Ever since "Doctor Who" was revived back in 2005, fans have become used to seeing 13 episodes back-to-back starting every spring, barring the skip year in 2009.
However, according to "Doctor Who" showrunner Steven Moffat, that format may be a thing of the past.
During an appearance at the Media Guardian Edinburgh International Television Festival (via The Guardian), Moffat said "What we're going to do this year is make it two [seasons]. "Doctor Who" will come back for seven episodes at Easter, build to an Earth shattering climax in episode 7, that will be a huge cliffhanger. A cliffhanger we would never do normally at the end of a [season] of "Doctor Who" because it would be too long until it came back."
"It's an enormous, honestly game changing cliffhanger for the Doctor, Amy and Rory," continued Moffat. "It'll just change everything for them. And in order to give you time to recover, we'll let you go off, have your summer holidays and come back in the Autumn for another six episodes for what will in fact be [season] 7.
Moffat also argued that "the wrong expression would be to say we're splitting it. We're making actually two separate [seasons]. "What I love about this idea is that with this you're never going to be more than a few months from a new [season] of "Doctor Who." You've got the Easter [season]. the Autumn [season] and the Christmas special.
"Tart that I am, it does occur to me that now we have two first nights and two finales," added Moffat. "We [also] have twice as many event episodes as we had before."
The Doctor (Matt Smith), Amy Pond (Karen Gillan) and Rory Williams (Arthur Darvill) will next appear in the "Doctor Who" Christmas special, which is slated to air later this year.
