Doctor Who preview: Yaz discovers her family

The new season of Doctor Who continues as the TARDIS team travels to 1940s India, encountering Yaz’s family and maybe some demons along the way.

Doctor Who season 11 continues with an episode that journeys back to 1940s India, putting Thirteen and her friends in the middle of a particularly violent and dramatic point in the country’s history.

The Partition – or division – of British India occurred on August 15, 1947, which led to the dissolution of the British Raj and the creation of two independent dominions, India and Pakistan. The Punjab Province was particularly affected by this separation, and ended up being split into East Punjab and West Punjab, one of which stayed a part of India, and the other which became part of Pakistan.

The partition displaced millions of people, largely along religious lines; there was a massive refugee crisis as well as widespread violence in which many people died. The violent aftermath of the partition is a large part of the reason that the relationship between India and Pakistan remains so fraught to this day.

This complicated and nuanced history is, of course, a lot to put on a Sunday night sci-fi series, so we’ll have to wait and see how much of the events surrounding the partition Doctor Who will choose to portray.

Happily, however, it looks as though “Demons of the Punjab” may finally give Yaz a proper episode of her own, since a major plot thread involves her family’s history, and her grandmother’s involvement in these events.

The official BBC synopsis describes the episode as follows.

"India, 1947. The Doctor and her friends arrive in the Punjab, as India is being torn apart. While Yaz attempts to discover her grandmother’s hidden history, the Doctor discovers demons haunting the land. Who are they, and what do they want?"

“Tread softly; you’re treading on your own history,” Thirteen warns Yaz in the episode trailer. Perhaps this means its time for this particular TARDIS team to learn about the potential downsides of messing about with time travel.

Doctor Who season 11 continues Sunday, Nov. 11 at 8 EST/7 CST on BBC America.