From its opening moments, Doctor Who righted a wrong of her debut year – as season 12 returned to the practice of a cold open. The cold open (a sequence shown before the opening titles). has proven to be an effective tool in the show, often used to bewilder viewers ahead of a fuller explanation revealed later in the story – or to set a tone for what was ahead. While not every story needs one, the complete absence of cold opens in Doctor Who season 11 felt strange to many.
While the technique has been used most often in Doctor Who since the show’s return, they made rare appearances in the classic series as well. A cold open was first used in the 1982 story “Castrovalva,” the first full story featuring the Fifth Doctor (Peter Davison), and again the following year in the 20th anniversary story, “The Five Doctors.” After a couple of further uses during Sylvester McCoy’s time on the show, it only became a regular feature with the arrival of the modern series — starting with 2005’s second story, “The End of the World.”
Not only were cold opens embraced by fans, but season 2 also featured web-only “Tardisodes,” minute-long bonus scenes – often set prior to the beginning of the given story’s action, and filling in some background story details. These were later collected as extras on the box set of David Tennant’s debut season. From season 1 onward, the cold open was a fixture on the show – until the arrival of showrunner Chris Chibnall. The first series under his command had no cold opens at all – though Chibnall has jokingly argued that, since “The Woman Who Fell to Earth” never in fact even shows the opening titles (a first for Doctor Who), "I gave you 60 minutes of a cold open,” he told the Radio Times in 2018. With season 12, however, Chibnall backed off the ban on the cold open, and they were used sporadically throughout the episodes.
Cold opens can be used for filling in important pre-story information (such as in Peter Capaldi’s brilliant explanation of the “Bootstrap Paradox” at the start of “Before the Flood,” or the frenzied prelude where the Tenth Doctor becomes human in “Human Nature”) – or they can be important stage-setting for the story to come (such as Matt Smith getting “mail” from a long-lost fellow Time Lord in “The Doctor’s Wife”). That said, they are most often used as a “hook” to get audiences committed to finding out what the rest of the episode will reveal.
Imagine how much more enticing the start to the TARDIS crew’s arrival.
Not every new-series installment prior to season 11 had a cold open – the 50th anniversary story “The Day of the Doctor“ lacked one, for example – but the technique appears to be employed frequently once again. It is clear that fans enjoy cold opens, and they seem to hook in more casual viewers, so it looks like they will continue to be used in Doctor Who going forward whenever a writer or director feels they are warranted.