Showrunner and writer, Russell T Davies, has revealed the reason new companion, Belinda Chandra (Varada Sethu), is kidnapped in The Robot Revolution, the opening episode of Doctor Who Series 15 — and it feels like an interesting variation on a notion from Series 2!

In the latest issue of Doctor Who Magazine, Davies says the episode is set 17 years after Belinda’s ex named a star after her as a gift. Now, robots on a planet orbiting said star come to London to take her back to what they consider as her “home”. He explains:

“They really think she’s their queen. Which is so mad, you have to make the robots mad, too! And the maddest thing of all is the AI Generator, who wants to marry her! Poor Belinda.”

This does sound similar to the central notion behind The Girl in the Fireplace, in which clockwork droids thought only the head of Madame de Pompadour would work to fix their ship, the SS Madame de Pompadour. Robots making mistakes is a common theme in Doctor Who, of course, and no idea is ever really new, so fair enough that Davies is featuring this as a conceit again.

And it’s very timely, seeing as AI is often in the news. Oh, and I hate it, at least in creative pursuits.

Elsewhere, in SFX, Russell says the Fifteenth Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa) aims to get Belinda back “to a very specific date”, and concludes:

“That’ll make sense once you watch the whole season.”

Presumably, this date, as teased in the brief snippets seen on the BBC so far, is 24th May 2025, the date Wish World is due to air, the first of a two-part concluding story for the season. This is likely when the universe blows up or similar, given those teasers also show destroyed monuments from across the world.

Doctor Who Series 15 begins on 12th April 2025.