Doctor Who Season 10: 6 Big Questions We're Asking After 'The Pilot'

By Paul Driscoll / April 17, 2017

This weekend Doctor Who returned in spectacular form to be met by largely positive reviews.

The Series 10 opener has been particularly welcomed by fans for being like a breath of fresh air. Not quite a reboot, it’s a whole new start for what some had been calling a tired show, with a lighter, less complicated feel than the last few series. As such The Pilot is the perfect launching pad for new and lapsed viewers.

Much of that accessibility is down to the fact that we see the Doctor and his mad world through the naïve eyes of Bill Potts, played with great promise by newcomer Pearl Mackie. A throwback to Billie Piper’s Rose, she even uses the same alarm clock.

But a Doctor Who episode, and certainly one penned by Steven Moffat, wouldn’t be the same without throwing up a whole bunch of questions, and so while the plot is uncomplicated and the chief protagonists easy to identify with, there are enough mysteries here to keep fans talking until the next episode airs.

Here are some of the most pressing questions that fans will be chewing the fat over for at least the next week.

6. What's Inside The Vault?

Over 50 years holed up in Bristol as a University Professor might seem like a flash in the pan for a Time Lord who’s lived for well over a thousand years, but past history tells us that there’s nothing the Doctor hates more than having his wings clipped. And the Earth of all places? Last time he was stranded here, employed as UNIT’s scientific adviser, he was desperately trying to get away. So it stands to reason that whatever lies inside the mysterious vault is major league stuff.

The Doctor has form for using the Earth as a hiding place, having locked away the Hand of Omega in a funeral parlour in 1963, but with all of time and space available, there’s surely better places to keep such artefacts – why not even store them inside the TARDIS?

Perhaps there is a particular reason why the vault is being kept on Earth, but more likely it’s a useful conceit to set up his meeting with Bill and a deliberate echo of his original extended soiree on Earth, when granddaughter Susan was a pupil of Coal Hill School.

The Pilot is a refreshingly simply tale, Doctor Who stripped back to its basics, and in keeping with this lighter touch the ongoing arc of series ten appears to be a rather straightforward ‘what’s inside the box’ puzzle. With so little to go on, inevitably fans are linking it to other things we already know about the series – might it contain John Simm’s Master, the Doctor’s Granddaughter, Susan, or even the next Doctor?