Lois Hannon and Adam Kendrick read through predictions for Series 14 submitted by members of the Oxford Doctor Who Society ahead of broadcast.

The Church on Ruby Road heralded the start of Doctor Who’s fourteenth series (or Season One as it was officially billed), introducing us to the Fifteenth Doctor’s first companion, 19-year-old musician and adoptee Ruby Sunday, and building to a climax depicting the mysterious circumstances of her abandonment as a baby. Immediately after airing on Christmas Day, a flurry of speculation and theories materialised from the fandom. Who were Ruby Sunday’s mother and Mrs. Flood? Which classic monsters would make their return? And why was Susan Twist playing multiple characters across different episodes? To find out what the Oxford Doctor Who Society thought, we invited members to submit their predictions, no matter how silly or serious, with little more than episode titles, official synopses, and trailers to go on. Would anyone successfully guess what Russell T Davies had planned for Ncuti Gatwa and Mille Gibson’s first series? And would any joke suggestions turn out to be accidentally prophetic?

With regards to the tone of Series 14, one member suggested that “Russell’s sense of Doctor Who as fun will override the threat and horror beloved of fans in the Hinchcliffe, Holmes, or indeed Moffat traditions, though I suspect that after the opening episodes, we’ll get some darker tales.” Another member correctly surmised that the Timeless Child storyline which had been introduced by Chris Chibnall would be further built upon, although “probably not in an obvious way.” As for the main villain, one member successfully hedged their bets by predicting that there would either be no returning villains at all or they would be semi-obscure at the very least, suggesting that appearances from either Fenric or Sutekh were more likely than the Daleks. Another member suggested that that the One Who Waits, to whom both the Toymaker and Maestro alluded, would be Omega (from The Three Doctors and Arc of Infinity), mentioning how he spent millennia isolated in a different universe and that his role as father of Time Lord society could tie into the series’ central theme of adoption and family. Finally, one member declared that we wouldn’t find out who the Boss (the Meep’s apparent employer from The Star Beast) was until next series and that the fandom would waste time trying to connect him to the actual villains of Series 14. [Personally, my money’s on the Boss being either the computer from The Green Death or Bruce Springsteen. – Ed.]

With her mother’s identity shrouded in mystery, speculation over Ruby’s parentage ran wild and rampant. Some guesses were purposefully frivolous, such as Ruby’s mother being the cloaked woman who appears in the advertising campaigns for Scottish Widows, but one person speculated that Ruby might have been created by combining the genes of several hundred people, thus thwarting Davina McCall’s attempts to locate her mother via DNA analysis. Other suggestions cued into Russell’s willingness to re-introduce elements from Classic and New Who, with guesses for Ruby’s true identity ranging from a reincarnation of Azal (from The Daemons), Kronos (from The Time Monster), the daughter of the Master and Queen Galleia (also from The Time Monster), Lucy Saxon (from The Sounds of Drums/Last of the Time Lords), and a creation of the Trickster (from The Sarah Jane Adventures).

Susan Twist made her first appearance as Isaac Newton’s inconspicuous housemaid Mrs Merridew in Wild Blue Yonder and continued to make numerous cameo appearances throughout the series, culminating with Susan Triad in the series finale. One member suggested somewhat cynically that her frequent appearances were being made “just for the fun of it” or to break a new record. Another member correctly predicted that Sutekh would return and that he would misuse Susan Triad to “wreak havoc”, although they did also claim that “the unlikely saviour of All of Time and Space” would be Susan herself rather than the Doctor. Less seriously, a different scenario was pitched wherein Susan Triad reveals she has “contracted her soul to an eldritch entity who wants nothing but soup”, with the cliffhanger comprising of the Doctor looking on in despair as Evil Dan (the fandom-created counterpart to previous companion, Dan Lewis) emerges from the void with a hearty “Ha-hoh!”

Contrary to one member’s prediction that she would only appear in The Church on Ruby Road as an audience viewpoint character, the enigmatic and fourth-wall breaking Mrs. Flood made subsequent appearances in 73 Yards and The Legend of Ruby Sunday/Empire of Death. Unsurprisingly, there were suggestions that she could herself be a Time Lord, with one member parodying the Saxon Master’s big reveal in World Enough and Time by suggesting that disguises would be “rather necessary when you happen to be someone’s former Monk!” Equal predictions were submitted in favour and against Mrs. Flood being the Rani, although considering that her true nature has yet to be revealed at the time of writing, the jury’s still out!

When it came to individual episode predictions, certain episodes garnered more curiosity than others. One member suspected that Space Babies would feature a neotenic alien race with telekinetic powers, hence eliminating the need to be able-bodied. In truth, the titular babies were firmly human and compensated for their lack of mobility with automated buggies, string, and wooden construction kits. The Devil’s Chord attracted significant attention due to the presence of the Beatles, with one member suggesting that the actors’ lack of resemblance to the real-life Beatles wouldn’t be explained and that they “just look like that”. Since it had already been revealed that the soundtrack wouldn’t feature any licensed music by The Beatles, someone riffed that the band would be conveniently interrupted whenever they were about to perform, presumably to avoid paying royalties to Apple Corps. Other predictions included Paul McCartney’s granddad being exposed as an alien (To quote Ringo from A Hard Day’s Night (1964): “Well, if he’s your grandfather, who knows?”), a reference to The Rolling Stones’s Ruby Tuesday being made during a phone conversation with Mick Jagger, and one member being enraged by the actors’ poor attempts at Scouse accents. Curiously, despite the widely-publicised casting of American drag performer Jinkxx Monsoon, there was a complete absence of speculation regarding Maestro’s identity and their involvement in proceedings.

Not a single prediction was made for either Boom or 73 Yards, possibly due to the deliberate lack of pre-broadcast information for both episodes, while a solitary response for Dot and Bubble predicted that the episode had been named after a pair of robots. In sharp contrast, the trailer for Rogue, with Jonathan Groff’s silent and gentlemanly Rogue decorated in Regency costuming and hints at an romantic entanglement with the Doctor, prompted several responses. Several members incorrectly assumed that Captain Jack Harkness had been recast, but there was a surprisingly accurate prediction that the plot would involve “a hunt for a rogue shapeshifter at some sort of Regency Ball”. Perhaps the most bizarre prediction that we received was that Groff would reprise his role as King George III from Hamilton: The American Musical, who was now on a mission to prevent the thirteen colonies seceding from the British Empire by singing a jaunty showtune. While George III was indeed on the throne in 1813, the year in which Rogue takes place, the American Revolution had ended decisively several decades before the episode took place. If you really had paid attention to the Hamilton phenomenon, you would have known this!

A final wave of predictions were submitted ahead of the two-part finale, The Legend of Ruby Sunday/Empire of Death, and a few of them actually came close to the mark. One member foreshadowed a critical plot by highlighting the coincidence of Susan Triad and Susan Foreman’s first names and predicted that the Doctor’s granddaughter would return after sixty years and call the Doctor out for breaking his promise to one day come back. Another prediction was that the Doctor would have a nice ride in either Bessie or the Whomobile, rather than on the back of a moped driven by returning companion, Mel Bush. There was a fan-theory that Mel had been secretly replaced by the Rani ever since the Seventh Doctor’s troubled regeneration in Time and the Rani and that she would unleash the Tetaps on UNIT, who would in the words of another member, “once again make the problem worse”. Finally, a shout-out to whoever proposed that Sutekh would be defeated by the Doctor performing a reprise of There’s Always a Twist at the End.

To wrap things up, we’ll give a special mention to some of the more unusual predictions that we received. One member hoped for a cameo appearance from Doom, the self-proclaimed universe’s greatest assassin played by Sooz Kempner from the underappreciated multi-media event, Doom’s Day, while another predicted the return of the late Moxx of Balhoon from The End of the World. Somebody guessed that the Vlinx would be played by Steven wearing a funny costume, a reference to Russell T Davies’s claim in the Video Commentary for The Giggle that he had considered reintroducing the First Doctor’s companion Steven Taylor: still played by Peter Purves, Steven would initially have been disguised as a giant cow, only to reveal his true identity at a vital moment in the battle with the Toymaker. Last and not least, there was a last-minute prediction that Empire of Death would conclude with a repeat of Doomsday’s cliffhanger, this time with Nicola Coughlan suddenly appearing in the TARDIS asking “Where am I? Is this Derry? I’m supposed to be getting married!” and the Fifteenth Doctor exclaiming “What? What? WHAT?”

For those who think they could do better and wish to send in their theories for the next series, keep a lookout for opportunities to submit your predictions for Series 15 in the coming months. Who knows, perhaps you’ll end up reading your own words back to yourself in a future issue of Tides of Time!