When should Doctor Who season 11 announce Thirteenth Doctor?

If you wander around through the British press these days, odds are that you’ll see Doctor Who season 11 rumors by the truckload. They’re tempting to write about and discuss — admittedly, we’ve done a lot of it. We love the fact that there is discussion about the Thirteenth Doctor so early on, but the reality is that talking about it seriously gets us nowhere.

There is no favorite to play the character yet. There may not be any discussion, either. This is a part that is still so far down the road that it’s difficult to telegraph. The only thing that we can say is that the odds are fairly high that most of the names being discussed at present won’t actually get the role. How do you know for sure that these people are going to be available? You don’t, and that is something that you have to be aware of.

The question that we’re more curious about right now is a question of when the next Doctor is going to be cast. If we were to fathom a guess, it would be over the summer. It’s not altogether productive for the BBC to make a casting announcement during the tenth season airing. After all, it could serve as a distraction to everything that is going on with the show itself, and you don’t want to do anything to stray all that far from the story happening onscreen.

Now that we’ve said that, the better timing for such a reveal could be when we get around to the finale. It’s okay to announce the next Doctor before the Christmas Special — after all, that makes the most sense, given that you probably are going to have a regeneration take place during that episode. You want to give viewers some time to prepare, and also some time to drum up some further excitement. We actually rather enjoyed the way the news was announced last time with a separate interview special; hopefully, this is considered again.

Want to get some further news when it comes to Doctor Who? Then we suggest that you head over to the link here right now. (Photo: BBC.)