With the return of the BBC’s “Doctor Who” is fast approaching (premieres in the UK on April 3rd and in the US on April 17th), fans are aching in both trepidation and excitement about how Matt Smith’s eleventh Doctor will follow up David Tennant’s tenth Doctor. I will warn you now that there are SPOILERS within this article. Proceed with caution!
How will showrunner Stephen Moffat kick off this new season with a new Doctor? Moffat talks about his approach to just throwing Matt Smith’s Doctor into the water:
“I thought it would be fun if, while he was still regenerating, he had to run around and save the world. He’s barely out of the box when he realises: I haven’t changed my shirt yet and I’ve got 20 minutes to save the world. It’s like trying to save the world with flu. And he does it with two minutes to spare.”
Smith adds how his character’s state of mind in the premiere episode of this season will evolve:
“Because in episode one, of course, he’s a man getting used to his body, going ‘How do I fit into this world…’ The Doctor you meet in the first episode is a different Doctor from the Doctor we’re filming [in the twelfth episode].”
As there has been some apprehension about the almost unknown Matt Smith taking the mantle of the Doctor, a reporter for the Telegraph describes how Matt Smith owns the role of the Doctor and describes his performance as such:
“Less prickly than Eccleston and without the slapstick of Tennant, he brings an air of muddled intensity that’s a bit reminiscent of, say, Tom Baker (though without the stripy scarf).”
One might be afraid that budget cuts will affect the success of this new Doctor’s run, but Moffat has no worries about it and reveals a nugget of “Doctor Who” history:
“…the original Tardis was a budget cut. It was. They couldn’t afford to make a spaceship. They couldn’t afford even to do a magic door. They couldn’t afford to do a sphere. So someone came up with, Why don’t we do a police box? And it’s bigger on the inside. That’s the single best idea, I think – though I am a bit prejudiced – in all of fiction.”
There are no images released yet of the inside of new Tardis (the above image here is a cap from the first episode when the Tardis crashes in Cardiff.), but it has been described as such:
“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.”
Fans will not only get to see the new Tardis at the end of the first episode, but they will also soon see a change in the Doctor’s screwdriver. Tennant’s screwdriver is to explode and be replaced by a shiny new one with a green light that “when Smith flicks his hand, metal claws that pop out at one end.”
What about this new companion? Twenty-two year-old, red-headed Karen Gillan explains what draws her character Amy Pond and the Doctor to each other:
“They’re two of a kind. They’re both a bit lost. 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.”
Does these sneak peeks into the eleventh Doctor set your mind more at ease? Matt Smith thinks that their first episode with Steven Moffat as showrunner will seal the deal with “Doctor Who” fans:
“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. It’s a good start for us.”
[Source] Telegraph
