I am restraining my editorial and trying to provide just the facts on the upcoming new season due to start on April 3rd.
– SPOILER WARNING –
Much of what is revealed below is from a reporter’s visit to the set during filming of the Season 5 (or is it 31?) premiere episode ‘The Eleventh Hour’ and posted on the Telegraph.
Doctor No. 11, Matt Smith
Via the Telegraph UK
Not only was Smith a surprising choice as the 11th Doctor, his ‘look’ was a last minute decision:
(The bow tie, with tweed jacket and braces, was Smith’s idea, and a last-minute replacement for a ‘more piratey’ look that the producers had developed.) Though Smith, 27, received good notices for his breakthrough TV role, in the little-watched BBC2 political drama Party Animals, he was a surprise choice to play the Doctor.
High expectations, the obligatory snarky thumbing of the nose at fandom.
Steven Moffat, the new lead writer and executive producer of Doctor Who, calls the cast and crew assembled in the Caernarfon Suite to order. ‘This,’ he says, with a portentousness that’s only half-sardonic, ‘will be the most scrutinised hour of our television lives.’ No fewer than 58 members of cast and crew are gathered for the script read-through of the first episode of the 2010 run: a new series, but also a new production team, a new companion and a new Doctor in the form of Matt Smith.
‘I think that’s Steven’s form of encouragement,’ Smith says drily. As the Doctor, Smith will be scrutinised not only by 10 million viewers, but also by some very nervous BBC executives and a dedicated – some would say slightly unhinged – online fan community. ‘You don’t really think about it on a day-to-day level,’ Smith says. ‘Because if you did, you’d never get anything done.’
‘The Eleventh Hour’ plot (notice how the threat is viewed as ‘obligatory,’ even the reporter is bored by it).
Smith hasn’t quite finished regenerating – a process that varies in length from Doctor to Doctor, but for Smith will carry on throughout episode one of the new run. There’s his new companion to introduce: Amy Pond, played by 22-year-old Karen Gillan – who was the last person to audition for the role, and who Moffat says was ‘a bit kookier’ than the others. And then, of course, there’s the obligatory threat of global annihilation – in the form of the Atraxi, an orbiting crowd of thuggish galactic policemen – to dispatch.
New companion, Amy Pond.
The race to save the planet that’s unfolding on the village green will, Gillan says, help to show viewers what bonds the Doctor and Amy together. ‘They’re two of a kind. They’re both a bit lost,’ she says. ‘Because Amy has no parents, she’s this Scottish girl in an English village. So they’re both lost souls that have found each other. And they both have a sense of adventure about them, and I think that’s what the Doctor loves about Amy. She has that spirit in her, and that fire. She keeps him on his toes.’
Not only does it serve as a plot contrivance, the sonic screwdriver is also the center of its own plot contrivances.
For now, it’s still Tennant’s screwdriver (at this point in the episode, in fact, the ‘raggedy Doctor’ is still wearing Tennant’s battered suit and trainers). For the purposes of both the episode (to frustrate the Doctor and cause a nice bang) and the series (so Smith can have his own, spanking new sonic screwdriver), the screwdriver has to explode.
Moffat’s agenda (more of the same, with a strange fear of replicating the golden age of the program from the 1970’s)…
Moffat is settling into the hotel bar – a welcome haven from the squall outside – with Piers Wenger, the head of drama for BBC Wales, and Beth Willis, the show’s third executive producer. For this new run, which starts on BBC One on Easter weekend, these three have taken over from the almost legendary team of Russell T Davies and Julie Gardner. Davies and Gardner transplanted Doctor Who to BBC Wales for its new incarnation after a 16-year absence from the screen and, through Christopher Eccleston and David Tennant, created a success that was monstrous in more ways than one. In those illustrious footsteps, Moffat says he has one goal above all others for this new series.
‘For it not to be shit,’ he says succinctly. ‘One wobbly wall, one pony-looking effect, one tiny thing goes wrong, and it’s back to the 1970s.’ Though there will be obvious differences – a new Doctor, for one – Moffat says that the team are not focused on changing the show from what’s gone before. ‘The audience, whether they’re eight years old or 48, they’re not waiting to see why it’s different or strange or new, they’re just wanting it to be really good. It’s actually an incredibly easy challenge to make something different. It’s incredibly hard to make something good.’
[Matt] Smith thinks again. ‘I think episode one has a lovely fairytale quality to it, which is a credit to Steven. I think it’s quite filmic, actually, and has a great story,’ he says. And then, almost in a whisper, he adds, ‘It’s a good start for us.’
The new TARDIS interior has changed (oh good, it has a swing now).
This new Tardis – not an obligatory accessory for each new Doctor, but required by the damage done to it in Tennant’s last episode – is big. It must be three times the size of Tennant’s, on multiple levels with staircases in between. Less grubby than its predecessor, with a transparent plastic floor on the main level, its walls are resplendent with polished copper and its central column features a blown glass decoration that could be straight from Tales of the Unexpected. There are old car seats and downstairs – downstairs! – a swing. With a nod to Paul McGann’s Tardis, the central column features an old TV screen on an extendable trellis. It also has a 1980s-style computer keyboard, and a His-Master’s-Voice style trumpet speaker.
Details on the season-long thread and the idea that Doctor Who is a fairy tale (previously stated above) is re-enforced.
(Via SFX) “I think there’s a magic to it. Steven has written a rather brilliant fairytale, in such a magical way. The Doctor’s getting to know his new body, which is just brilliant, all the great stuff that Steven’s done with that. What’s interesting about this particular series is that it has a thread twining through it. And you learn about that in episode one. And the Doctor’s scoping it out. It’s quite important for the rest of the tale.”
Is this Season One? Season Five? Season Thirty One? 31 would confirm that this is a continuation of the classic series, 5 recognizes the five years of BBC Wales Doctor Who, but the production team actually has renumbered the new Matt Smith era starting over at 1… but Moffat not only sees no debate, he also has an opinion on what numbers are more exciting than others:
(Via Androzani.net): “It’s Series Thirty-One of Doctor Who, and it’s Series One of Matt Smith’s Doctor, Those are both real numbers. I submit that ‘Series Five of Doctor Who’ means absolutely nothing unless you really believe that Matt Smith is the third Doctor. Everyone knows he’s the Eleventh Doctor so that means it’s definitely not ‘Series Five’. Whichever number you choose, ‘Series Five’ is the one that’s flawed.”
“’Series One’ is an exciting sentence. ‘Series Thirty-One’ is an awe-inspiring sentence. ‘Series Five’ is a boring sentence – and also a complete lie.”
BBC wales’ Head of Drama Piers Wenger on what fans can expect from the new Doctor Who:
(Via Digital Spy)”It wasn’t about suddenly becoming Tim Burton, but it was finding a pinch of that, a pinch of Twilight, a pinch of Harry Potter – but it’s still absolutely, slap-bang, mainstream Doctor Who.
I quite like Steven Moffat and was initially very excited about his take on the program. Based on his scripts this far, he has provided some of the more memorable and exciting episodes of the new program (Empty Child/The Doctor Dances, Girl in the Fireplace, Blink, Silence in the Library). Has his stance changed, is my take on his approach flawed or was he set upon by the BBC to make Doctor Who into a whimsical fairy tale?
The new series starts next month with a special hour-long adventure featuring a new Doctor, new companion, new TARDIS, opening sequence and logo and yet it sounds like more of the same to me. But don’t take my word for any of this, read the articles I have linked here and make up your own mind.
The Daily P.O.P. 