Doctor Who moves to earliest timeslot yet to make room for David Attenborough documentary

Jodie Whittaker’s adventures are being shifted in the schedules for an upcoming episode

Published: Tuesday, 6 November 2018 at 1:52 pm

Jodie Whittaker’s first Doctor Who series will have its earliest timeslot yet for an upcoming story, with the Sunday 18th November episode Kerblam! set to air at 6.30pm.

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So far this year Doctor Who has tended to air at or around 7.00pm on Sunday nights, with a couple of episodes landing at 6.55pm and the series’ first episode (which was around 12 minutes longer than usual) kicking off at 6.45pm.

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But now the upcoming Pete McTighe-scripted episode Kerblam!, which guest stars Julie Hesmondhalgh and Lee Mack alongside regulars Whittaker, Tosin Cole, Mandip Gill and Bradley Walsh, appears to be being shifted earlier to make room for the new David Attenborough nature documentary Dynasties, which will air from 8.00pm-9.00pm on Sunday nights from the same night.

Previously, Doctor Who and the following Strictly Come Dancing results show ran up until 8.30pm to lead into the half-hour comedy Still Open all Hours, but the longer runtime of Dynasties seems to have necessitated a backward jump for both programmes.

In the current schedule for November 18th the seventh episode of Doctor Who begins at 6.30pm, followed by the Strictly Come Dancing results show at 7.20pm (shifted from the later time of 7.50pm in earlier weeks) until 8.00pm.

Dynasties will then run for an hour before The Little Drummer Girl continues as usual at 9.00pm.

And given that Dynasties is set to run for five weeks (and Strictly continues until mid-December) it seems likely that the remaining three Who episodes in the series will continue to air at about 6.30pm until the finale on 9th December.

In other words, then, it’s high time we all adjust our clocks for our Doctor Who alarms – because after this Sunday’s episode (Vinay Patel’s Demons of the Punjab, which airs at 7.00pm) we’re going to need to tune in a little earlier.

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Doctor Who continues on BBC1 on Sundays

Authors

Radio Times commissioning editor Huw Fullerton. He sits in front of a shelving unit, looking at the camera and smiling. He wears glasses and has a moustache

Huw FullertonCommissioning editor

Huw Fullerton is a commissioning editor for Radio Times magazine handling comedy, entertainment and specialist drama. In a previous regeneration, he covered all things sci-fi and fantasy for RadioTimes.com.

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