The Timeless Child revelations will be followed up in Doctor Who series 13, Matt Strevens teases.

Get ready for some fallout, Doctor Who fans! Jodie Whittaker’s Doctor will revisit some loose ends from the ‘Timeless Child’ reveal in the soon-to-launch Doctor Who series 13. Or at least, that’s what executive producer Matt Strevens seems to have implied in a new interview shared by the BBC.

Fans of the show will recall the Doctor Who series 12 centrepiece in which Whittaker’s Time Lord discovered several big secrets about herself – she was the first Time Lord ever (known as The Timeless Child), the entire Time Lord race was genetically altered using her DNA, and she has lived countless lives that she can’t remember.

Although he didn’t give much in the way of clues, Strevens said in the new interview that Doctor Who series 13 “picks up on a lot of the things the Doctor learned about herself and her history at the end of series 12.”

Viewers will be glad to hear that those huge revelations will have some sort of consequences, and it’ll be interesting to see if Jo Martin’s Fugitive Doctor – one of those secret regenerations that we just learned about – will reappear with any new insights.

Saying what he is willing to divulge about the new series, Strevens added:

“I can honestly say it’s not like the previous two series. It’s huge in its scope and its scale and the jeopardy.

“Also we’ve really tried to go as big as could with the visuals as well, in terms of CGI and in terms of the design of the series, we really tried to pull out all the stops so when you watch the show, whether it’s in five years’ time or whenever, no one will be able to say, ‘You made that during a pandemic!’ We didn’t want that to impact on the experience for the audience.”

Strevens also explained how the new series, which will run for six episodes, came together during development. He said,

“Series 13 evolved quite late in the day, we had a plan for what we wanted to do and then the pandemic hit and what we realised was that there were certain things we wouldn’t be able to do in the normal way, as we had for series 11 and 12.

“So rather than be compromised – as what you want for Doctor Who is for every series to be bigger and better than the last, you don’t want to rest on your laurels – Chris [Chibnall, showrunner] came up with the brilliant idea of going, ‘Why don’t we just do something different for our era, wouldn’t it be great if we told one big story?’ We knew we wouldn’t be able to do the same number of episodes in the time that we had so he came up with the fantastic idea of this overarching narrative.

“Each episode has the same bang for its buck, each episode has the story of the week, we’ve still gone for that filmic quality for each episode, but much more than the previous two seasons we’ve tied it together with a massive overarching story for the Doctor and huge jeopardy for the Doctor.” We look forward to seeing how it plays out for The Timeless Child.

Doctor Who: Flux begins on BBC One at 6:25pm on Sunday 31st October 2021.

I can’t wait for the audience to come on the Flux ride with us. It’s our biggest adventure yet with so many brilliant new characters to fall in love with. We had a blast making it.

Doctor Who fans finally have a date for the return of the long-running sci-fi series, with Jodie Whittaker’s Doctor now confirmed to make her comeback on a spookily auspicious Sunday: 31st October, AKA Halloween.

Specifically, the first episode of Doctor Who series 13 will air on that Sunday, followed by new episodes on the five Sundays following, through to the finale on 5th December. And while this six-episode sprint is a shorter run than usual fans won’t have long to wait for more, with a festive special expected less than a month later around New Year’s Day.

This in turn will be followed by two more specials in the spring and then the autumn for the BBC’s centenary – altogether, rather a lot of Doctor Who to look forward to in the next year, even before the newly-announced return of ex-showrunner Russell T Davies in 2023.

The news was revealed in a new trail for series 13, which also revealed a special subtitle for this serialised series – Flux – on BBC One shortly before the latest episode of Strictly Come Dancing.

It’s currently unknown whether the choice of Halloween for series 13’s premiere has any particular significance. Doctor Who has occasionally dropped slightly scarier episodes around that time (for example, the Waters of Mars special in 2009) and we know at least some terrifying old monsters (including The Weeping Angels) are making a comeback for the new series.

However, it seems less likely that an explicitly scary episode would be used as the opener for a series, so it might be that the air date is more of a coincidence. Or the episode could be set on Halloween (fans had spotted some carved pumpkins on set during filming last year), and have a story that isn’t necessarily spooky all the way through.

Still, however much sofa-hiding they’ll need to plan for, we’d say fans will be glad to finally mark their calendars for their reunion with the Doctor and Yaz (Mandip Gill) and their first meeting with newcomer Dan (John Bishop). Not long to wait now.

Doctor Who returns to BBC One on Sunday 31st October.