It is a good sign, surely, that Doctor Who and his new time-travelling companion seem to get along. When we enter the room to interview Ncuti Gatwa and Varada Sethu in New York, they are in fits of laughter. It is the back end of a conversation about their mothers washing dishes.

And if that tells us next to nothing about the new season of Doctor Who, it does tell us that numbers one and two on the call sheet – still crying with laughter – have developed a rapport.

“Chemistry was inbuilt with us,” Gatwa says. “Because we’d broken the ice with Boom.” This is a reference to the third episode of the last season, the 14th since the series was revived in 2005, in which Sethu made a guest appearance as a solider called Mundy Flynn. It went so well that this time she’s been invited back and given top billing, with a character called Belinda Chandra who is connected to Mundy in ways that (in typical Doctor Who style) shall come to be revealed.

Loading

Are we witnessing another case of spatial genetic multiplicity, fans will ask? Or was it just that Gatwa and Sethu liked each other?

“It was the perfect balance for me,” says Sethu, once she’s stopped laughing about washing dishes. “Because I didn’t have any of the anxiety that I, 100 per cent would have had, if I was just told I was going to be the companion and I’d never met Ncuti before.”

As it is, Sethu flies into the role of Belinda, a hard-working nurse who many years ago had a star named after her as a gift from a then-boyfriend, and pulls it off with aplomb: this is a different kind of Doctor’s companion, as much an antagonist and dissenter as a loyal lackey.

“She is a companion who doesn’t want to be a companion,” Sethu says. “The whole season is about how she wants to go home – she doesn’t want to be involved in his world. I think she’s a very astute woman who can read people very well and isn’t afraid to hold them to account. That’s what she brings to the Tardis: she’s not afraid to call the Doctor out on when he crosses a boundary and say, ‘I think you’re dangerous. And I don’t want to be part of the sport.’”

Loading

Certainly in the first episode of the new run, in which robots kidnap Belinda and the Doctor flies in to bring her back to Earth, the two of them are a partnership of equals.

“What we normally see is the Doctor and his companion going into space, the companion willingly and starry eyed, following the Doctor wherever he goes,” Gatwa says.

This time they have to put their heads together to try to figure out how to get a distinctly unamused Belinda back to Earth in time for her next shift.

“Within that, the Doctor has to release so much ego and control,” says Gatwa, who points out that his Doctor is all about ego and control. “It’s a very humbling yet enriching relationship for him, and they have to get really vulnerable with each other, and just sort of, what’s the word … relinquish themselves to the situation that they have no power in, either of them. So it’s very interesting ground to play, and I don’t think we’ve seen that dynamic before.”

It won’t have escaped your notice that this is a storyline about equality and mutual understanding, so it fits in with Doctor Who’s tenor ever since writer Russell T. Davies took back the reins to the series he revived (and made good again) in 2005.

Davies never passes up an opportunity to promote inclusivity and a progressive agenda, despite criticism in the UK where the series is filmed that it has become too “woke”. (Doctor Who celebrated its 60th anniversary in 2023, when some viewers criticised its introduction of transgender and non-binary characters, as well as a scene in which David Tennant’s Doctor realised he had a crush on Sir Isaac Newton.)

Loading

“I love it,” says Sethu, who has already noted that the Tardis will now be occupied entirely by people of colour for the first time. “I relish the opportunity to challenge things that should be challenged.”

Gatwa adds: “That’s what you want as an actor. Intelligent scripts that will challenge our minds and hopefully make people think about things. He [Davies] does sprinkle all these themes into his scripts, but humour or drama is always the vehicle by which we get that message. There’s always a very interesting way that the message is delivered.”

They both highlight a plot strand from the first episode that looks at toxic masculinity.

“It’s addressed in a metaphor,” Gatwa says. “But the metaphor is comical. So the reveal is like, ‘LOL!’ but it’s also tragic. It allows people to think about things.”

Of course, if Doctor Who was just messaging and metaphors, it would alienate its younger audience at a stroke. Now that it’s part of the Disney+ empire it needs to appeal to a global audience of all ages and creeds. Sethu has also starred in Disney’s Andor – part of the Star Wars universe – so she knows what obsessive fandom feels like.

“I learnt the hard way through Andor how to deal with the pressure,” she says. “There’s a way of taking that love, the fandom, as support, as something that uplifts you, instead of it feeling like a pressure that weighs down on you.”

With Disney money behind both productions, the sets and props were stunning, Sethu says. “It was all there in front of you. It’s very easy to play as an actor opposite a giant robot, if the robot’s actually there.”

Gatwa adds: “It’s so exciting that Disney’s on board with Doctor Who. The scripts that Russell writes are so huge and crazy and wild – as they should be, for a show that’s set in time and space – and now we can really bring them to life.”

And they intend to do it together, the Doctor and Belinda, one hand each on the tiller of the Tardis.

Doctor Who is now streaming on Disney+.

Find out the next TV, streaming series and movies to add to your must-sees. Get The Watchlist delivered every Thursday.