How to watch Doctor Who 60th Anniversary Specials abroad (outside the UK)

Doctor Who fans are about to be treated to a run of three specials to celebrate the 60th anniversary. The episodes will premiere on November 25, December 2, and December 9. This is a nice little extra to tide us over while we wait for season 14; which is due to arrive in 2024. As if that wasn’t enough, the BBC has also promised that there will be a Christmas special in 2023. That means we have a whopping 4 episodes of Doctor Who dropping this winter!

Below, we’ll explain where you can watch every episode live. It’s important to note that we’ll only be recommending official sources. Doctor Who is a sci-fi phenomenon, and as a result, there are sure to be unlicensed streams. However, these are often low-quality and prone to mid-broadcast takedowns. As anyone with a UK TV License can watch Doctor Who for free, there’s really no reason to use unofficial streams.

Best VPN for Doctor Who: NordVPN

VPNs are among the easiest ways to protect your online activities from prying eyes. As well as encrypting your traffic, they allow you to connect to servers all over the world. This means you can use a VPN to get an IP address in Britain from abroad. Perfect if you want to stream BBC iPlayer on vacation.

If you want to watch Doctor Who 60th Anniversary Specials from outside of the UK, we strongly recommend NordVPN. It is a high-speed VPN with more than 5,000 servers spanning 60+ countries. Best of all, it can reliably unblock platforms like BBC iPlayer, Netflix, and Amazon Prime Video.

Signing up is easy and only takes a few minutes. Simply choose your desired subscription length (one month, six months, or a year) and make a payment. This starts a 30-day trial period, meaning you can enjoy watching Doctor Who for free for a month and then get your money back if you want to.

Read our full review of NordVPN to find out more.

How to unblock Doctor Who abroad with a VPN

Never used a VPN before? There’s no need to panic – unblocking geo-restricted services is easy. Here’s how to watch Doctor Who abroad with a VPN:

1. First, register with a reputable VPN provider. We recommend NordVPN, but ExpressVPN and CyberGhost are both excellent alternatives, that offer excellent performance for streaming British TV abroad.
   
2. Install the VPN software. There’s a different version for most popular operating systems so be sure to download the right one.
3. Choose a suitable source from the list below.
4. Connect to one of your VPN’s servers in the appropriate country. For instance, you’ll need a British server to unblock BBC iPlayer or a US one to unblock Disney+.
5. Try loading a video from the site. Once you reload the page, it should begin playing almost instantly, and any errors should disappear.

It’s a good idea to run through the steps above before Doctor Who actually comes on. This way, if you run into difficulty, there’ll still be plenty of time to contact your VPN’s customer support.

The BBC employs particularly strict geo-restriction measures, and as such, your VPN may not work occasionally. In these cases, customer support can often point you to a server that works to watch BBC services. If your VPN can’t help you, that means you need to cancel your subscription and subscribe to one of our recommendations instead.

Where to watch Doctor Who online

Doctor Who is a hugely popular series, and as a result, it’s broadcast simultaneously in several countries around the world. Below, we’ll let you know how to tune in no matter which country you live in.

USA

American viewers will no longer be able to watch Doctor Who on BBC America. This is because the BBC has finalized a deal with Disney+, which is now the international broadcaster of Doctor Who in more than 50 territories around the world.

The 60th Anniversary specials (and the Christmas special) will be uploaded to Disney+ USA a few hours after they finish airing on UK television. Disney+ starts at $7.99 per month, so if you want to stream the show in the US you will need to purchase a subscription.

Remember that Disney+ is region-locked, so if you go on vacation abroad, you will need to use a VPN to regain access to your US Disney account. All the VPNs recommended in this guide have servers in the US that work to watch Disney+.

If you don’t have a subscription to Disney+ and want to stream episodes of Doctor Who while in the US, you could, of course, use a VPN to get a valid IP address in the UK and watch the new episodes for free on BBC iPlayer.

Canada

In Canada, Doctor Who can be streamed live on Disney+. To watch live streams, you’ll need a subscription to Disney+ Canada. The deal with the BBC means that new episodes will be added to the on-demand library a few hours after they finish airing on British TV.

Disney+ region locks its content, meaning you’ll need a VPN to watch if you’re outside Canada. It shows foreign visitors a browser error (“This content is not available for viewing in your browser”) rather than a geo-restriction one, but this disappears when connected to a Canadian server.

UK

Streaming Doctor Who in the UK is very simple: just watch it live on BBC iPlayer. You will have to create an account beforehand, but this is free and only takes a minute. You should note that legally, you’re required to have a valid UK TV License to watch. However, there’s no actual verification process in place, so this service essentially relies on an honor system.

As with the services above, episodes are made available on-demand shortly after airing. BBC iPlayer offers one feature most streaming platforms don’t, however: the ability to watch with audio descriptions if you’re visually-impaired.

See also: Best VPNs for BC iPlayer

Australia

As is the case elsewhere, Disney+ is not the official broadcaster of Doctor Who in Australia. Free episodes are no longer available on ABC, so you will need to pay for a Disney+ subscription to watch Doctor Who in Australia.

If you are on vacation outside of Australia but want to log in and stream your Disney+ account, you can use any of the VPNs in this guide. Our recommendations have servers in Australia that work to stream Disney+ abroad.

If you don’t have a subscription to Disney+ you can opt to connect to a server in the UK to watch the 60th anniversary specials on BBC iPlayer instead.

Other locations

If you live in a non-English-speaking country, you now have a lot more accessibility to Doctor Who thanks to the BBC’s deal with Disney+. Disney has acquired the rights to the show internationally, so you should be able to stream it in most countries where Disney+ is available.

If there’s no local broadcast of Doctor Who, and it’s not included in your country’s Netflix library, you may be able to purchase episodes individually on platforms like Google Play, iTunes, or Amazon.

If you want to watch Doctor Who for free but you’re currently outside of the UK, you can still tune in by connecting to a VPN server in Britain to watch BBC iPlayer.

Can I stream Doctor Who with a free VPN?

Free VPNs might appear to be an easy way to protect yourself online, but they have several disadvantages that premium services don’t. For instance, free services have more users, yet fewer servers to spread the load. This results in long loading times, stuttering video, and potentially even sporadic disconnections. These factors make free VPNs a poor choice for streaming live HD video. Further, these services are often the first to be blacklisted by streaming services, so they’re not reliable in the long-term.

How can a free VPN afford to operate? Although you don’t pay in cash, you still help the company make a profit. By harvesting information about your activity using tracking cookies, these companies can compile a highly-detailed dossier of your browsing habits. This is invasive enough already, but some even sell this information to third parties without your knowledge. As a result, you could find that using a free VPN actually diminishes your online security instead of enhancing it.

Finally, there’s no guarantee that the VPN you’re using is safe. At least one major app store has been found to host dozens of purported free VPNs that actually include malware, or in some cases, don’t actually encrypt your traffic. Even well-known free VPNs have been caught abusing their users’ trust, with one found to be selling idle user bandwidth for profit.

The best way to stay safe online is to use a reputable VPN with a proven track record of protecting its users’ privacy.

Doctor Who cast changes

Below we have included a list of cast members for the new episodes of Doctor Who:

• David Tennant as The Fourteenth Doctor.
• Catherine Tate as Donna Temple-Noble.
• Bernard Cribbins as Wilfred Mott.
• Yasmin Finney as Rose Temple-Noble.
• Jacqueline King as Sylvia Noble.
• Karl Collins as Shaun Temple.