Doctor Who lives many lives. No, not just the convenient regenerations that allow the BBC to cast a new actor whenever someone leaves the role, but lives lived across a plethora of media platforms including TV, comics, audio, and books. The BBC is taking advantage of this once again and has announced a huge crossover event called Doctor Who: Doom’s Day, which will tell one 24-hour story across every medium that Doctor Who appears on.
The series will focus, it seems, not on the Doctor themselves but on a character named Doom, played by stand-up comedian, comedy sketch artist, and actor Sooz Kempner (pictured at bottom). Doom is the universe’s best assassin, but Death is coming for her and she only has 24 hours (and a vortex manipulator) to find the Doctor, who is the only person that can save her. It sounds like this might be a “Doctor Light” adventure, where the focus will be more on Doom encountering characters from the 60 years of Doctor Who history as she searches time for the Timelord.
“DOOM’S DAY is a huge new adventure for the whole Doctor Who universe – starring the brilliant and hilarious Sooz Kempner as an intergalactic assassin,” said Doctor Who‘s returning showrunner Russel T. Davies. “Her adventures will span comics, audio, a novel, video games stories, and more, expanding the world of Doctor Who into brand new territories. Beware the Doom’s Day, it’s coming for us all.”
Doom’s Day will play out across a myriad of platforms, kicking off on Doctor Who‘s digital channels later this year (probably meaning shorts or even full-length shows online) and then jumping over to the other Doctor Who producers: Doctor Who Magazine (short stories), Titan Comics (comic books), Penguin Random House (novels), East Side Games (video games), and Big Finish and BBC Audio (audio adventures). Each bit of content will tell an hour of Doom’s story, leading up to a 24-hour adventure of cosmic proportions.
This isn’t the first time that Doctor Who has attempted something like this. Back in 2020, we received Time Lord Victorious, which told a whole story across all of the franchise’s platforms as well. It was an interesting attempt at pulling everything together but never truly felt cohesive. However, with the lessons learned from that and a singular central character in a story told over a finite amount of time, this could be pulled off much better. Let’s also remember that Davies is keen to expand the Doctor Who universe after the BBC joined forces with Disney, and things like this help him do that.
