Since it was announced that the
seventh season of Doctor Who was
going to be delayed until the fall, much consternation has gone on about what
it means. It’s no secret that that the BBC is cash strapped, but that is only a
small part really. As showrunner Steven Moffat noted in a recent interview “There's
no chance of the BBC giving up on Doctor
Who: it's a huge money spinner, it's doing better than ever abroad, the
global number of people watching Doctor
Who has just gone up and up and up, it was the most downloaded show on
American iTunes last year - not a chance of the BBC giving up on Doctor Who, not at all.”
While Moffat has played well the corporate
employee of the BBC by keeping mum on the whole issue (except to say “I've
always been open to anything that shakes [the series] up. I think that decision
actually came from the BBC. But I've been well up for anything that we can do
to shake up the transmission pattern, the way we deliver it to the audience and
how long we make the audience wait, simply because that makes Doctor Who an
event piece”) it still seems logical that that part of the reason the series
was moved was financial, part of it was because the show has fared poorly as
the days grew longer in England, and as the 50th anniversary starts
in 2013, it keeps season 8’s (though not yet commissioned, but given its
popularity, a forgone conclusion) start on or around the official birthday of
the series, November 23.
Not an accountant, but while the
series will film through the end of the year, at least 8 of its episodes will
be broadcast in 2013. Whether that factors into the financials, I’m unsure.
Anyways, another thing that seems
in flux is the transmission order. We know that 6 episodes will air in 2012,
probably starting around mid-November. There had been reports –or rumors- that
it would be an uninterrupted run, meaning episodes 7-14 would start in January.
Now other rumors suggest the show will take a transmission break and return in
late winter, possibly March. Moffat says “You're not getting shorter and
shorter seasons, we're just splitting it over Christmas; we're making the same
number of episodes as usual - I can tell by the grey hairs on my head - but we
delayed it a few months to start it later in the year, that's all that's
happened.”
Which is what is probably another
one of those sly attempts to keep the press guessing, as Moffat quips: “We can't really contain everything, because
people will crawl all over us with cameras and sneak views of scripts and
call-sheets. Something will get out. But we've been fairly sly, so let's wait
and see.”
Meanwhile, what has leaked out is
that originally the Christmas episode with new companion Jenna-Louise Coleman (now
rumored to be named Clara) was to film first. However, Moffat admits the story
is not finished, so work has begun on one of the other Coleman episodes, what
is now known to be number 11 (written by Neil Cross, who created the BBC series
Luther). Recent set photos show it
to be a Victorian based story (?).
The series has also confirmed
that beyond Moffat, Mark Gatiss and Neil Cross writing stories for the back 8, previous
Who writers John Fay, Tom MacRae and Steve Thompson have been added. Meanwhile,
Harry Potter actor Mark Williams who
is guest-starring as Rory’s dad in episode two will also appear in episode 4,
which has a working title of Cubed.
No comments:
Post a Comment