Earlier this week the BBC released a trailer for the sixth season of Doctor Who. Doctor Who has over the years become something of a cultural touchstone in the United Kingdom and as such all the BBC needed to do was declare the existence of a sixth season to get us Brits excited. Over in the US though Doctor Who doesn’t have quite the cultural cache and as such BBC America pulled together something a little different. It is striking comparing the two approaches, the British trailer revelling in new Doctor Who whilst the American trailer has to set up the concept of the show. It’s also amusingly American centric.
Doctor Who Season Six starts on BBC1 and BBC America on the 23rd April 2011 and opens with the Doctor and his companions Amy and Rory visiting America in the 1960s. From the looks of things the episode will take the Doctor and company from Washington D.C. to New Mexico and should hopefully be all kinds of fantastic. Stephen Moffat has done sterling work ever since he took over as show runner on Doctor Who last year and these trailers showcase the Sci-Fi Fairytale style the show has adopted whilst under him.
I’m a massive geek for Doctor Who and as such both trailers have got me amazingly excited for what’s to come. With pirates, alien cities, creepy aliens in the White House, sad clowns, Lily Cole, and what looks like a Minotaur it feels like season six might be even better than the previous seasons. But even without those great distractions the prospect of another season in the company of Matt Smith’s Eleventh Doctor is more than enough to get excited about. Smith won me over from his first episode and he has gone from strength to the strength in each episode and in doing so he has perfectly encapsulated the Doctor as a hero who triumphs with intellect and romance over brute force and cynicism.
Season Six is due to be split into two chunks, with seven episodes running from April and six episodes running later in the autumn. The sixth season has episodes written by Who veterans such as Toby Whithouse, Mark Gatiss and Gareth Roberts and newcomers like Neil Gaiman and looks like it has a lot of potential. Chud is going to be running Tag-Team reviews of the new episodes as they air but for now enjoy the trailers and the collected screenshots below. Click to expand.
