to accommodate other programmes (most prominently Strictly Come Dancing in 2015), sometimes leading to it airing at a much later time than audiences were used to.

“I feel it’s slightly used as a pawn in a Saturday night warfare,” former series star Peter Capaldi commented in 2015. “I feel as if it should go out at 7:30pm or around that time.”

“I see a lot of kids and a lot of families and these families who all love Doctor Who want to sit down and watch it together. I used to do that with my daughter when it came back so it has to be on at a time that’s reasonable for them to do that.”

Former showrunner Steven Moffat also partially blamed the series’ struggling ratings in recent years on such changes.

“I don’t think 8:25pm is brilliant for Doctor Who,” he said in 2015.

“I’m not blasting the BBC or getting cross or anything, but that’s not smart. I don’t think anyone thinks that’s smart. If there’s a slight, and it’s only a slight, drop off, it’s I think, that’s not where Doctor Who’s meant to be.”

So could a new Sunday-night time slot help alleviate these issues? Well, maybe. Sunday evening is certainly a more traditional night for drama with a more captive audience (people go out on Saturdays, but they stay in on Sundays, especially in the autumn/winter), and it would mean Who doesn’t have to contend with the vagaries of Strictly’s scheduling.

In fact, if Doctor Who followed the Strictly results show (which finishes around 8.00pm on Sundays) it might get a good lead-in of viewers from one of the biggest shows on TV. But perhaps more likely, it could run before Countryfile and Strictly at around 5:30pm, returning to its original teatime slot, while also recommitting to its core audience of children, for whom 8:00pm the night before school might be too late.

We understands that the BBC will be revealing the specific time slot closer to broadcast, so we’ll have more of an idea how it’ll fit into the established Sunday-night schedules then.

Of course, given the rise of catch-up and on-demand viewing, it arguably matters less what night of the week Doctor Who airs on, with younger fans having the option of watching the show as and when they please on BBC iPlayer.

And, as noted above, it’s not like the series hasn’t changed the day it airs at any point in its 55-year history. While classic Who did usually air on a Saturday, in the 1980s the adventures of Peter Davison’s Fifth Doctor were often shifted to weeknight slots, and the series managed to survive the change at the time.

Still, however the new time slot affects the ratings one thing’s for sure – this particular piece of time travel is a big new step for the Doctor.

Doctor Who returns to BBC1 on Sunday 7th October