Ncuti Gatwa’s First Official Doctor Who Dalek Encounter Is… an Escape Room

It’s agelong been believed that if you privation to get the existent measurement of a Doctor Who star—who, heavy down, their incarnation of the Time Lord truly is compared to what came before—you find it successful their first brushwood with a Dalek. Whether it’s successful the penning oregon performance, the Doctor is formed successful their effect to the astir past and iconic of evils the amusement has, nary substance however galore stories travel earlier oregon aft that fabled matchup. So it’s benignant of chaotic then, that Ncuti Gatwa‘s archetypal proverbial ace astatine the Kaled whip is going to beryllium successful an highly constricted engagement.

This week the BBC announced A Dalek Awakens, a caller flight country acquisition for fans successful the UK developed with Escape Hunt. Tasking players with boarding a vessel occupied by a sole Dalek, A Dalek Awakens volition spot radical lick puzzles unneurotic to flight the murderous wrath of the Doctor’s top foe without being capable to trust connected the Time Lord’s presence… directly astatine least.

Help the Doctor decision a Dalek! Get up adjacent and idiosyncratic with the Doctor's deadliest force and assistance the Fifteenth Doctor successful the recently regenerated flight country 'A Dalek Awakens' from @EscapeHuntUK 💥 pic.twitter.com/A3hScoNeVO

— Doctor Who (@bbcdoctorwho) November 19, 2024

As seen successful the teaser video above, Gatwa volition reprise his relation arsenic the Doctor for A Dalek Awakens, providing dependable implicit to usher players on successful their quest to flight definite doom—and of people supply discourse for what a Dalek is truly susceptible of. Which means that this is, successful fact, the precise archetypal clip anyone volition really get to perceive what the 15th Doctor is similar erstwhile faced with the menace of the Daleks… alternatively than successful the amusement itself.

It’s a peculiar choice, but not each that of a astonishing one. Although there’s been teases and hints that a new, redesigned Dalek-kind volition look successful the latest iteration of Doctor Who at immoderate point, returning showrunner Russell T. Davies has besides conscionable arsenic overmuch made wide that the latest epoch of the amusement wants to keep the Daleks astatine plunger’s length for a small while. “I deliberation they’ve been done a lot—people are expecting them each twelvemonth now. So I deliberation they request a bully pause,” Davies told British tabloid the Mirror up of past year’s 60th day specials. “Hopefully, there’s immoderate enemies that volition go caller classics, but it’s ever bully to determination on.”

Of course, Davies was besides astir to speed-run the 14th Doctor’s three-episode tenure by having David Tennant’s latest instrumentality connected the Time Lord look disconnected against an aboriginal Dalek prototype successful a foundation mini-episode, truthful that bully intermission wasn’t truly for each that long, but still.

On the 1 hand, it makes sense, fixed that the Daleks had became a regular staple of the New Year’s specials during Jodie Whittaker and Chris Chibnall’s epoch of Doctor Who conscionable beforehand—making them an expected quality blunts the Daleks of their peculiar individuality and narration to the Doctor and Doctor Who astatine large. On the other: beauteous insane that the archetypal clip immoderate radical volition really get to perceive Ncuti Gatwa speech astir warring Daleks is going to beryllium for an flight country experience!

Fingers crossed it won’t beryllium each that agelong until we get thing akin wrong the amusement itself—something Gatwa is conscionable arsenic anxious to spot himself. “By the clip that I’m done with Doctor Who, I amended person faced a Dalek. What connected world would beryllium the constituent of maine being Doctor Who without facing a Dalek,” the histrion asked of Entertainment Weekly successful a screen communicative up of the premiere of his debut play earlier this year. What would the constituent be, indeed.

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