Showrunner, Russell T Davies, has confirmed that the Fifteenth Doctor will meet the Beatles and visit Abbey Road in an upcoming episode of Doctor Who Series 14.

In imagine … Russell T Davies: The Doctor and Me review, Davies guides Alan Yentob through Bad Wolf Studios, enthuses about the Doctor meeting the Fab Four, and further explains:

“This is Abbey Road in 1963. It’s very unbuilt at the moment. This is going to be Studio 1 at Abbey Road — the big studio, the big orchestral studio.

“It has to be said, there’s a great big battle in here to save the universe, with people being flung all over the place… and a moving piano.”

The episode is apparently set in the 1960s, and it’s long been suspected that it would feature the Beatles.

The pop group were due to play themselves in the First Doctor story, The Chase, but while that didn’t happen, per se, a clip from Top of the Pops of the foursome playing Ticket to Ride was used, inspiring Ian Chesterton to dance along in a fashion that has no doubt inspired Who fans for decades. And that episode of Top of the Pops is otherwise missing from the archive, meaning Doctor Who saved this short glimpse at the Beatles’ performance on the long-running BBC charts show.

You can also hear snippets of Beatles tracks in The Evil of the Daleks and Remembrance of the Daleks, while Jo Grant quotes I Am the Walrus in The Three Doctors and the Seventh Doctor namechecks A Hard Day’s Night in Ghost Light.

But yes, finally, we’ll get a story in which the Doctor meets John, Paul, George, and Ringo!

The episode will come shortly after the release of The Beatles’ last ever single, the brilliant Now and Then.