There has been much buzz about the the Tardis interior getting a redesign on the second half of the current series on Doctor Who. Now Steven Moffat confirms that the new interior will make its debut in the Christmas episode. New interviews, interiors and images all abounded this week.
The BBC is building up the buzz for the Doctor Who Christmas Special like they never have before. The Doctor Who Advent Calendar has been dropping goodies every day, as has the official Twitter, UK, and US sites. Here is a rundown of the most key elements that we learned this week.
First up is the new interior, or at least part of it from BBC America. It’s probably the top of the console panel, but it could easily be a part of the walls as well.
It’s certainly a lot more blue than we’ve seen in the reboot era. It’s actually a throwback to classic Doctor Who where the interior with each Doctor was predominately a silvery blueish-grey. David Tennant’s and Chris Eccelston’s Tardis was a very monochromatic tan, whereas Matt Smith’s is ablaze in color, notably orange and yellow hues. Also of note are the Gallifreyan symbols predominately displayed. We haven’t had a really solid look at anything from Gallifrey since River’s crib in “A Good Man Goes to War”. It will be interesting to see if these symbols play a major role in the rest of the console too.
Fans shouldn’t be too surprised with the revamp. Having a new Tardis is about as common as having a new Doctor. Over the years that only thing consistent about the Tardis has been the exterior, and even then the window design has varied a bit. Likely, the showrunners will canonically explain the change via the fire Doctor and River were putting out in “The Angels Take Manhattan” There were lines that intimated that the Tardis needed some work. Michael Pickwoad, the show’s production designer since 2010, is the man responsible for the new look.
Also of note this week were interviews with showrunner Steven Moffat, Matt Smith, and new companion Jenna-Louise Coleman. No one is dropping any juicy details but Jenna is quite animated talking about her audition process and the fun of the Christmas special.
The very best part of the week though were the series of images that released surrounding the Christmas special. As much fun as the canon-based images were, The best of the lot were the stylized photos of each characters holding other characters in snow globes.
Lastly, according to MTV’s Den of Geek, “As well as the new episode introducing, properly, Jenna-Louise Coleman as the new assistant, we’ve just discovered another piece of interesting news about The Snowmen. And that’s that the role of Voice Of The Snowman has gone to Sir Ian McKellen. We shall thus hear Gandalf himself in Doctor Who, but not see him. McKellen joins Richard E Grant on guest star duties. This isn’t rumour: it’s been 100% confirmed to us, and is one further reason to get excited about this Yuletide’s Doctor Who adventure.” We are assuming that they got their information at the brunch and screening of the Christmas episode that they attended in New York City on Friday. Matt Smith and Jenna Louise Coleman were there and though the BBC hasn’t officially announced Sir Ian McKellen’s participation, since Den of Geek actually saw the episode, we’ll take their word on this and call it fact not rumor.
What do you think about the new Tardis design. Are you ready to form an opinion now, or do you need to see more? How about Sir Ian McKellen joining the cast?