With Doctor Who returning for a new season with Jodie Whittaker and Mandip Gill, the sci-fi classic adding a new face to the mix, and the cast and crew wants fan to get to know him a bit better. The series has released a new featurette all about the brand new companion, Dan Lewis (John Bishop), taking a look at just who this new character is and how he fits into the complicated ecosystem of the TARDIS in Whittaker’s final season.
Much like companions of the past, Dan is an everyman, a normal person scraping by in Liverpool without much excitement in his life until the Doctor rolls around. Bishop describes the experience of joining Who as “crazy," but that fans will hopefully enjoy the excitement Dan brings to the TARDIS as he represents the audience’s point of view:
“He’s somebody who’s been born and bred and stayed in Liverpool, and he’s not really ventured out, and his horizons seem to have been limited by his life experience. He’s got a heart of gold, he’s everybody’s friend, but he’s got a few little failings of his own. He’s not doing very well financially. He helps out at the food bank, and he’s trying to help other people, but he’s not doing really very well...I think what you have to embrace with Doctor Who is that if you look at all the friends in the past, they’re taken from a normal life and put into an abnormal situation, but within a couple of scenes, they have to go, “I’m either embracing this or I’m going to spend all of my time going, ‘Wow, wow.’” You’ve got to think that he’s gonna go, “Right, well, this is happening, so I’ve just got to get on with it.”
As revealed in last night’s episode, “The Halloween Apocalypse," Dan runs into the Doctor after his house is shrunk down and he is kidnapped along with it, meaning that he isn’t invited into the TARDIS, but rather falls into the middle of an already-established unit — a wrench in the works of the Doctor and Yaz’s friendship, according to director Jamie Stone:
“Dan’s entrance kind of affects the TARDIS team quite a lot. The Doctor and Yaz are quite a tight unit. They’ve known each other for a long time now, they’ve been through a lot of adventures together, and it’s interesting to kind of drop a new presence like Dan into that and see how it affects what’s quite a tight unit and a tight friendship. And I think and interesting to see how Dan kind of shakes up the TARDIS team.”
What contributions to the Doctor’s intergalactic adventures Dan will have in the coming season is anyone’s guess, but the cast and crew hope that fans can relate to this new companion as he falls into the world of Doctor Who, whether audiences are brand new to the world or have been with the Doctor for over fifty years. Doctor Who: Flux airs on Sundays on BBC America. Check out the full featurette below.