Series 5/2010 Megathread -Spoilers

[Tomspy77]

Start date and time revealed?
The BBC Programme Information site is saying the new series will begin on Saturday 3rd April at 6.25pm.
The Doctor has regenerated into a brand new man, but danger strikes before he can even recover. With the TARDIS wrecked, and the sonic screwdriver destroyed, the new Doctor has just 20 minutes to save the whole world - and only Amy Pond to help him.
The date and time have not been confirmed by the BBC Press Office and are subject to change. The series is referred to as Series Five on the website and the duration of the episode is noted as 60 minutes.
gallifreynewsbase.blogspot.com

Here is a clip from BBC news that includes a short clip of the first epiosde of series 5 at the end...
news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/8575519.stm

And a short review of epiosde one:
news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/8572786.stm

[Tomspy77]

With the press launch of Doctor Who last night, the BBC Press Office have now released more information on the forthcoming 2010 series. As well as a brief listing of cast and crew (see our side bar for more details), the pack also includes interviews with the stars and production team.


New Doctor Matt Smith reflects on his version of the Time Lord, and the role of the TARDIS:
He is still the same man but I think my Doctor is a bit more reckless; he's a thrill-seeker and addicted to time travel. He is the mad buffoon genius who saves the world because he's got a great heart, spirit and soul but he also doesn't suffer fools. I hope all of these things come across but I think I've also injected a bit of my own personality into the role. I also helped choose the Doctor's costume which was great fun. Steven Moffat was very keen the outfit isn't seen as the overriding factor of the Doctor's personality but we still needed to find something that felt right. We tried on lots of things but kept reaching a dead end and we dismissed a number of items including a long leather coat, a long blue coat and some short punky stuff! But then one day I brought in my braces and a tweed jacket and it went from there. Soon we had the whole outfit although something still felt like it was missing and I asked if I could try on a bow tie – at that point the execs all bowed their heads in concern but luckily when I tried it on we agreed it worked and it has sort of become the signature of my Doctor now.

The TARDIS is like a Ferrari, Lamborghini and Porsche all moulded into one! It's so incredible because the TARDIS is an icon of our cultural history and suddenly I'm the one who's flying it. I am quite clumsy though so I kept breaking parts of the console and the poor production team had to keep fixing it. But the TARDIS is a magic concept and it provides a constant source of wonderment and adventure for both the Doctor and the viewers.

Karen Gillan considers her character and the relationship with the Doctor:
Well, for a start Steven Moffat has written a brilliant character. I do think Amy is different from previous Companions because she's very equal to the Doctor. She doesn't take his word as gospel and she's always happy to challenge him. If he tells her to do something then she won't necessarily do it, she might go off and do her own thing which can sometimes create a rift between the two of them! They are best pals though and it's a very up and down relationship because they are both very passionate people.

The Doctor is definitely an alpha male and Amy is an alpha female, so when they meet, they combust. They have quite a turbulent relationship but it's also really passionate and they care about each other. Amy can really hold her own against him and Steven's written some great one-liners. It's a great relationship.

I think it's quite important that I feel like her when I wear the clothes. So I worked quite closely with the costume designer, Ray, and also the producers, to come up with the signature Amy look. They were generally vintage clothes, but we tried to incorporate high street styles as well because Amy is young. I think naturally there is going to be some of me in her style, as I relate to Amy and we are the same age as each other.

Head Writer and Executive Producer Steven Moffat discusses the casting process for the two principle characters of the series:
I had a clear idea, which actually turned out to be the absolute opposite of what we ended up doing – which always happens when you get the casting right. I actually remember at the beginning of the process when I got a little bit cross whilst looking at the list of actors as it was full of people in their twenties. I said to everyone that we couldn't have a Doctor who is 27. My idea was that the person was going to be between 30–40 years old, young enough to run but old enough to look wise. Then, of course, Matt Smith comes through the door and he's odd, angular and strange looking. He doesn't come across as being youthful at all, in the most wonderful way.

The challenge with casting the Companion is that there are only so many people that would actually go through those blue doors. It has to be someone that loves adventure and doesn't quite feel at home with where they are. They have to be a feisty, fun-loving and gutsy person – and now we've got Karen Gillan. She was just exactly right for the role despite inhabiting Amy Pond in a way that was quite different from how I originally wrote the part.

Beth Willis, Executive Producer, reflects on the making of the new series:
It has definitely been a big challenge taking on this show because we love it so much, and why tinker with something that has been as popular, successful and brilliant as it has been? But at the same time we are terribly aware we have to look forward and work out how the show is going to survive in the future. In 2005 the team looked at what was fresh and new then and we have to do a bit of that ourselves. Looking at the episodes we've filmed so far we're starting to see the impact of those changes; what the team has managed to achieve is pretty thrilling.

Head of Drama for BBC Wales, Piers Wenger, explains the aim for the series:
The thing which is most important to us is telling a good story at the end of the day; that's always the thing the audience is going to be most demanding about. Beyond that, any changes we have made have been motivated by giving the show the best production values money can buy. It's the nation's favourite, and that means it deserves the best.

It is the biggest show on British TV in terms of the level of technical expertise everyone has to be versed in. There were new challenges for Beth and I as we had limited experience in dealing with prosthetics and complex CGI. However, I think the biggest challenge was to move everything forward and make the right calls on what to change and what not to.


Finally, what makes Doctor Who the show it is?
Matt Smith: The idea is magic. Time travel and the TARDIS are just brilliant concepts and within the context of television it gives writers the opportunity to pen amazing stories because they have the scope to go anywhere and do anything. Doctor Who is infinite in its orbit and imagination and so it has fulfilled audiences' desires throughout the decades and will hopefully continue to do so in the future.

Steven Moffat: I think it is centrally vital for Doctor Who that at its heart and in its soul it is a children's programme. Not one that excludes adults, but one that welcomes them in. But when Doctor Who is really working, when it really delivers, the entire audience is eight years old – whatever age they started out!

See the press pack for the full interviews.
gallifreynewsbase.blogspot.com

[Tomspy77]

Ten Teasers From Matt's First Outing:

1. The newly regenerated Doctor's first words to Amy are: "Can I have an *****? All I can think about is *****s. I love *****s."

2. One character asks Santa to send them something most unusual.

3. The Tardis has, or had, a swimming pool. And a library.

4. Amy Pond is handy with a cricket bat.

5. Several familiar faces make a cameo. Including 10 previously seen on Doctor Who. And Sir Patrick Moore, who thinks Amy's gran is a fox.

6. The Doctor is referred to as "raggedy", "magic" and "a disappointment".

7. The Doctor inadvertently comes across something inappropriate when he commandeers a laptop for some high-tech world saving via Twitter.

8. A fire engine makes for an interesting, and innovative rescue vehicle.

9. The Shadow Proclamation gets a mention.

10. The Doctor bares all to Amy. And we don't mean his soul.

tv.sky.com/doctor-who-episode-1-10-teasers

[Tomspy77]

[Tomspy77]

Easter, we have been told for centuries from the pulpit, is a season of regeneration. The BBC presumably intends no blasphemy in choosing Easter Saturday for the first proper appearance of the regenerated Doctor Who, aka the actor Matt Smith, seen briefly at the very end of David Tennant’s final outing in the part at Christmas. By that curious time travel sometimes available to the select few, yesterday journalists and the Welsh ruling classes were delivered unto Cardiff to see Smith’s debut a fortnight early.

Secrecy surrounds Doctor Who like no other BBC programme and the media last night were encouraged to observe a vow of omerta regarding the details of the episode, entitled The Eleventh Hour in honour of the eleventh Doctor. That, The Times, decided still left room to praise it and particularly the performance of Matt Smith. At 27, he is the youngest actor to land the part, although the show’s new lead writer and producer, Steven Moffat, has always insisted that Smith won it despite, rather than because of, his youth. What was crucial was that by the end of episode 1 we stopped thinking of him as young, for the Doctor is, as we all know, an alien born many Earth centuries ago.

What is clever about Moffat’s script as well as Smith’s interpretation is that it allows the new Doctor to grow within his first hour’s outing. He starts as a raggedy-clothed, tatty-shirted doctor, a tie barely secured around his neck. His actions are jerky, almost like a newborn’s. He is a forehead-slapping, apple- munching, fishfinger-and-custard- chewing adolescent, still finding his place in his new body. By the end the Doctor is almost debonair in a tweedy jacket and tightly wrapped bow-tie. “They’re cool,” he says of the neckware and my bet is that by Christmas they will be, too, even in necktie-free Britain.

The actors who have played the Doctor have all brought something to the part. William Hartnell, the original, cast in 1963, played him as a censorious Victorian older than his 55 years. His successor, Patrick Troughton, was a cosmic hobo. For many, none has surpassed Tom Baker, a genuine eccentric who in the late 1970s took the plots seriously but never himself so.
Related Links

* Will Doctor 11 have the phwoargh factor?

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* Matt Smith is the new Dr Who

In the revived series post-2005 under Russell T. Davies, Christopher Eccleston regionalised the Doctor, and David Tennant brought an angsty arrogance to the part. Others took something from the role, namely authority. There was nothing lordly, and very little timelordly, about Sylvester McCoy.

Smith is undoubtedly aristocratic, a prince rather than a lord of space and time, but one in no doubt of his lineage — briefly referred to last night in the briefest of romps through the previous ten Doctors. But what he does bring to the part is indeed his youth. He is comfortable with Google and Twitter, and is not going to run short of breath amid all the rushing around that the modern Doctor Who plots require.

Whereas Tennant incorporated the misery of eternity into the part, Smith’s Doctor is not afraid to go “Wow!” when he sees what has happened to the inside of the Tardis. It is, incidentally, geometrically arranged in greens and reds with a retro look that incoporates a Seventies digital clock, a gramophone horn and (oh dear) a pair of hot and cold taps. Boys of all ages know that wow feeling when they first charge up their new smartphone.

Karen Gillan, as the new companion Amy, compensates for the Doctor’s relief last Christmas on discovering he is not ginger, by being a vivacious redhead, a girl still and with a girl’s innocence and sexiness — and manifesting an obvious crush on her new man. Yet she too grows up by the episode’s end.

Again Moffat tackles the question of youth in this pilot by presenting her first as an eight-year-old and then 10 years later. It is an episode rightly much concerned with time, flitting around the decades but also presenting the bulk of the action in as near as dammit real time. Connoisseurs — if not the Welsh Secretary Peter Hain and the former first minister Rhodri Morgan, who were among the VIP guests — will also enjoy it that the Paisley-born Moffat chose to set his debut episode in a Scottish rather than a Welsh village.

The monster, as viewers will discover at Easter, is a very large eye, a metaphor surely for the immense scrutiny this regenerative episode will attract. Moffat was nervous before the screening, although “this”, he said, pointing to his glass of red wine, was helping. He gives his new Doctor the line, “I am still cooking.” There will be critics, of course, but it looked well done to me.

The new series of Doctor Who starts on BBC One on Saturday, April 3

[Tomspy77]

Executive Producer Steven Moffat talks to The Guardian today about his hopes and plans for the new series. He talks about taking over one of the BBC's biggest brands and his fears for the BBC should there be a change of government this year.

Moffat speaks of his excitement in writing both the opening and closing episodes of the series and of how he wanted to do more fun, following his reputation as a writer of darker episodes. Although no past characters appear in the forthcoming series, Moffat hints he would not be averse to Captain Jack meeting Matt Smith's Doctor in the future.
gallifreynewsbase.blogspot.com
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BBC America have updated their Doctor Who Websiteinpreparationfor the new series launching on the channel on April 17.

The updated site includes profiles on The Doctor and Amy Pond and a photo gallery from The Eleventh Hour as well as guides to the series and a trailer.
gallifreynewsbase.blogspot.com

[Tomspy77]

[Tomspy77]

Jonathan Ross welcomes Eleventh Doctor Matt Smith onto his Friday night chat show tonight.

In the programme, recorded yesterday, Smith talks about becoming the Doctor:
My Doctor is clumsy, a little reckless, but becomes more assured as the series develops. I couldn't tell anyone for three months, To my mind it's the best part in British TV history. I spoke to David briefly, he said 'enjoy the ride'
On the TARDIS, he reveals there have been some changes:
It's bigger on the inside, has different levels, other rooms including a library, and is a different shade of blue outside. I hope to do at least another year, it's a wonderful part and I want to keep it.

There's also an exclusive sneak preview of episode six of the new series, the Doctor's encounter with vampires.

Smith is joined on the programme by Emma Thompson and Professor Brian Cox. The programme is on BBC One/BBC HD at 10.35pm and will be shown on BBC America at a later date. NB: Quotes are taken verbatim from the studio recording and may not actually be included in the transmitted version of the programme.
gallifreynewsbase.blogspot.com

[Tomspy77]

bbcamerica.com/shows/doctor-who/video/new-series-videos.jsp?bcpid=72484309001&bclid=59272646001&bctid=74063500001

[pickinduck]

The commercial On TV says it will start on the 17th

[sherlew (Ret)]

Yes, on BBC America. Take a look at this this.