Phew, another big week for Who fans… we just published the first picture of David Bradley as William Hartnell – how awesome was that?! – and now the Moff himself is calming our fears about what’s to come this year’s end…
Yes Entertainment Weekly have been chatting to current Doctor Who showrunner Steven Moffat about the Doctor Who 5oth anniversary and what we can expect when Smith becomes… whoever is next.
Earlier this year there were rumours that the annivesary episode – set to be broadcast and shown simultaneously in cinemas – would only be one hour, however it seems this is not the case: “It’s a special episode,” says Moffat. “I think you could call it movie-length, yeah. I mean, I’m saying that with a slight hint of vagueness because I don’t know the finished running time. [Laughs] It’s certainly well over an hour.”
He goes on to talk about the pairing of Matt Smith and David Tennant: “They’re quite a fun pairing, I would say. There’s a bit of the normal joshing of each other but they’re both such enthusiastic Doctors. While they might be sort of competing slightly, they’re both standing there saying, ‘Oh god, it’s so cool, there’s two of me!’ So, it’s very different. I think the other one that worked brilliantly was Jon Pertwee and Patrick Troughton. They were incredibly funny together. This is very different from that but it’s a sublime double act.”
Regarding the regeneration of Smith into his successor, Moffat says it will be traditional – did we expect something nontraditional? – “You know, the Eleventh will fall and the Twelfth shall rise. And you’ll see that in the closing moments of the show. I mean, you sometimes sit and think, ‘Are there better ways of doing it? Is there a different way of doing it?’ But quite honestly what could be better than that? It’s just too exciting.”
Smith will have to have a wig since he has shaved his head for the new Ryan Gosling movie How To Catch A Monster for the scene but the Moff assures that he will have his signature look: “We can’t have Matt’s last stand in the TARDIS without his proper look!”
Curiously, despite all the rumours and news recently about the casting of the new Doctor, unless he’s telling big porkies, it seems the role has not yet been filled: “We’ll announce a new Doctor within days of finalising the new Doctor. Because it’s very very hard to keep any kind of a secret. The last time, when we chose Matt, we had to hold over on that one, because there was a Christmas Doctor Who special called “The Next Doctor” for which Russell T Davies was playing the game of pretending it was going to be David Morrissey. So we couldn’t deflate that. [Laughs]. But I think we’ll go public pretty fast.”
So there you have it… feature length, traditional, wiggy and not yet cast. It’s ever dull being a Doctor Who fan…
Marc
Marc is a self-confessed nerd. Ever since seeing Star Wars for the first time around 1979 he’s been an unapologetic fan of the Wars and still believes, with Clone Wars and now Underworld, we are yet to see the best Star Wars. He’s a dad of two who now doesn’t have the time (or money) to collect the amount of toys, comics, movies and books he once did, much to the relief of his long-suffering wife. In the real world he’s a graphic designer. He started Following the Nerd because he was tired of searching a million sites every day for all the best news that he loves and decided to create one place where you can go to get the whole lot. Secretly he longs to be sitting in the cockpit of his YT-1300 Corellian Transport ship with his co-pilot Chewie, roaming the universe, waiting for his next big adventure, but feels just at home watching cartoons with his kids….
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