Owing to the popularity of Doctor Who, there are going to be rumors regarding Matt Smith’s replacement. Now these rumors have kicked into overdrive.
How do you decide if a rumor is credible nor not? Sometimes it’s just down to tracing back to the original source, and judging their track record of getting scoops in the past. Then again, even that isn’t certain. You never know who overheard a cell phone conversation, or who was talking too loud in a bar after having a few too many. The long and short of it is that information gets out.
The latest rumor to take flight was via Starburst Magazine. If you are asking “Who?”, don’t worry so were we. They aren’t exactly known as a font of original Whovian material. They claim to have a source, who has a source at an unnamed U.K. newspaper, who has a source at the BBC that stated the role of the Doctor was narrowed to three candidates: Domhnall Gleeson, Daniel Kaluuya, and Dominic Cooper.
According to Starburst, this unnamed paper was to divulge the top-runner’s name this Sunday, thus scooping the BBC. In response, the BBC was supposedly to do a preemptive strike, and announce the name today. After hearing the rumors, the official Doctor Who Twitter put out the following:
We can confirm there is no #DoctorWho announcement planned for today.
— Doctor Who Official (@bbcdoctorwho) June 8, 2013
On top of that, Ed Stradling, who has worked with the BBC and Steven Moffat closely for a number of years on Doctor Who behind the scenes projects, sounded off on his Twitter as well.
Don’t believe what you read about the new #doctorwho being announced this weekend. I think it must be Starburst getting a bit over-excited!
— Ed Stradling (@edstradling) June 8, 2013
Steven Moffat says this morning “I haven’t a clue who it is, we’ve barely started.” So no #doctorwho announcement this evening I fear!
— Ed Stradling (@edstradling) June 8, 2013
Ed Strandling went on to remind the public of is that nothing is certain when it comes to Doctor Who.
“On the #doctorwho casting, remember inspiration can come from anywhere. In 2008 Steven wanted a 40+ actor to replace David Tennant. Then Matt Smith auditioned for Dr Watson in Sherlock. He was wrong for Watson but perfect for DW, so he cast him anyway despite his age but they didn’t cast him on day 1. They were looking for someone older. But nobody was as good. So they cast him anyway.”
Now what is a little unusual in all of this flurry is the fact that the BBC responded at all. Generally, the BBC just laugh at these sorts of things and disregard them. Maybe they were getting tired of the phone calls, or they did want entertainment reporters wasting their Saturday refreshing the official Doctor Who page every few minutes hoping for an announcement. Whatever the case may be, the fact that they responded to it on the official Twitter account is pretty unusual.