Doctor Who‘s big birthday was always going to be a huge, spectacular event. But as the Doctor gets ready to go over the hill next year, could we be seeing a live television broadcast? Well, don’t count your metaphorical chickens just yet.
Earlier this month Producer Caroline Skinner confirmed that the Doctor Who 50th anniversary would feature a wide range of celebrations, including “huge live events” beyond its regular slot at the BBC Proms. At the time, we suspected another convention and that a couple of “best of” shows would be joining the Mark Gatiss penned docu-drama. But the show’s star Matt Smith has recently made some suspicious comments that could be taken to mean many things.
In an interview with Forbes, the actor said he felt “very pleased and privileged” to be working on “a very exciting year for Doctor Who,” declaring it the “biggest” of the show’s history. “It’s [The Doctor’s] birthday, so it’s my birthday.”
When pressed to extrapolate further on 2013’s festivities, Matt teased: “It won’t just be a televised event, I think it will be a live event.” His comments seemingly mirror Caroline Skinner’s – until he decides to be a little more revealing. “The way it’s transmitted on TV will hopefully be an inventive thing,” he continued. “Something different.”
While by no means definitive, his comments were certainly enough to pique our interest. While exciting, we here at Hypable find it hard to envision a live Doctor Who episode with any impact. The adventure would have to be almost devoid of special effects (Who without special effects? A scandal!), and a live broadcast would almost certainly rule out the widely rumored multi-Doctor story – we find it hard to believe actors like Tom Baker and David Tennant would be able to commit the rehearsal time necessary to pull off the stunt, especially at the same time as seven other big stars!
Can you imagine a live Doctor Who working on screen? How could the production team make the episode’s transmission “different”?
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