
Next Saturday,
Doctor Who returns to Disney Plus with all new episodes when the Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa) first meets Belinda Chandra (Varada Sethu) after she is kidnapped by robots from outer space. The Doctor starts his journey to return her to Earth in his TARDIS, only to be stopped by a mysterious force. The two will face new dangers and bigger enemies than ever before.
A new companion means that the dynamic between the main characters is going to be quite different as they are trying to return to earth, according to Gatwa and Sethu who spoke with SciFi Vision recently. “For one, this season, we're trying to get back to Earth, which is like a deviation from the usual direction, trying to get out into space and tackle things, but Belinda has absolutely no interest and is not charmed at all by the Doctor at first,” explained Gatwa. “The Doctor lives a very dangerous life. It’s great. We love the Doctor. He's also very dangerous.”
“The bond…I guess it takes a little longer,” he continued. “It's slower, but it's just as deep as any that there's been, maybe more so. The payoff is that they really value each other, and they value each other's value systems. But yeah, she challenges him and calls him out.”
“They're very much equals,” Sethu told SciFi Vision. “They're a team figuring out how to get back home, because she decides she's got very much her own life, her own plot, her own main character journey. And when she gets plucked out of that by the Doctor, in some ways, all she wants is to go home. She doesn't want to be somebody else's little adventure. She wants to go back to her life.”
“So, she challenges him; she holds him accountable, and eventually, they become very aligned,” Sethu added. “They realize that they need to work together to be this team, to get back to earth, to get back to where she wants to be. So, yeah, they have a really, really strong, equal [partnership].”