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David Tennant as the Tenth Doctor and Billie Piper as Rose Tyler

Mar 30, 2013 By Mark Redfern Doctor Who

This year Doctor Who is celebrating its 50th anniversary. The first episode of the long-running sci-fi show first aired in November 1963. It has long been speculated that the BBC would do something special to honor the anniversary and it’s just been confirmed that later this year (probably in November) there will be a special 50th anniversary episode that sees the return of David Tennant as the Tenth Doctor and Billie Piper as his companion Rose Tyler. They will star alongside the current (and Eleventh) Doctor (played by Matt Smith) and his new companion Clara Osward (played by Jenna-Louise Coleman). Legendary actor John Hurt (Alien, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy) will guest star.

This isn’t exactly surprising news, it’s been long expected that at least one of the former Doctors would return for the 50th anniversary. For the 10th anniversary in 1973 the first three Doctors came together for The Three Doctors and for 1983’s 20th anniversary special The Five Doctors the first five Doctors united (although, William Hartnell, who played the First Doctor, was dead and was replaced by Richard Hurndall, and Tom Baker, who played the Fourth Doctor, refused to appear and so they had to use footage of him from an earlier unaired abandoned episode). The Doctor is a time and space traveling alien Time Lord who doesn’t die, but Regenerates into a new body and personality when he is mortally wounded (thus allowing the producers to cast a new actor in the role).

This is the first time since the show’s relaunch in 2005 that more than one Doctor has met each other. Smart money would say that Tennant is really playing the duplicate of the Tenth Doctor, who was last found living out his years with Rose Tyler in an alternate universe, but it’s still Tennant and the Tenth Doctor all the same. Diehard fans have no doubt dreamed that the producers would have also found a way to bring back the Ninth Doctor (Christopher Ecclelston) and the Eighth Doctor (Paul McGann), although Eccleston never embraced the role and all the sci-fi fandom that comes with it as much as Tennant did and McGann only played the role once, in 1996’s TV movie for FOX (an ill-fated TV pilot for a relaunch then that never happened). Also still alive are the actors who played the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh Doctors in the classic series, but all are a bit too old to convincingly still play the Doctor without some timey wimey explanation for why they have aged so much.

Doctor Who‘s seventh season (since the relaunch) resumes tonight on BBC America at 8 PM/7 central, after a hiatus since December’s Christmas special. The episode is titled The Bells of Saint John and hopefully we’ll find out more about the mysterious Clara Osward.

Check out our 2009 interview with David Tennant here.

Here’s a trailer for the rest of season seven: