David Tennant & Catherine Tate to Return for DOCTOR WHO's 60th Anniversary in 2023

 
Your move, Matt Smith and Karen Gillan.

The BBC has announced that former Doctor Who stars David Tennant and Catherine Tate are returning as their respective characters the Tenth Doctor and Donna Noble for the show's 60th anniversary in 2023.

This will be the first televised reunion of the Tenth Doctor and Donna Noble since "The End of Time, Part Two" in 2010, the second part of Tennant's final story during his tenure as the Tenth Doctor. In their final encounter, the Tenth Doctor appeared after Donna's wedding and met up with Donna's grandfather Wilfred Mott and her mother Sylvia Noble. The Doctor gave Wilfred and Sylvia a wedding gift for Donna, an envelope with something purchased with a pound given to him by Sylvia's late husband. When Donna opened the envelope, she found a lottery ticket, to which both Wilf and Sylvia realized was a winning ticket which would solve all of Donna's financial problems. The Doctor then left with a final look at Wilfred, the man whose life he saved at the expense of his own. As he left, Wilfred saluted him and cried, realizing he would never see the Doctor again.

Tennant and Tate has since appeared together as their characters in the 2016 and 2019 Big Finish Productions audio adventures Technophobia, Time Reaver, Death and the Queen, No Place, One Mile Down, and The Creeping Death.

In a statement, returning Doctor Who showrunner Russell T Davies teased, "They're back! And it looks impossible -- first, we announce a new Doctor, and then an old Doctor, along with the wonderful Donna, what on earth is happening? Maybe this is a missing story. Or a parallel world. Or a dream, or a trick, or a flashback. The only thing I can confirm is that it’s going to be spectacular, as two of our greatest stars reunite for the battle of a lifetime."

Tennant, 51, last appeared on Doctor Who as the Tenth Doctor in the 50th anniversary special, "The Day of the Doctor", where he met Matt Smith's Eleventh Doctor and the late Sir John Hurt's War Doctor. In his final scene, before he stepping into his TARDIS, the Tenth Doctor expressed his desire to change the Eleventh Doctor's final destination of Trenzalore, saying: "I don't want to go." This echoed Tennant's final line in "The End of Time, Part Two" before the character regenerated into Smith's Doctor.