Doctor Who Series Seven Update

Hello. Doctor Who Series Seven is supposed to broadcast in 2011... but will it? Danny Cohen, the BBC1 Controller, announced the news to the audience at the 2011 Church and Media Conference. One of the attendees at the conference tweeted:

"Danny Cohen says there won't be a full series of Doctor Who in 2012, but a special run for the anniversary in 2013."

Then, later that day, Lizo Mzimba, a news reporter, tweeted:

"Bit of confusion, to summarise: no FULL 13 episode series of Dr Who in 2012. So some episodes will still go out in 2012. Remainder in 2013."

But before you make any assumptions, this does not clear up everything. Some questions still need to be answered: with some of the episodes in 2012 and some in 2013, will the Christmas Special be shown in the middle of the series? And will Episode Specials (like the ones in 2009) be broadcast up until Series Seven starts?

Also, Steven Moffat tweeted this about the subject of Series Seven:

"Misquotes and misunderstandings. But I'm not being bounced into announcing the cool stuff until we're ready. Hush, and patience."

Following on from this, Doctor Who Magazine said this about the matter:

"Doctor Who's future is safe and secure. And there is 'cool stuff' on the way, according to Steven Moffat. We can definitely vouch for that."

Finally, Sam Hodges from the BBC tweeted:

"Situation stays the same - 14 episodes commisioned, starting in 2012. How they will play out will be revealed at a later date."

The Rebel Flesh Short Interviews

Hello. In the latest edition of Doctor Who Magazine (which seems to be the main focus on the last few days) some short interviews with some of the crew of The Rebel Flesh and The Almost People were printed. One interview is with Raquel Cassidy (Foreman Miranda Cleaves), Julian Simpson (the director of the episode and Matthew Graham (the writer of the episode). The Matthew Graham interview is a few pages long so I'll only put an extract of it.

Raquel Cassidy

"I think I need to read them (the scripts) a few times," grins Raquel Cassidy, who played Foreman Miranda Cleaves. "I was cast three days before we were due to film, and those days were sort of swallowed up by prosthetics appointmentsand costume and stuff like that. So it was a bit of a speed-read to go 'Can I do this? Do I want to do this?' and then 'What does it mean?' so I think it took a while... and, if I'm really honest, because they were long days filming and because I took my family with me, I'm not sure I really knew who I was for a good couple of weeks, which is pretty scary!"

It must've been fun though? "Oh yeah I certainly remember the first day filming, the first scene we filmed, just looking at Matt, looking at this piece of computer thing in an old ruined castle, thinking 'I'm in Doctor Who! And I don't know who I am!' That kind of carried on for a while, I think. It didn't stop it being fun, but as an actor, obviously that's quite a difficult place to be."

Julian Simpson

Speaking of difficult places to be, filming took place in the middle of Winter at Neath Abbey and three castles - Cardiff, Caerphilly and St Donat's - which were "rugged, cold environments," as director Julian Simpson recalls. "The reason we needed more than one was because the script demanded a whole bunch of different rooms within the monastery, and we knew we weren't going to find them all in one castle - partly because most castles aren't intact anymore, and partly because you want different looks and feels because you're spending two episodes in one place."

Armed with production designer Michael Pickwoad's plan of the fictional monastery, showing how the different locations connected, it looked like everything was going smoothly for Julian. "But I managed to slip on ice outside my apartment on day four, and did all the ligements in my ankle in, so I spent the entire shoot on a walking stick," he laughs. "It was absolutely the right place to shoot, and I'm glad we did it, but it was tough, it was a tough shoot."

Matthew Graham

But if the episodes were tricky for Raquel and Julian,, they were even more so for the writer Matthew Graham who - as he revealed in last issue's preview - originally planned to write a single episode, before having a two-parter sprung on him. "It's a tall order," he admits. "You're hogging two Saturday nights, so you are aware that you've got to tell a really good story. I wanted to tell a good story, with good characters, and for it to be as scary as we could get away with. There were some bits we had to take out, in the end, because they were too nasty, too scary. But that's a good sign. That was the way I wanted to go."

What worries did Matthew have about two-parters before he was asked to write one? "The preconception was that I would go and write a cracking kick-off story - loads of fantastic ideas, loads of jeopardy - and then I'd reach a cliffhanger and wouldn't know where to go from there. What I did was I sort of planned out an endpoint. I knew where I wanted it to finish, and I knew where I wanted Episode 1 to climax. What I didn't have was the bit between the start of Episode 2 and the end. That was probably the hardest script, then. That was the one I rewrote the most.

You can read the whole interview with Matthew Graham in DWM Issue 435.

Neil Gaiman Interview: Bringing the Old Girl to Life

Hello. In the most recent edition of Doctor Who Magazine, Neil Gaiman was interviewed about bringing the Doctor's closest friend, the TARDIS to life. At this point I would usually put a link to read the interview, however, Doctor Who Magazine does not have a website and so the only thing I can do is tell you to read DWM Issue Number 435 to read the interview and more. Let's start:

So, did you always intend to make the TARDIS flesh in your episode?

It was very upside down. That wasn't the first bit of the idea. I was thinking about The Most Dangerous Game - and it's still an idea I might go back to one day, with the Doctor. The idea of somebody hunting the Doctor, and the idea of going deeper and deeper into the TARDIS. But somebody said to me, "Oh, they're going to do a novel like that." But I still liked the idea of going deeper into the TARDIS, and making the TARDIS dangerous, you have to ask yourself questions. What's made the TARDIS dangerous? The TARDIS' soul is no longer the TARDIS' soul? Okay, so where is the TARDIS' soul? Well it's in somebody. And at that point, that was all I needed to start making a story...

How would you describe the relationship between the Doctor and the TARDIS? In this episode, it almost has touches of a love story...

I don't know that it's a love story. She's the constant. He's been calling her 'old girl' forever. We've known really since The Edge of Destruction - so William Hartnell's third story - that the TARDIS was intelligent. In drafts of the script where we needed Idris to say more, one of the lines she actually sais, she quoted William Hartnell: "The machine is not intelligent as we think it is intelligent..." That has been a constant forever.

Once you gave the TARDIS a voice, how did you approach the portrayal of their relationship?

What I tried to write was something that took us through every spectrum of couple, including, you know, the point where he's saying "You're not my mum," and she's saying, "You're not my child," - that's kind of what they are, there's a little bit of that. And she's also kind of his girlfriend, which Amy picks up on and reacts to. There is no woman in his life who can ever quite compete with the TARDIS. Even, you know that if the Doctor fell in love again, if you got another Madame de Pompadour turning up and she said, "Leave your TARDIS and come live in my little house..." He might do it, but he'd be incredible miserable. And one day he might just walk down to the blue box, open the door and press the button and he'd be off again. Because this is the love of his life, this is the thing he loves doing, and this is where he loves to be. And they are a couple. Not a romantic couple, but she is his best friend and his only constant.

And that's the point you make with the final scenes of the episode.

There are versions of that where it was a much, much longer speech from Amy - especially when it was Episode Eleven last year (The Doctor's Wife was originally scheduled for Matt Smith's first season), and we're heading into The Big Bang, and we think the TARDIS is going to be destroyed - at that point it was very much Amy getting to say,

"I'm one of hundreds of people who have travelled with you. And one day, I will be eaten by a monster or I will go away and get married, something will happen to me and I won't be with you anymore. But the two of you are going to go on till the end of time. It's always going to be a boy and his box." And when I took that line out, which was kind of sad in the first draft, and thought, "Well, hang on, we've moved it to the following season..."

And so I decided to make it more upbeat. And so I decided to make it a bit more upbeat. So, then I wrote the Doctor's response to that, where he says,

"You say that as if it's a bad thing, but it's the best thing there is." And it is, for him. You don't want to see it as a tragedy - this guy of in his box - for him, this is the best thing it could possible be.

To read the interview, read Doctor Who Magazine Issue 435. It is worth £4.50 and you can find the interview on page 32.