On Halloween night, the long-running BBC series Doctor Who will return for the premiere of Season 13. Due to a production that was altered due to the coronavirus pandemic, this new season, subtitled Flux, will consist of only six episodes, offering a new, serialized format for the 58-year old series. Indeed, Doctor Who: Flux will tell one overarching story on a massive scale, according to the recently-released trailer.
Now, it’s been a long time since the Doctor and her companions have graced our television screens. In fact, it has been nearly two years since the conclusion of Season 12, and the series’ last episode, the New Year’s special “Revolution of the Daleks,” aired on Jan. 1, 2021. Therefore, it’s possible that fans find themselves in need of a refresher on everything that happened before Doctor Who: Flux begins. Here’s a rundown of the major developments that took place in Season 12.
The Master Returns
In Season 12 of Doctor Who, the Thirteenth Doctor and her companions, Graham, Yaz and Ryan continued their travels across time and space. But while Season 11 saw the quartet face nothing but new threats and enemies, Season 12 kicked things off differently by featuring the return of the Doctor’s worst enemy: the Master, who had gone through a new regeneration. The Master revealed to the Doctor that he had learned a great, terrible truth about the Time Lords, something that infuriated him to the point of destroying Gallifrey itself. However, that truth would remain a mystery a while longer.
Throughout her travels with Graham, Yaz and Ryan, the Doctor then came across a woman played by Jo Martin, who would ultimately be revealed as another, past version of the Doctor. This iteration of the Time Lord, dubbed the Fugitive Doctor, was wanted by the Judoon, but she would eventually escape in her TARDIS — and the Thirteenth Doctor would be left with nothing but questions.
The Timeless Child Revealed
The answers would finally come in the Season 12 finale. After the Master once again returned, the Doctor learned that she was the Timeless Child, a person who arrived in this universe from a mysterious vortex a very, very long time ago. This child was found and studied by those who would eventually come to call themselves the Time Lords, who replicated the child’s ability to regenerate and took it for themselves. Upon this revelation, the Doctor discovered that she was much, much older than she ever knew and that she had countless regenerations before the thirteen versions she knew about. What’s more, all of those previous lives had been kept from her by the Division, a mysterious group of Time Lords.
Once the Master was once again defeated, a group of Judoon found the Doctor in her TARDIS, and they arrested her for her crimes as a fugitive. As Season 12 came to a close, Graham, Yaz and Ryan were left alone on Earth, while the Doctor was locked up in a maximum-security prison in deep space.
The Doctor in Prison
In the New Year’s special “Revolution of the Daleks,” the Doctor served her sentence for years. Although she was imprisoned, she kept her spirits up as much as she could, but the truth she learned about the Timeless Child also had a deep effect on her. Thankfully, her time in prison was cut short thanks to the return of an old friend: Captain Jack Harkness, who broke the Doctor out. Together, the duo then traveled to present-day Earth, to find that the Doctor’s companions, Graham, Yaz and Ryan were all dealing with an invasion of Daleks.
The Doctor and Jack joined the battle, and together, they defeated the alien invaders. However, sorrow was in store for the Doctor once the crisis was over. While she intended to return the moment she had left her friends, her companions had actually spent a considerable amount of time on their own. While she was ready to head back out into the universe with her entire fam, Ryan and Graham were ready to let the Doctor go and remain on Earth, where they belonged.
As the season came to a close, the Doctor bade her friends a bittersweet farewell, and she and Yaz got ready for more adventures across space and time. But while they headed out as a duo, they were soon bound to become a trio, as the series teased the arrival of the Doctor’s next companion, Dan. In Season 13, Dan is set to join the Doctor and Yaz for an adventure unlike any other.
To see what happens to the Thirteenth Doctor in Season 13, catch Doctor Who: Flux on BBC America starting Oct. 31.
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