Doctor Who Season 11 Made Up Of Standalone Episodes, Christmas Special Confirmed

The secrecy surrounding Doctor Who‘s upcoming eleventh season is so tight that we haven’t even had a clear picture of the structure of the run yet. It’d previously been revealed that season 11 would consist of 9 episodes of 50 minutes each and a season opener at the special length of 65 minutes. However, whether the episodes would be made up of several sets of two-parters or even one long serialized storyline was not known.

Thanks to a press conference at San Diego Comic-Con, though, we can finally tell you the format of season 11. Showrunner Chris Chibnall revealed to Digital Spy that each of the 10 episodes will be standalone, meaning there won’t be any of the traditional two-parter storylines. He explained that this approach was taken in order to make sure there was a “range and variety” to the storytelling.

“It’s 10 standalone episodes, there’s no two-parters or anything like that. What we want is for people to feel like we’ve got the range and variety of Doctor Who this year. So if you’ve never seen it before, you’re gonna fall in love with it, and if you have seen it, you’re gonna get those things that you love about the show across the 10 episodes.”

The other big question fans had about season 11 was whether or not there would be the annual Christmas special. It’s been a fixture of the festive season for 13 years now, but there was worryingly no mention of an additional winter episode in the initial press release. Thankfully, Chibnall was on hand to assure fans that there would be one, teasing us by saying: “We seem to be filming 11 episodes, and it’s only a series of 10.”

His co-executive producer Matt Strevens then continued the joke, adding:

“I don’t know what happened. It’s a show about space and time, so it’s all quite abstract. I would definitely think there’s another episode after the end of the series, yeah.”

It’s unknown why the producers are playing so coy about the special, but at least we now know it’s definitely on the way. As for the announcement that season 11 will be all standalone episodes, that may well disappoint fans of multi-part storylines that allow for more in-depth plots, but you can’t deny that it better fits Chibnall’s desire to focus on the breadth of what Doctor Who can do.