At Comic-Con this year, Hypable was able to speak to Mark Gatiss, Steven Moffat, David Bradley, Matt Smith, and Jenna-Louise Coleman about the 50th anniversary special, An Adventure in Space and Time, and the search for a new Doctor.
The cast of Doctor Who did round table interviews on Sunday and spoke about a multitude of subjects, including the much anticipated TV special An Adventure in Space and Time, a biopic of the show’s start staring Harry Potter‘s David Bradley as the first Doctor.
Gatiss said that getting as big a story as Doctor Who into one film was a challenge, but he knew the story well enough to take on the project.
As a kid I was very aware of the story. It was a very small show that became a gigantic hit with the BBC. The first episode was broadcasted the day after Kennedy was shot so they had to do rebroadcast it again because nobody was looking. And then the daleks came and nobody thought they were going to be anything and they became a world wide phenomenon. I know these things well, I always thought it would be fascinating. The biggest challenge was to focus the story down because there are 50 different stories. The daleks alone is kind of like their own film.
To help narrow down the story and make the biopic as good as possible, Gattiss worked with Warris Hussein, the original director for Doctor Who who’s still alive and well. “I met Warris a long time ago to start discussing it. Warris was really incredibly helpful…The only day he could come to set was the first day, and we were shooting we were with Sacha [Dhawan] and Jessica Raine and he was sitting next to me behind the monitor and he was crying, as you would expect. It’s suddenly his own life being portrayed, which must be very curious.”
After speaking with Bradley and Gatiss, we got a chance to chat with Moffat about the 50th anniversary as well as the search for a new Doctor.
Someone at the table had asked whether the anniversary was going to be the second half of what we’d seen in the series seven finale and part two of the cliffhanger, to which Moffat answered, “No. It would be awful if our big anniversary was the second half of something. At the end of ‘The Name of the Doctor’ you learn something about the Doctor you’ve never known before. The anniversary special will be free standing, that was just a cliffhanger. [It] was just too big an ending to resist!”
In talks about the new Doctor, Moffat revealed some interesting casting tactics they use when selecting the new star. When asked if Doctor Who does gender blind casting, he says it wouldn’t be a sensible thing to do. “You would have to make a decision on gender before you approached.” Meaning only a handful of people in the world know the gender of the next Doctor, and we can’t wait until they announce it!
For most casting calls, film makers search for an actor who’s going to fit the bill with the ability to form the character to the needs of the story, but Doctor Who works a lot differently when it comes to casting the next Doctor.
Moffat explains, “Generally speaking the way Doctor Who works is you’re led by the actor, you have to be. Cause it’s a sort of star vehicle. Each time a person takes it on it becomes their vehicle.”
Hypable also spoke with Matt Smith and Jenna-Louise Coleman, which you can actually watch a video of here.
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