Doctor Who fans got some bad news earlier this year when news broke that no new episodes would air in 2019 beyond a New Year's special, which was especially disappointing given the reactions to Jodie Whittaker as the latest Doctor. The good news is that the New Year's special promises to pack in an epic adventure featuring one of Doctor Who's most iconic villains: the Daleks. Take a look at a new promo for the upcoming episode:
Now, most of the trailer's content is content fans have seen before if they watched an earlier preview for the New Year's special, called "Resolution." Viewers already saw the Doctor refer to the DNA of the "most dangerous creature in the universe." The new twist and tease for the Daleks comes after the trailer shifted to the Doctor Who title card, when the unmistakable voice of a Dalek says "Exterminate." Anybody else get chills?
Unless Doctor Who is using this latest preview to misdirect fans (in what would be a rather unkind move considering that this would be the last episode for at least a year), the Daleks -- or at least a Dalek -- will menace the Doctor and Co. in the New Year's special. The episode will fittingly take place as the new year begins in the Doctor Who universe. Unsurprisingly, the Doctor and her friends will kick off their new year with a frightening adventure through time.
The description for "Resolution" reveals that a terrifying evil has begun stirring from across the centuries of Earth's history, and it will fall to the Doctor and her friends to try and overcome the dire threat to Earth. An earlier trailer for the special elaborated, revealing that the threat is a creature once buried in the 9th century. Once free, the Doctor states that it's going to kill anyone that gets in its path of taking over the planet.
Basically, what we knew of "Resolution" even before the latest trailer already pointed to one of the Doctor's most iconic villains, and what manner of creature other than a Dalek could really wreak that much havoc on its own? Longtime fans of Classic Doctor Who have a lot of experience with what the Daleks can do, and even those who only discovered the show with the 2005 revival learned quite early on of the danger posed by a single Dalek.
Assuming a Dalek does appear in "Resolution," it will mark the first appearance of the species in the Jodie Whittaker/Chris Chibnall era of Doctor Who. It would be interesting to see how the Doctor's archenemies are treated under Chibnall as showrunner. They were certainly handled differently under Steven Moffat after the departure of original revival showrunner Russell T. Davies.
Find out when the New Year's Day special kicks off on Tuesday, January 1 at 8 p.m. ET on BBC America. It will be the first and only installment of the time travel series in 2019, so swing by our 2019 midseason TV premiere schedule for some viewing options in the not-too-distant future.
