Doctor Who recap: the story so far

No. 01 · 1963 · Series

Doctor Who (1963) recap

The First Doctor, a prickly old man, travels with his granddaughter Susan, who is at school in 1963 London, until two of her teachers, Ian and Barbara, follow her into the TARDIS and are taken away. Over seasons 1 to 4 they meet the Daleks, visit Earth's history and pick up companions such as Vicki, Steven, Polly and Ben; Susan stays behind on a future Earth. After the first Cybermen story, the worn-out Doctor renews himself into the Second Doctor, a scruffy cosmic hobo. In seasons 4 to 6 he travels with the Highlander Jamie, Victoria and Zoe, fights the Ice Warriors and the Yeti, and meets Colonel Lethbridge-Stewart, later the Brigadier of UNIT. The Time Lords finally put him on trial for interfering and exile him to Earth in a new body. The Third Doctor spends seasons 7 to 11 working with UNIT and his assistants Liz Shaw and Jo Grant against the Autons and his rival Time Lord, the Master; after The Three Doctors his exile is lifted, and Sarah Jane Smith joins him before he dies of radiation poisoning. The Fourth Doctor, with his long scarf, runs from season 12 to 18, travelling with Sarah Jane, Harry, the warrior Leela, the robot dog K9 and the Time Lady Romana; he witnesses the creation of the Daleks by Davros, hunts the Key to Time, and falls from a radio telescope fighting the Master. The young Fifth Doctor, in seasons 19 to 21, loses his companion Adric to the Cybermen and gives his life to save Peri. The loud Sixth Doctor, in seasons 22 and 23, is put on trial again by the Time Lords and faces the Valeyard, a dark version of himself. The Seventh Doctor, a clown who becomes a schemer, travels with Mel and then Ace through seasons 24 to 26, ending the original run in 1989.

How Doctor Who (1963) ends

The original series ends with Survival in 1989: the Seventh Doctor and Ace defeat the Master on a dying planet of cat people and walk off together to find more adventures, the Doctor saying there is work to be done. The show was then cancelled. The story picks up in the 1996 TV movie, where the Seventh Doctor regenerates, and fully returns in 2005.

No. 02 · 1996 · Film

Doctor Who: The Movie recap

The Seventh Doctor is carrying the remains of the Master, executed by the Daleks on Skaro, back to Gallifrey when the remains escape as a snake-like creature and force the TARDIS down in San Francisco on December 30, 1999. Stepping out, the Doctor is shot by a street gang, and a young man named Chang Lee takes him to hospital. Cardiologist Grace Holloway, confused by his two hearts, operates and accidentally kills him. In the morgue he regenerates into the Eighth Doctor, who has lost his memory. The Master takes over the body of a paramedic named Bruce, wins Chang Lee over with lies, and opens the Eye of Harmony, the TARDIS's power source, which will destroy the Earth at midnight on New Year's Eve. The Doctor, his memory returning, persuades Grace to help him find a part to fix the TARDIS.

How Doctor Who: The Movie ends

The Master captures the Doctor in the TARDIS and tries to steal his remaining lives through the Eye of Harmony, killing Grace and Chang Lee when they turn on him. The Doctor breaks free, and the Master falls into the Eye and is destroyed. The TARDIS brings Grace and Chang Lee back to life, Grace declines to travel with him, and the Doctor flies off alone.

Post-credits scenes

No. There is no post-credits scene.

No. 03 · 2005 · Series

Doctor Who: Series 1 recap

Rose Tyler, a nineteen-year-old shop worker in London, is saved from living shop dummies by a stranger called the Doctor, who turns out to be the last of the Time Lords after a war that wiped out his people and the Daleks. She leaves her mother Jackie and boyfriend Mickey to travel with him to the end of the world, Victorian Cardiff and a 2006 Downing Street invaded by the Slitheen. The Doctor meets a lone surviving Dalek, Rose tries to save her father Pete on the day he died and nearly breaks time, and in wartime London they pick up Captain Jack Harkness, a con man from the future. The words Bad Wolf keep appearing wherever they go.

How Doctor Who: Series 1 ends

On a space station in the year 200,100, the Doctor finds that the Dalek Emperor survived the war and has built a new army. He sends Rose home, but she opens the heart of the TARDIS, absorbs the time vortex and returns as the Bad Wolf, wiping out the Daleks and bringing Jack back to life. The Doctor draws the energy out of her to save her life, which kills him, and he regenerates into the Tenth Doctor in front of her. Jack is left behind on the station.

No. 04 · 2006 · Series

Doctor Who: Series 2 recap

After saving Earth on Christmas Day in his first hours, the Tenth Doctor takes Rose to New Earth, Victorian Scotland, where Queen Victoria founds the Torchwood Institute to fight aliens, and a school where they meet his old companion Sarah Jane Smith and K9. On a parallel Earth, Cybermen are created, and Mickey stays behind to fight them. The Doctor falls for Madame de Pompadour through time windows and faces a creature claiming to be the Devil in a black hole. Rose's father Pete is alive in the parallel world.

How Doctor Who: Series 2 ends

Ghosts appear around the world, and Torchwood, now based in London's Canary Wharf tower, turns out to have opened a breach that lets in an army of Cybermen and four Daleks. The Doctor sucks them all into the void between worlds, but Rose is nearly lost with them, and Pete catches her and pulls her into his parallel world, where she stays with Pete, Jackie and Mickey. The Doctor says goodbye to her by projection on a beach in Norway, and a bride, Donna Noble, appears in the TARDIS.

No. 05 · 2006 · Series · optional

Torchwood recap

In series 1, police officer Gwen Cooper stumbles on Torchwood Three, a secret team in Cardiff that deals with aliens coming through a rift in time and space. Its leader is Captain Jack Harkness, now unable to die, and the team includes doctor Owen, technician Toshiko and assistant Ianto. Gwen joins and keeps it from her boyfriend Rhys, and the team faces fairies, cannibals and a Cyberwoman Ianto has hidden. At the end, Owen opens the rift, unleashing a giant creature, Abaddon, which Jack stops at the cost of his life; he revives and then vanishes when he hears the Doctor's TARDIS. In series 2, Jack returns, Gwen marries Rhys, Owen is killed and brought back as a walking corpse, and Jack's brother Gray buries him alive under Cardiff for nearly 2,000 years; Owen and Toshiko die in the finale. Children of Earth, the five-part series 3, has alien beings called the 456 speak through every child on Earth and demand ten percent of them; the British government, which secretly gave them twelve children in 1965, tries to destroy Torchwood, Ianto dies, and Jack defeats the 456 by sacrificing his own grandson. In series 4, Miracle Day, nobody on Earth dies anymore, while Jack has become mortal. Gwen and Jack join CIA agents Rex and Esther to expose the Families, a secret group behind the miracle, and the camps where governments burn the living dead.

How Torchwood ends

Miracle Day ends at the Blessing, a fault running through the Earth's core, where Jack's mortal blood resets the world and death returns. Esther is killed, and Rex, who had a transfusion of Jack's blood, comes back to life, now immortal himself. Jack and Gwen are left as the last of the original Cardiff team. The TV series ended there; the story continued only in audio dramas and books.

No. 06 · 2007 · Series

Doctor Who: Series 3 recap

Medical student Martha Jones meets the Doctor when her hospital is transported to the Moon by the Judoon, and he takes her on one trip, then another. They visit Shakespeare's London, a gridlocked motorway in New New York, Depression-era Manhattan with the Daleks and a future starship. To hide from aliens, the Doctor turns himself human as schoolteacher John Smith in 1913, and Martha protects him. In Blink, he is trapped in 1969 by the Weeping Angels and helps a young woman named Sally Sparrow through messages hidden on DVDs. Martha loves the Doctor, who still misses Rose. Captain Jack returns at the end of the universe, where a kindly professor turns out to be the Master.

How Doctor Who: Series 3 ends

The Master, now British Prime Minister Harold Saxon, uses the Toclafane, the last humans from the end of the universe, to conquer Earth and ages the Doctor into a tiny creature. Martha walks the world for a year spreading the Doctor's story, and at a set moment everyone thinks of him, restoring him. The year is undone, the Master's wife shoots him and he refuses to regenerate, dying in the Doctor's arms. Martha chooses to leave to look after her family, and a ship named Titanic crashes through the TARDIS wall.

No. 07 · 2007 · Series · optional

The Sarah Jane Adventures recap

Former companion Sarah Jane Smith now lives on Bannerman Road in Ealing, secretly investigating alien threats with a supercomputer, Mr Smith, hidden in her attic. In series 1, she rescues Luke, a boy grown in a lab by the alien Bane, and adopts him, and with neighbour Maria Jackson and Luke's friend Clyde she fights the Slitheen, the Gorgons and the Trickster; at the end, Mr Smith turns out to be a Xylok plotting to move the Earth, and the team stops him. In series 2, Maria moves away and Rani Chandra joins, Sarah Jane nearly undoes her parents' deaths and the Bane return with the Brigadier's help. In series 3, the Trickster tries to trap Sarah Jane in a wedding to a man named Peter, and the Tenth Doctor turns up to save her. In series 4, Luke leaves for Oxford University with K9, and the Eleventh Doctor and old companion Jo Grant join the team at what seems to be the Doctor's funeral. Series 5 brings Sky, a girl left on Sarah Jane's doorstep as a baby who turns out to be an alien weapon, and Sarah Jane adopts her too.

How The Sarah Jane Adventures ends

Elisabeth Sladen, who played Sarah Jane, died in April 2011, so series 5 stopped after three stories. The last, The Man Who Never Was, has Luke and K9 home from Oxford as Sarah Jane, Rani, Clyde and Sky free enslaved aliens. The show ends with a short tribute to Sarah Jane, looking back on her life of adventures, from her travels with the Doctor to her last adventure with her son and friends on Bannerman Road.

No. 08 · 2008 · Series

Doctor Who: Series 4 recap

Donna Noble, the bride who once turned the Doctor down, finds him again while investigating a diet pill company, and joins him as a friend, not a love interest. They visit Pompeii on the day of the eruption, free the enslaved Ood and stop a Sontaran plot to gas the Earth with Martha's help. A machine grows the Doctor a daughter, Jenny, from his cells. In a library the size of a planet, they meet River Song, an archaeologist who knows the Doctor's future and dies saving him. In Turn Left, Donna sees a world where she never met him, Rose appears from another universe, and the stars start going out.

How Doctor Who: Series 4 ends

Davros and the Daleks steal 27 planets, including Earth, to build a Reality Bomb that will destroy every other universe. The Doctor's friends, Rose, Martha, Jack, Sarah Jane and Mickey, come together, and Donna, touched by energy from the Doctor's old severed hand, becomes part Time Lord and defeats the Daleks. A human copy of the Doctor stays with Rose in her universe. To save Donna's life, the Doctor wipes her memory of him and leaves her at home. Specials from 2008 to 2010 follow, ending with the Tenth Doctor's regeneration.

No. 09 · 2010 · Series

Doctor Who: Series 5 recap

The newly regenerated Eleventh Doctor crashes into the garden of seven-year-old Amelia Pond, promises to come back in five minutes, and returns twelve years later. Amy, now grown, runs away with him the night before her wedding, and he later brings her fiance Rory along. A crack in Amy's bedroom wall follows them through time, erasing anything that falls into it. They meet Churchill's Daleks, the Weeping Angels with River Song, and Vincent van Gogh. Rory is killed and erased by the crack, and Amy forgets he existed.

How Doctor Who: Series 5 ends

The Doctor's enemies build the Pandorica, a prison made to hold him, believing he will cause the explosion that is cracking the universe. Rory returns as a plastic Roman, guards Amy in the box for 2,000 years, and the Doctor flies the Pandorica into the exploding TARDIS to restart the universe, erasing himself. At Amy and Rory's wedding, Amy remembers him and brings him back. River leaves with an unanswered question about who she is, and the married Ponds keep travelling with him.

No. 10 · 2011 · Series

Doctor Who: Series 6 recap

Amy, Rory and River watch a 1,100-year-old future Doctor shot dead at Lake Silencio in Utah by an astronaut rising from the water. The younger Doctor does not know, and they travel with him to 1969 America, where an alien order called the Silence, which you forget as soon as you look away, has been shaping human history. Amy turns out to have been a copy for months while the real Amy, pregnant, is held prisoner. Her baby, Melody Pond, is stolen by Madame Kovarian, and River reveals that she is Melody, Amy and Rory's daughter, raised to kill the Doctor. In Let's Kill Hitler, River gives up her remaining lives to save him. The Doctor drops Amy and Rory home and goes to meet his death.

How Doctor Who: Series 6 ends

River refuses to kill the Doctor at the lake, causing all of history to happen at once, and the Doctor marries her to put time right. The Doctor who died at the lake was really a shape-changing robot with the Doctor inside, so the universe thinks he is dead. He goes into hiding, leaving the warning that the question Doctor who must be answered at the Fields of Trenzalore.

No. 11 · 2012 · Series

Doctor Who: Series 7 recap

The Doctor visits the Ponds between their adventures, meeting a girl named Oswin trapped in a Dalek asylum who dies saving him. In New York, the Weeping Angels send Rory back in time, and Amy lets them take her too so she can live out her life with him; the Doctor never sees them again. At Christmas he meets Clara Oswin Oswald, a Victorian governess, who also dies. He finds a third Clara in modern London and travels with her, trying to solve the mystery of the impossible girl, and they face the Great Intelligence.

How Doctor Who: Series 7 ends

At the Doctor's grave on Trenzalore, the Great Intelligence enters the Doctor's timeline to undo every victory, and Clara jumps in after it, splitting into echoes across all his lives to save him. The Doctor rescues her and sees a forgotten incarnation of himself, the one who fought the Time War. The 50th anniversary special, The Day of the Doctor, follows: three Doctors save Gallifrey instead of destroying it, and the Doctor dies of old age on Trenzalore in The Time of the Doctor before the Time Lords give him a new cycle of lives.

No. 12 · 2014 · Series

Doctor Who: Series 8 recap

The Twelfth Doctor is older, colder and unsure whether he is a good man, and Clara has to learn to trust him again. She starts dating Danny Pink, an ex-soldier who teaches maths at her school, and hides her travels from him. The Doctor shrinks into a Dalek, meets Robin Hood, sends Clara to the Moon and leaves her with a terrible choice, and fights a mummy on a train. In several episodes, people who die wake in a place called the Nethersphere, run by a woman called Missy.

How Doctor Who: Series 8 ends

Danny is killed in a car accident, and the Nethersphere turns out to be a Time Lord data store where Missy has uploaded the minds of the dead. Missy is the Master, now a woman, and she turns the dead into an army of Cybermen as a gift so the Doctor can rule the world. Danny, as a Cyberman, leads them to destroy themselves, and Missy is seemingly killed. The Doctor and Clara each lie to the other that they are fine and part ways, until Christmas brings them back together.

No. 13 · 2015 · Series

Doctor Who: Series 9 recap

Davros, dying on Skaro, summons the Doctor, and Missy helps Clara save him. On an underwater base, ghosts warn of the future. In a Viking village, the Doctor makes a girl named Ashildr immortal and later meets her again centuries on, now calling herself Me. Zygons hiding as humans threaten a ceasefire, and Clara grows more reckless, taking after the Doctor. In Face the Raven, Clara takes on a death sentence meant for her friend Rigsy and dies, a trap Me set to capture the Doctor for unseen masters.

How Doctor Who: Series 9 ends

The Doctor is trapped alone in a castle that resets, and over four and a half billion years he punches through a wall harder than diamond. He emerges on Gallifrey, overthrows Lord President Rassilon and pulls Clara out of time one heartbeat before her death. To protect her, he tries to wipe her memory of him, but the attempt backfires and he forgets her instead. Clara flies away with Me in a stolen TARDIS, still bound to her death one day.

No. 14 · 2016 · Series · optional

Class recap

At Coal Hill Academy, the London school the Doctor once taught at, tears in space and time let monsters through. Charlie Smith, a student, is secretly a prince and the last of the Rhodians, and his physics teacher Miss Quill is the last of the Quill, a race that fought his and now forced to protect him. When the Shadow Kin attack the prom, the Doctor saves the day and makes Charlie, Quill and the students April, Ram and Tanya the school's defenders. April ends up sharing a heart with Corakinus, the Shadow Kin king. Over the series they face a dragon, alien petals and a prisoner's nightmare. Charlie holds the Cabinet of Souls, which contains the souls of his people and could be used as a weapon, and the head teacher, Dorothea Ames, pushes for it to be used.

How Class ends

Corakinus returns and kills Ram's father and Tanya's mother, and the mysterious Governors judge Ames unfit and have a Weeping Angel kill her. With the Shadow Kin overrunning the streets, Charlie uses the Cabinet of Souls and wipes out every Shadow Kin, and Quill saves his life. In the final scene, April wakes up in Corakinus's body. The show was cancelled after this one series.

No. 15 · 2017 · Series

Doctor Who: Series 10 recap

The Doctor has been a university lecturer in Bristol for decades with his assistant Nardole, guarding a vault that holds a prisoner. He takes on Bill Potts, a student who works in the canteen, and she starts travelling with him, to a robot-run colony, Regency London and a space station where he is blinded. Alien Monks offer to save humanity in return for consent to rule it, and Bill gives it to save the Doctor's sight. The prisoner in the vault is Missy, who seems to be trying to become good.

How Doctor Who: Series 10 ends

On a vast spaceship near a black hole, Bill is shot and turned into one of the first Cybermen, and Missy meets her earlier self, the Master. Missy decides to stand with the Doctor, and the Master kills her as she wounds him. The Doctor holds off the Cybermen and is fatally wounded. Heather, a girl from the first episode now made of living water, saves Bill. The Doctor refuses to regenerate, meets his first incarnation at the South Pole, and at Christmas regenerates into the Thirteenth Doctor.

No. 16 · 2018 · Series

Doctor Who: Series 11 recap

The Thirteenth Doctor falls through the roof of a train in Sheffield, without her TARDIS, and gathers Ryan Sinclair, police officer Yasmin Khan and Graham O'Brien, whose wife Grace dies helping fight an alien hunter called Tzim-Sha. They follow the Doctor, whom they call their fam, and meet Rosa Parks on the eve of her protest, giant spiders in Sheffield, the Partition of India, a delivery company in space and the witch trials of 1612. Graham, grieving Grace, wants revenge on Tzim-Sha.

How Doctor Who: Series 11 ends

On the planet Ranskoor Av Kolos, Tzim-Sha has shrunk whole planets to take revenge on the Doctor. The Doctor returns the planets, and Graham chooses not to kill Tzim-Sha, trapping him in stasis instead. The Doctor rescues the captured planets and their people, and the fam keep travelling with her. In the New Year's Day special that follows, they face a lone Dalek scout rebuilt in Sheffield.

No. 17 · 2020 · Series

Doctor Who: Series 12 recap

The Master returns in a new body and reveals he has destroyed Gallifrey after learning a secret about the Time Lords. In Gloucester, the Doctor meets Ruth, a woman who turns out to be a version of the Doctor she has no memory of being. The fam visit Nikola Tesla, a plague in Peru and Lord Byron's villa, where a lone Cyberman called Ashad hunts for a dangerous weapon. In the future, the last humans flee a new Cyber army.

How Doctor Who: Series 12 ends

On the ruins of Gallifrey, the Master reveals that the Doctor is the Timeless Child, a being from another universe found as a child whose ability to regenerate was copied to create the Time Lords, and whose earlier lives were erased from her memory. He turns dead Time Lords into Cybermen. The Doctor cannot bring herself to wipe them out, so another man sets off the bomb. Her friends escape back to Earth, but she is arrested by the Judoon and locked in a prison, and in the following special Ryan and Graham leave.

No. 18 · 2021 · Series

Doctor Who: Flux recap

A wave of destruction called the Flux begins tearing the universe apart. The Doctor and Yaz pick up Dan Lewis, a Liverpool tour guide, and are hunted by Swarm and Azure, powerful beings from the Doctor's erased past. The Sontarans take advantage of the chaos in history, the Weeping Angels turn the Doctor into an Angel, and she meets Tecteun, the woman who found her as a child and runs the secretive Division. Vinder and Bel, a couple separated by the Flux, search for each other across the ruins. Earth is surrounded by Sontaran, Dalek and Cybermen forces.

How Doctor Who: Flux ends

The Doctor, split into three, plays her enemies against each other, and the Flux is absorbed by the Passenger creatures, saving what is left of the universe. Swarm and Azure are destroyed by Time itself, and the Doctor hides a watch holding her lost memories in the TARDIS. Three specials follow: a time loop with the Daleks, the Sea Devils, and The Power of the Doctor, in which the Master forces her to regenerate and she becomes the Fourteenth Doctor, with a face from her past.

No. 19 · 2024 · Series

Doctor Who: Season 1 (2024) recap

After the 60th-anniversary specials, the Fourteenth Doctor splits into two, and the Fifteenth Doctor, who has let go of his old wounds, travels with Ruby Sunday, a young woman who was abandoned as a baby at a church on Christmas Eve. They visit a baby farm in space, 1960s London where the god-like Maestro steals music, a minefield where the Doctor cannot move, and the Regency era. Strange things follow Ruby, including snow falling around her, a mysterious neighbour called Mrs Flood, and a woman named Susan Triad whose name keeps appearing. UNIT tries to find Ruby's mother.

How Doctor Who: Season 1 (2024) ends

Susan Triad is a disguise for Sutekh, the god of death, who has been hiding on the TARDIS since the Doctor last fought him and now wipes out all life in the universe. The Doctor leashes Sutekh to the TARDIS and drags him through the time vortex to his end, restoring everyone. Ruby's mother is Louise Miller, an ordinary woman who left her as a teenager, and they meet. Ruby stays with her families, and the Doctor travels on alone, while Mrs Flood hints that something worse is coming.

No. 20 · 2025 · Series

Doctor Who: Season 2 (2025) recap

After a Christmas adventure at a time hotel, the Doctor meets Belinda Chandra, a nurse from 2025 who is kidnapped by robots to marry their king and looks exactly like a woman he met before. He promises to get her home, but the TARDIS keeps refusing to land on May 24, 2025. They are trapped in cartoons in 1952 Miami by a god called Lux, face a deadly mining world, and meet the Barber, who controls humanity's stories in Lagos. Ruby Sunday returns in a story about a podcaster who fakes an alien attack to discredit UNIT. At a galaxy-wide song contest, the news arrives that Earth ends on May 24, 2025, and Mrs Flood reveals herself as the Rani, a Time Lord villain.

How Doctor Who: Season 2 (2025) ends

The Rani traps the world in a false reality where the Doctor and Belinda are married with a daughter, Poppy, so she can free Omega, the Time Lords' founder. Omega devours one Rani, and the Doctor sends him back, but Poppy is erased when reality is restored. The Doctor triggers his regeneration early to bring Poppy back as Belinda's daughter, says goodbye, and regenerates into a new body that looks like Rose Tyler, played by Billie Piper.

No. 21 · 2025 · Series · optional

The War Between the Land and the Sea recap

When fishermen kill a Sea Devil, the ancient sea-dwelling reptiles reveal themselves to the whole world and ask for talks in London. Their ambassador, Salt, picks Barclay Pierre-Dupont, a low-level UNIT office worker, to speak for humanity, alongside UNIT commander Kate Lethbridge-Stewart. Salt demands an end to ocean pollution, and when talks stall, the Sea Devils dump the oceans' rubbish on land and close the seas to ships and planes. At a summit under the Atlantic, a bomb hidden by a member of a secret government plan called Severance kills hundreds of Sea Devils and the human crew. Barclay and Salt fall for each other and go on the run, and Kate's partner Ibrahim is killed in an attempt on her life.

How The War Between the Land and the Sea ends

The Sea Devils begin melting the ice caps, then thousands of them are found dead: Downing Street engineered a virus that killed most of their people. The survivors surrender and accept exile in the Mariana Trench, warning that water will find humanity one day. Barclay meets Salt on the coast, she gives him gills, and they swim away together. Kate, shaken, holds a jogger at gunpoint for dropping a plastic bottle.