Doctor Who season 11 is going to be a completely new beginning for the sci-fi series in many ways. Not only is it the first outing to star Jodie Whittaker as the Thirteenth Doctor, but it also marks the start of new showrunner Chris Chibnall’s era and will see the usual format revamped. Instead of 12, 45 minute episodes, season 11 will consist of 10, 50 minute episodes.
Those additional five minutes should be a useful bit of extra room for the stories to breathe, and that runtime is clearly flexible as the first episode of the season has been confirmed to be an hour long. However, this new format does sadly mean that we’ll have less Doctor Who in terms of hours of television. Or at least, that’s what we thought.
A new report has surfaced this week that suggest there might be even more time travel adventures coming our way than we expected. As part of industry publication Toy World Magazine, an official advert (as seen on page 69) from BBC Worldwide about upcoming tie-in merchandise for the series teases “more than 11 hours of new content in Autumn 2018.”
If you do the math, you’ll realize that the whole of season 11 only equates to about 8 and 1/2 hours, which leaves 2 and 1/2 half hours unaccounted for. Obviously, you can probably add the annual hour long Christmas special to that total, but there’s still 1 and 1/2 half hours left to pin down.
Could there maybe be an extra episode of season 11 then, that the BBC is keeping a secret? Potentially. It’s also possible that the format of the series has been reworked somewhat. Perhaps some more money has been thrown at the show, meaning one more episode can be produced?
The rest of the excess time could be explained by an extended season finale. Or perhaps some exclusive online content such as mini-episodes or behind-the-scenes featurettes. Both of those have been popular in the past, so we’d think they’re a safe bet.
Unfortunately, all we know for sure right now is that Doctor Who season 11 is due to materialize this Autumn, but as always, we’ll be sure to let you know once we learn more.