A star named after you! In the real world, it’s something your well-meaning but wacky friend gives you when they’re stuck for a birthday gift. There’s a lovely, warm moment between you as you both pretend they haven’t just spent £40 on a piece of A4 with an obviously legally unenforceable promise laser-printed on it. But … what if? What if those certificates were real? What if the star has evolved into a civilised planet? What if you are its rightful ruler?
Under the aegis of veteran TV hitmaker Russell T Davies, Doctor Who is good at finding the sort of simple fantasies that will make its younger viewers’ eyes widen. As it begins season 41 (season 15 if you restart the clock with the BBC’s 2005 revival; season two if you consider it to be a different show after Disney’s buy-in last year), the name on the star is Belinda Chandra, a Brit who was once given a present by a soon-forgotten teen boyfriend. Sixteen years later, robots with laser guns crash through the patio doors of her house, proclaiming her to be their queen before bundling her into a rocket. In pursuit is intergalactic nomad the Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa), who has sensed that Belinda’s real destiny is to be his companion on the impossible spaceship he calls the Tardis, roaming time and space.
