No new Doctor Who for an entire year? When the BBC announced last month that the Time Lord's travels were being put on hold for 12 months, it sounded like the worst possible news for fans.
We've been here before, of course. Again, bar a single special, there was no Doctor Who in 2016, while the show's most significant hiatus was considerably longer – about 15 years longer – and back then, we didn't even know when (if!) the show would return.
Related: Doctor Who season 12: Premiere, cast, air date, trailer and everything you need to know
We made it through the Wilderness Years and we'll make it through this dry spell, too. But if you're having withdrawal symptoms, here are a few ways you can make 2019 fly by a little quicker… even without a TARDIS.
1. Watch classic Doctor Who
If you're a nu-Who fan who's been wary of venturing back into the original series, now is the time to start. You won't regret it.
The older episodes can come in for flak from short-sighted critics – wobbly sets, rubber monsters, blah blah blah. But we Doctor Who fans are a clever and imaginative bunch, right? And able to see past the limitations of a shoestring BBC budget.
What to Read Next
There's a wealth of great storytelling here: 26 years' worth. You can pick up Peter Davison's debut series and pre-order Tom Baker's last on shiny Blu-ray. Classic episodes are even streaming – for free – over on Twitch right now. So why not dip in and try it?
Heck, even the '80s episodes aren't as bad you might have heard...
2. Listen to some Big Finish
Some what? For the uninitiated, Big Finish have been producing Doctor Who audio books and full-cast audio plays – like a radio play, only released on CD and as a download – for almost 20 years.
In that time, they've crafted hundreds, literally, hundreds, of new adventures for the classic Doctors and given "one-shot" TARDIS travellers like Paul McGann and John Hurt the full run of episodes they deserved.
Since 2015, they've also been working in the worlds of nu-Who, reuniting David Tennant with Catherine Tate as Donna Noble for a trilogy of new adventures, battling skeleton armies and space gangsters.
This was followed in 2017 by Vol 2, with Billie Piper back as Rose Tyler – yes, Rose and Ten, together again! A third volume, bringing back Bernard Cribbins as Donna's grandfather Wilfred Mott, will be released in May 2019.
There are dozens of new releases featuring practically every single Doctor and companion every single month. So get listening.
3. Read a book or two, or three, or a thousand
There's quite a bit of print fiction out there dedicated to Doctor Who. If you're keen to play it strictly nu-Who, there have been 100+ novels published since 2005, ft. all six Doctors from Eccleston to Whittaker.
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Then there are the BBC's Eighth Doctor novels, published from 1997-2005 in the absence of a TV show and taking Paul McGann's incarnation on hundreds more new adventures.
Or the New Adventures novels, which likewise filled the gap between the end of the classic series in '89 and McGann's '96 TV movie, and saw writers including Russell T Davies and Mark Gatiss pen new travels for Sylvester McCoy's Doctor.
And there are hundreds more novels featuring past Doctors, and brilliant novelisations of TV episodes, and Torchwood books, and short-story collections, some by big-name authors... Oh, you get the idea. Get thee to a bookshop!
4. Or read a comic
Doctor Who has a long and rich history with comics, dating all the way back to the '60s.
Since 2014, Titan Comics has publishing ongoing series following each of the ninth, 10th, 11th and 12th Doctors – plus miniseries featuring the eighth, fourth, third and seventh – all telling tales with an ambition and visual scope that would probably bankrupt the BBC, but which work superbly on the page.
In October 2018, Titan began publishing Doctor Who: The Thirteenth Doctor, and, for the serious collector, there's even a Torchwood comic picking up where the TV show left off, co-written by none other than John Barrowman.
Doctor Who will return to BBC One in "very early" 2020.
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