Doctor Who News, Articles, Cast and Crew Interviews

[Alan]

Series 8: “At least” 13 episodes in 2014
Published October 31, 2013

Some fans have felt that the 50th anniversary year has come up a little short in terms of the actual amount of Doctor Who episodes being broadcast, 10 in total by the end of 2013. The majority of which were remaining episodes from Series 7 held over from 2012.

However, there is some good news for the future at least. Steven Moffat has confirmed that we can expect a full series for Peter Capaldi’s debut run next year.

In an interview with Broadcast, Moffat says they are committed to producing “at least” 13 episodes in 2014. Although, it is not clear if this includes the 2014 Christmas special or not. Earlier reports did suggest that Series 8 would be slightly reduced to 12 episodes as opposed to 13.

Speaking about the difficulty of juggling his current workload on the show Moffat said: “There’s always a point in production, usually half-way, maybe two thirds, through a series when you realise you’re juggling at least one aspect of each show at once: maybe a press launch for one, another in the edit and I might not have written the last one. You wake up in the night thinking about 13 emergencies, each of them equally calamitous. As a lifestyle choice, it’s questionable.”

He adds: “One of the hardest things for me to do is work out when I’ll have time to write. A whole week can disappear when I haven’t had a moment to sit down. I was amazed recently when I got a script ready in time for the tone meeting.”

Link to original article here: http://www.doctorwhotv.co.uk/series-...2014-54632.htm

[BruTak]

Any of you Australian types manage to catch this when it was on?

http://www.au.timeout.com/sydney/aro...s-vivid-sydney

[Teddybrown]

http://www.doctorwhotv.co.uk/50th-co...ning-54659.htm
More details on 50th convention.

[Teddybrown]

http://www.doctorwhotv.co.uk/doctor-...2013-54519.htm
UPDATED: Exclusive clip of TDOTD to be shown on Children in Need

[Quizziard]

http://www.doctorwhotv.co.uk/doctor-...2013-54519.htm
UPDATED: Exclusive clip of TDOTD to be shown on Children in Need

So, presumably, spoiler-phobes will need to avoid it. Would have preferred a small piece of original material that provides a lead-in...

[Blencathra]

Tweet from Doctor Who Official (@bbcdoctorwho)

#DoctorWho has won ‘Best British TV Show’ at the BBC Radio 1 Teen Awards! Big thanks to everyone who voted!

and...

50th Minisode: The Night of the Doctor

http://www.doctorwhotv.co.uk/50th-mi...medium=twitter

The British Board of Film Classification have revealed another one of the extras for the 50th anniversary special, The Day of the Doctor.

There is a mini episode entitled The Night of the Doctor starring Matt Smith and David Tennant. It runs for exactly 6 minutes and 54 seconds. No other details are presently known.

This is in addition to the extra revealed last week entitled The Last Day.

More details on the 50th special itself have also been outed. As previously reported, it is classified ‘PG’ for containing “mild violence and threat.” Further insight on the reasoning for the rating follows:

Spoiler:

There are scenes of mild violence, including attacks on a city and its residents, as well as scenes of threat from attacking forces.

There is one use of mild bad language (“Oh my God”).

[Blencathra]

AudioGO in Administration

http://www.doctorwhonews.net/2013/11...istration.html

Audiobook publisher AudioGO, the company licensed by the BBC to produce Doctor Who Audiobooks, has been placed into administration, suspending all operations.

AudioGO was formed in July 2010,when a team of private investors bought out the Bath-based BBC Audiobooks, with BBC Worldwide still owning a minority stake. The company produced a number of audio products based on BBC programmes, including a large number of Doctor Who-related discs, such as readings of classic novelisations and productions such as the Destiny of the Doctor series. (This series continues to be available from co-producers Big Finish).

The company suspended operations on 22nd October, following the discovery of financial irregularities and the suspension of the managing director and departure of the financial director. It was hoped that a buyer for the business could be found which would enable the company to continue trading. However, on Friday AudioGO was formally put into administration, with 57 employees losing their jobs.

Mark Shaw, of the administrators BDO, said

Significant accounting issues and the consequent working capital requirements at AudioGO led to it being insolvent. Unfortunately, there was no other option at this stage but to place the remaining UK business into administration, as no suitable buyer could be found. The administrators are taking all necessary steps to mitigate losses to customers and to maximise recoveries for the benefit of creditors.

Before administration the company sold its US arm Blackstone Audio back to Blackstone's founders, who operate the US Downpour.com download site. AudioGo had acquired Blackstone 10 months ago.

[Blencathra]

Murray Gold receives IFMCA Award for Doctor Who

http://filmmusiccritics.org/2013/11/...or-doctor-who/

Composer Murray Gold has been presented with the 2012 International Film Music Critics Association Award for Best Original Score for a Television Series for Doctor Who by IFMCA member Jon Broxton.

This is Gold’s first win from four nominations, all of which were for his work on the Doctor Who series. The other nominees in the television category were Downton Abbey by John Lunn, Green Lantern: The Animated Series by Frederik Wiedmann, Isabel by Federico Jusid, and Priceless by Naoki Sato.

Doctor Who is the BBC’s lavish reincarnation of the classic British science fiction show, which originally began in 1963, and was brought back to screens in 2005 to entertain a whole new generation of fans enchanted by the adventures of the time-traveling Doctor and his battles across time and space with Daleks, Cybermen, and dozens of other alien monsters and inter-stellar megalomaniacs. Gold’s music is large, bold, and theme-filled, and performed with consummate gusto by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales under the capable baton of conductor Ben Foster. Series 7, in which the Doctor is portrayed by Matt Smith, gave Gold the opportunity to build further on his multiple themes for the main characters, and produce even more brilliant, exciting music.

English composer Gold was born in Portsmouth in 1969, attended the University of Cambridge, and began his career in film music in the late 1990s. He first came to prominence following his acclaimed, BAFTA-nominated score for the BBC costume drama Vanity Fair in 1998, and he subsequently worked on such popular TV projects as Queer as Folk (1999), Randall & Hopkirk Deceased (2000), Clocking Off (2000), Shameless (2004) and Casanova (2005), as well as feature films such as Beautiful Creatures (2000) and Hawking (2004). Gold joined the crew of Doctor Who when it returned to screens in 2005, and he has since scored all 102 episodes of the show to date, including all episodes featuring Christopher Ecclestone, David Tennant and Matt Smith as the Doctor; he also wrote a new arrangement of the show’s famous theme, originally composed by Ron Grainer. While working on Who, Gold has continued to stretch his musical horizons by writing music for other projects, including TV shows such as Last Tango in Halifax and the Doctor Who spinoff Torchwood, as well as movies such as Alien Autopsy (2006), Death at a Funeral (2007), and Hoodwinked Too! Hood vs. Evil (2011).

As a writer, Gold won the Michael Imison Memorial Prize for Best New Radio Play in 2002 for Electricity, which was produced at the West Yorkshire Playhouse. His other plays include 50 Revolutions performed by the Oxford Stage Company at the Whitehall Theatre, London in 2000 and Resolution, which was staged at Battersea Arts Centre in 1994. Gold also wrote the radio play Kafka the Musical which was broadcast on BBC Radio 3 on Easter Sunday 2011, and won the 2013 Tinniswood Award for the Best Original Radio Drama.

[Blencathra]

Tom Baker on Doctor Who: 'It was so much better than real life'

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-24657064

As Doctor Who nears its 50th anniversary, Tom Baker reflects on his seven years as the fourth Doctor. "It was so much better than real life," he says.

Tom Baker is planning to break the habit of a lifetime on 23 November.

The actor says he's never been interested in watching Doctor Who - including his own stories - but he plans to sit down in front of this month's special episode that will mark the show's 50th anniversary.

"I hope it's going to be terrific," he says. "It's such a landmark. It'll be a big, emotional thing, but I don't know what they'll do - I'll make an exception and watch that."

With his long scarf and love of jelly babies, Baker's fourth Doctor remains one of the most instantly recognisable incarnations of the Time Lord. He is also the show's longest-serving star, having played the role from 1974 to 1981.

"I can't explain the show's longevity any more than I can explain my own," booms the 79-year-old actor when we meet in a private members' club in London's Covent Garden. "It's just a happy accident."

Baker admits he "wasn't at all happy" just before he was cast to replace Jon Pertwee in what is arguably British TV's most well-known role.

After joining Olivier's National Theatre company in the late 1960s, Baker moved into films. He was Rasputin in Nicholas and Alexandra (1971) and had roles in Pier Paolo Pasolini's The Canterbury Tales (1972) and The Golden Voyage of Sinbad (1973).

But he was working as a labourer when he was cast in Doctor Who.

"I was going through a bad time of feeling rejected, even though I'd had a flirtation with movies. I was on a building site, having no skill there except to make the tea and use a drill," Baker recalls.

"So when the opportunity came to play Doctor Who, it was a jackpot."

Baker's co-workers on the building site found out the news by reading it in the Evening Standard.

"I went to work next morning - famous! They were so thrilled for me. I legged it down to Barclays Bank and got an advance and gave them a party. It was like being reborn."

Baker admits he had no idea how he was going to tackle his role as the new star of Doctor Who.

"How could I? I didn't watch it. I didn't watch it when I was in it and I haven't watched it since. So when it came, and these scripts were given to me, one of the problems was they were being written for Jon Pertwee - so I had to wrench it my way."

Without doubt, Baker made the part his own. Viewing figures went up and many of his stories - The Ark in Space, Genesis of the Daleks, The Brain of Morbius, The Deadly Assassin and The Robots of Death - are regarded as classics.

How did he find being the Doctor?

Baker beams. "It was a great experience. Actors want a big audience, and to be admired and to get applause is one thing, but to be adored is something I recommend."

He reminisces about visiting schools and hospitals, doing charity work and being flown round in helicopters.

"Everywhere I went I was waving like royalty and dishing out 50 pence pieces," he says.

"It was so much better than real life. I stayed so long because real life at the time wasn't so terrific.

"Being Doctor Who, I used to look at the clock and know at half past four we were going to stop rehearsing - and that was a sad moment for me because I wanted to stay in this beautiful, unreal world."

Asked if he has kept any Doctor Who props, Baker responds: "I had lots of bits and pieces but they've all been begged off me by the charities. It's all gone now."

"I have some interesting letters from fans who saw me as a messianic figure and thought I could do miracles."

He flashes one of his Doctor-like grins: "They were quite mistaken, but I didn't disabuse them."

After leaving Doctor Who in 1981, Baker's career embraced TV, stage and film.

In 1982 he was Sherlock Holmes in BBC TV's The Hound of the Baskervilles, and his stage roles included Hedda Gabler, Educating Rita (RSC) and She Stoops to Conquer (NT).

More recent TV roles include Randall & Hopkirk (Deceased), Monarch of the Glen (2004-5) and the narrator of Little Britain.

Despite his assertion that he's not watched his own stories, Baker has, of course, sat through some of them for DVD commentaries and at conventions.

In recent years he has reprised the role of the Doctor for a number of Big Finish audio adventures.

"I'm back now in the groove," Baker says. "The fans want to go back in time and I don't disappoint them because I haven't advanced at all from Doctor Who."

All these years on, the actor notes, Doctor Who fans can still be in awe of him.

"Anyone who's on television gets a reaction when playing a heroic part like the Doctor. And it still happens now with much older people.

"But some of them are telling me lies," he adds, with a glint in his eye. "I met an old lady, aged about 85, the other day, who said: 'When I was a little girl I used to hide behind the sofa when I saw you!'"

Many of those who watched the show in the 1960s and '70s have helped bring on the next generation of fans.

"People introduce me to their grandchildren or to their children," Baker says. "It's very sweet that it's passed on affectionately by parents, showing my old stuff.

"Small children sometimes approach me and ask 'is it true you used to be Doctor Who?'"

The Doctor Who 50th anniversary special, The Day of the Doctor, will be shown on BBC One on 23 November.

[Teddybrown]

http://www.doctorwhotv.co.uk/davison...rose-54725.htm
Davison feels companions weren't written right till Rose...

[Teddybrown]

http://www.doctorwhotv.co.uk/the-day...psis-54738.htm
Official synopsis released by BBC.

[BruTak]

http://www.doctorwhotv.co.uk/the-day...psis-54738.htm
Official synopsis released by BBC.

Getting excited now!

T-minus 19 days and counting...

[Blencathra]

I sort of read that synopsis with one eye closed as I was a bit frightened it would give away too much, but it really doesn't say anything more than we know already, thank goodness.

And yes, I'm getting excited as well.

[Alan]

I'm not not looking at that released synopsis at all, minimal details or not.

ROLL ON NOVEMBER 23RD!!! 19 DAYS TO GO!!!

Regarding the Doctor's regeneration cycle:

Spoiler:

Watched Mawdryn Undead...wonder if the Doctor's inherited some sort of immortality that's resulted in him having an endless regeneration cycle.

[BruTak]

How many of us are booked for "The Day of the Doctor" in the Cinema?