'Doctor Who' new season trailer asks: Will you be Jodie Whittaker's best friend?

All of this is new to us.
 By 
Chris Taylor
 on 
Original image replaced with Mashable logo
Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

"All of this is new to me," says the Doctor. And she's not alone.

The trailer for Doctor Who Season 11, starring Jodie Whittaker as the Time Lord's first female incarnation, was released at San Diego Comic Con Thursday. And while the locations we glimpsed are familiar to any Who fan -- quarries, beaches, corridors, the wreck of an alien ship -- there's a distinct freshness to it all.

Part of that comes from Whittaker's youthful energy, which makes a distinct change from grumpy predecessor Peter Capaldi. It bubbles out through words spoken in her native Yorkshire accent. (Other than "brilliant!", the one word she spoke in the final post-regeneration scene of last year's "Twice Upon A Time," we've never heard Whittaker talk in character as the Doctor before.)

It also shows in the fresh take on the Doctor's costume and the redesign of her all-important little helper, the Sonic Screwdriver.

Part of that freshness is due to her new permanent companions -- three of them, numbers which haven't been seen in the TARDIS since the early 1980s, not counting brief sojourns with Rory, Amy and River Song back in Season 6, and a more diverse representation of folks than the Doctor's vessel has ever seen.

All we know so far is their names -- Yasmin, Ryan and Graham -- and the fact that they have some sort of connection to the Doctor. "If I ask very nicely," she says in a post-regeneration moment of vulnerability, "will you be my new best friends?"

The Doctor Who fandom has already answered that one with a resounding "yes" -- as shown in the other video the new Who team brought to Comic Con.

Doctor Who Season 11, the first to be helmed by new showrunner Chris Chibnall, warps onto our screens this October.

Topics Doctor Who

Chris Taylor
Chris Taylor

Chris is a veteran tech, entertainment and culture journalist, author of 'How Star Wars Conquered the Universe,' and co-host of the Doctor Who podcast 'Pull to Open.' Hailing from the U.K., Chris got his start as a sub editor on national newspapers. He moved to the U.S. in 1996, and became senior news writer for Time.com a year later. In 2000, he was named San Francisco bureau chief for Time magazine. He has served as senior editor for Business 2.0, and West Coast editor for Fortune Small Business and Fast Company. Chris is a graduate of Merton College, Oxford and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. He is also a long-time volunteer at 826 Valencia, the nationwide after-school program co-founded by author Dave Eggers. His book on the history of Star Wars is an international bestseller and has been translated into 11 languages.

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