SPOILER WARNING: This article includes spoilers for Doctor Who: Series 10, Ep 11
Brian Minchin, executive producer on Doctor Who, has been speaking to Doctor Who: The Fan Show – The Aftershow all about the latest episode from Series 10, World Enough And Time.
Fan Show host Christel Dee discussed the return of John Simm as The Master and the also the return of the renegade Time Lord’s classic use of disguise in the episode. Minchin commented on the character of ‘Razor’:
“We kind of wanted it to be surprise, like an old-school Master surprise, and we weren’t sure how we could manage it. Neill Gorton [prosthetic effects designer from Millennium FX], again, came up with a fantastic mask and he [John Simm] did the voice.”
“We kind of thought we were probably on the right lines when we actually filmed in public for a whole evening with Razor out in the streets and people were taking pictures of the Cybermen and Bill and no one recognised John Simm!
We think it’s great fun and a very ‘Master’ thing to do.”
Brian also discusses why John Simm’s Master was brought back and just why those pesky Mondasian Cybermen have returned in the Series 10 finale.
Watch the latest episode of Doctor Who: The Fan Show – The Aftershow in the player below.
Peter Capaldi, Steven Moffat and Michelle Gomez discuss leaving Doctor Who
And so, here we go again – it’s all change for the Time Lord. Doctor Who invented the sci-fi reboot back in 1966 when the first Doctor William Hartnell’s health began to suffer. But rarely has the show faced such a combination of changes – with Peter Capaldi, showrunner Steven Moffat and Michelle Gomez, who plays Missy (the female version of the Master), all signing off this year.
The first symptom of the changes is John Simm’s return as the earlier Master in this season’s penultimate episode, World Enough and Time. He told Moffat he’d love to return as long ago as his final appearance in 2010’s The End of Time, when David Tennant left. “It’s a role no father can turn down,” Simm explained.
His arrival this week begins an extended finale that will take us as far as a Christmas special, Capaldi and Moffat’s swansong. With the end in sight for Gomez, Capaldi and Moffat, we asked them about Doctors past, present and future…
Peter Capaldi
I love this show, but I’ve never done anything where you turn up every day for ten months. I want to always be giving it my best and I don’t think if I stayed on I’d be able to do that. I can’t think of another way to say, “This could be the end of civilisation as we know it.”
With episodic television of any genre, the audience wants the same thing all the time – but the instinct that leads the actor is not about being in a groove.
What’s the Doctor Who audience like?
The conventions are a big carnival with a lot of really smart people having a laugh dressing up. The show is quite a benign friend so you get a happy response – people shouting from their cars, “Doctor Who, where’s your Tardis? What are you walking for?”
It still amazes me how huge the show is. I was recently in Minneapolis – where Prince is from. I was recognised so many times by so many people, I couldn’t quite believe it – not because of the character, who I know is world-famous, but because it was me.
What’s the hardest part of being the Doctor?
Doctor Who is a hugely challenging show to write and to act in. It has to turn on a dime from comedy to terror to tragedy. It’s a children’s show that developed into something more complex, a bit more adult-orientated, but we have a duty to play to the seven-year-old as well as the 42-year-old. Sometimes you have to be more comic than you’d normally be comfortable with, but it’s important.
How would you describe your Doctor?
The Doctor is deeply sad – I think he always has been. When you’re wise and you’ve lived a very long time, that’s how you’d be. Although you have to be careful with very human emotions and the Doctor because he’s an alien. It’s more straightforward to play the human elements, but then it might as well be a cop show.
What’s it like working with Michelle Gomez?
She has such range and energy – and she’s very beautiful.
She points out that she, you and Steven Moffat are all from Glasgow…
Well, Steven isn’t technically from Glasgow – he’s from Paisley. But he has a Glasgow sense of humour. He always finds what’s funny about you physically and puts it in the script. You suddenly read this description of yourself that is accurate but not always flattering. His presence is more pervasive than most people think.
Scripts come in that need a little work. He goes through them and sorts that out. This season people have compared scripts with his name and without his name and say the others are better. But they’ve all got his touch.
What can you say about your regeneration?
I can’t go into the details. I know what happens, but I don’t know how it happens. Certainly it’s not straightforward. It’s more complicated than recent ones. That’s one of the appeals of being in the show – it has death at the heart of it. He’s the only hero on TV who dies again and again.
Michelle Gomez
As Missy, aka the Master, did you ever think you’d get to play the longest-serving villain in showbusiness?
No. And I nearly didn’t. I was offered an audition for Ms Delphox, the villain in Time Heist, but I wasn’t available. [The role went to Keeley Hawes in the 2014 episode.]
I thought that was my only chance to be on the new Doctor Who and I was gutted. So I was moved to write to Steven saying I was such a huge fan and if in the future if he ever needed someone for a razor-cheek-boned villainess then it’s me. I didn’t think any more about it until my agent called and said, “You’d better sit down.”
What’s the Doctor Who audience been like?
I’ve been to a few conventions and there are so many people giving it a bit of Missy cosplay. It’s a really moving experience to be part of that. I’ll be going to those for a long time to come.
What’s the hardest part of playing Missy?
I’ve been training for this my whole life. If you look at my career – from Irvine Welsh to Green Wing and Taming of the Shrew – there’s a little bit of Missy in all of it, from silly voices, to falling down, to some touching moments and the odd psychotic episode – sometimes all packed into just one speech. And in a corset.
How’d you describe your take on the Master?
I like to think of her as Mary Poppins’s evil twin. The loving part of the Master/Doctor relationship is just the fact that there’s a lot of history between them – they were incredible friends at one point, but the relationship just went sour. I mean, they’ve knocked around the universe together for hundreds of years.
She’s always talking about missing her friend. I think there’s a throwback to the relationship between Roger Delgado’s Master and Jon Pertwee’s Doctor [in the early 1970s]. Then you could see there was history between them, and a mutual appreciation of each other’s wit and intellect. Missy harks back to that.
Is it a coincidence that you, Peter and Steven Moffat are all Scottish?
It’s no coincidence – it’s a plot. Me, Peter and Steven are all basically from the same city. It’s because Gallifrey actually looks a lot like Glasgow. The Weegie sense of humour and attitude did give us almost a shorthand to communicate with – it’s a little bit of extra chemistry.
Which is the scariest monster?
When I was little, my brothers used to scare me by saying, “The Cybermen are coming.” Just that. I would freak out. Because that’s what’s so scary about the Cybermen – that they are coming.
The big reveal [during Missy’s first series in 2014] that the woman in charge of Heaven was really the Master, that I was in command of an army of Cybermen and I was surrounded by quite a large number of the metal men… That’s a day that will stay in my mind for a long time to come.
Steven Moffat
What’s it like reaching your final series as showrunner?
Well, we’ll show up again at Christmas – apart from Michelle. I seem to have been reminiscing my way out of the door for about two years. It’s the longest departure in human history. I never intended to do it for ever and the workload is staggering.
I’m just at the end of my toughest ever year in which I’ll have done – in about a year – three Sherlocks and 14 Doctor Whos. That’s been shattering. Doctor Who has to move on and be different and shed me like a scale of a mighty dragon as it shambles off to another battle.
What’s the scariest monster you’ve created?
I think the Weeping Angels. We used to stay in a hotel in Dorset and next to it was a marvellous church with a chained-up graveyard and the words “unsafe structure” on the gates. I looked into the graveyard and could see a stone angel with its face in its hands as if lamenting.
I put the chained-up gates into the very first shot of Blink [a 2007 episode] and then I made up the Weeping Angel and I was very proud and excited. A few years later I said to my son Joshua, “Come and have a look at this. I’ll show you the original Weeping Angel.”
We went back to the graveyard and the angel wasn’t there – it was gone. So either I misremembered or they’ve moved it or there’s a real Weeping Angel in the world moving around when you’re not looking.
What’s the hardest thing about writing Doctor Who?
There are degrees of difficulty rather than degrees of ease. The Day of the Doctor [the 50th anniversary special in 2013] with all the pressure on the storyline and all the stars appearing in it was just a nightmare. I was never so happy with anything as when that became such an immense hit.
How would you describe your Doctors?
He is someone who’s running towards everything at once because he might miss it. He doesn’t understand why anyone would do the same thing every day or sit in the same room every day. He doesn’t understand why you would live a life in safety when you could be running from fires and explosions. He doesn’t understand why we volunteer to be dull – he needs to be out there and experiencing everything at once.
Along the way, of course, he helps people and people start to think of him as this great hero, but he doesn’t understand that – he’s just running past people and seeing that they need help, so he helps. Actors either have it or they don’t. The first time I saw Matt Smith – only the second person to audition for the role – you could instantly tell that he was Doctor Who. There was nothing clever about saying, “Well, obviously it’s him.”
How do you bow out?
I’ll strike a balance between not revealing spoilers and trying to get people to watch. I’m honour-bound as a writer not to give a damn about my departure. There’s no story about me leaving, the kids don’t know I exist – you can’t really get me away from the balcony when nobody knew I was in the building.
But it’s about giving Peter a grand, several-stage finale and trying to refresh the story that Doctor Who gets involved in with a tremendous crisis, during which he gets in some way mortally injured and has to turn into another actor.
Who would you cast as the next Doctor?
I think it should be me. That would be awesome. It’s about time they let a writer play the lead. I mean, I’ve been making up everything he says for years, so I can totally do it.
Doctor Who continues on BBC1 this Saturday 24th June at 6:45pm
Friendship drives the Doctor into the rashest decision of his life. Trapped on a giant spaceship, caught in the event horizon of a black hole, he witnesses the death of someone he is pledged to protect. Is there any way he can redeem his mistake? Are events already out of control? For once, time is the Time Lord’s enemy…
“One of the best episodes since the show returned – and certainly one of the darkest”
This preview of Doctor Who: World Enough and Time contains references to elements of the episode that have already been officially revealed by the BBC but no major spoilers beyond that.
After the endearing freshness of series opener The Pilot and the lovely Frost Fair setting of episode three Thin Ice, I’ve found this series of Doctor Who slightly underwhelming. But as we enter the home straight for Peter Capaldi’s Twelfth Doctor and Steven Moffat’s tenure as showrunner, it feels as if things are stepping up a gear (to slightly mix a metaphor). This weekend’s offering, penned by Moffat, is not only one of the best episodes of this run but one of the best since the show returned in 2005 – and certainly one of the darkest.
World Enough and Time is officially the first in a two-part series finale but, given that it opens with a dramatic foreshadowing of Capaldi’s departure in the Christmas special, it may effectively be the start of a three-part farewell.
The one thing I can tell you about that scene without spoiling it is that Capaldi’s hair is wilder and more majestic than we’ve ever seen it before.
After that pre-credit cliffhanger, we’re back in the present, whenever that is, sweeping along the flank of a giant spaceship so gorgeously realised that it would be at home in a blockbuster movie. On board, Missy is sallying forth on her first training exercise as superhero ‘Doctor Who’, with ‘expendables’ Bill and Nardole in tow and Michelle Gomez, as the apparently repentant Time Lady, on excellent comic form.
The Doctor is monitoring proceedings from the Tardis and – just to underline the distinct lack of peril that’s about to evaporate in an instant – he’s stuffing his mouth with crisps as he issues instructions.
But then – and before I say this, bear in mind again that this is a largely spoiler-free preview – a thing happens. It’s quite a significant thing, that might make some viewers feel emotions. And it results in Bill being separated from the Doctor.
But it’s where she finds herself next that things start to get really dark. The setting is the fantastically eerie clinic we’ve already glimpsed in trailers and promo pictures and Bill hears a sound there that leads her to a horrible realisation, expressed in the most macabre way possible. It puts me in mind a little of one of the ideas that so disturbed viewers in the opener to another recent Doctor Who series finale, Dark Water. Forget the children, I wonder how many adults will have nightmares after watching this.
There are of course a number of other similarities between series eight’s Dark Water and World Enough and Time. Both are the openers to two-part finales, both feature Missy and both involve an army of Cybermen. But here it’s not just the unthreatening action-figure versions but the original Mondasian Cybermen encountered by the First Doctor in 1966 story The Tenth Planet – and god are they creepy. Those ghostly masks and human looking hands always made them the most disturbing Cybermen but their backstory, as revealed here, really turns the horror up to 11.
Bill at least finds an ally among the gloomy corridors and sickly patients of her new home, a character who manages to impart warmth and plenty of black humour and who you feel may become more significant as the story proceeds.
But wait, I’m forgetting something… oh yes, the Master! Anyone who actually watches Doctor Who will know by now that John Simm’s maniacal incarnation of the Doctor’s Time Lord nemesis – Missy’s former self – returns in this episode with a goatee beard and a diabolical plan. Exactly how he arrives you’ll have to wait to see but despite the fact that it’s been heavily trailed it may still take some people by surprise.
We end on an appalling final revelation asking ourselves some big questions about more than one key character. I’ve just watched that scene again and I’m shivering on what is a hot day in London – partly with horror and partly wth anticipation…
Doctor Who: World Enough and Time is on BBC1 on Saturday 24th June at 6:45pm
Get ready for a wibbly wobbly #DrMen adventure with Dr Tenth – Christmas Surprise We know what’s at the top of our Christmas list! Available this October 2017.
The greatest mash-up in the Whoniverse continues with a new Christmas adventure, starring the Tenth Doctor!
Dr Tenth and Donna set out from the TARDIS to find a Christmas tree, but run into an oddly robotic-sounding stranger dressed in red and white along the way . . .
Doctor Who meets Roger Hargreaves’ Mr Men in this fun and charming Christmas story; a seasonal special to compliment the twelve Dr Men titles in the ongoing series written and illustrated by Adam Hargreaves.
A new keepsake hardback format makes this the perfect Christmas gift for any Doctor Who fan.
Candy Jar Books is pleased to announce the latest Lethbridge-Stewart novel of 2017.
The Dreamer’s Lament sees Lethbridge-Stewart team up once again with Harold Chorley, to investigate the case of a missing train. The trail leads to the Keynsham Triangle, and the year 1815. Together they are thrown into a story of body snatching, slavery and animals that refuse to stay dead.
It is written by newcomer to the range, Benjamin Burford-Jones, who previously wrote the children’s novel Beware of the Mirror Man for Candy Jar Books.
Range editor Andy Frankham-Allen says: “The Dreamer’s Lament started off as an unpublished Second Doctor Doctor Who novel that Ben wrote some years ago. Shaun (Russell, head of publishing) brought the story to me during the early days of the series, but it took me a while to get to it. I was impressed by the core story, and realised that an almost page-one rewrite would be needed, but there were enough key elements contained in the original story for me to see how it would fit Lethbridge-Stewart. The hardest part to work out was the time travel aspect.”
Ben, who now lives in Manchester, has had an extremely varied career that has ranged from clerical work, television production to puppet making. He was more than happy to rework the story, and collaborate with Andy in how to turn it into a Lethbridge-Stewart novel. Ben says: “When I was asked to adapt my unpublished book, how could I resist the challenge? It was an honour to add to the continuing adventures of Lethbridge-Stewart. Of course, I couldn’t resist setting the adventure in my home town of Keynsham.”
The cover art is by Martin Baines, doing his second piece of Lethbridge-Stewart work after last year’s Times Squared. Martin says: “I really wanted to do justice to such imaginative story. The mixture of voodoo and time travel, plus zombie animals makes this a story a gift for a cover artist. Coming from an advertising background I usually draw cute dogs and cats, so I found that the main focal point of the cover was a real test for me having to make them as horrific as possible.”
Ben has this to say about the cover: “When I first saw the wonderful artwork, I was over the moon. The cover sums up the story perfectly. It was almost as if Martin had read my mind.”
The Dreamer’s Lament has a foreword by Candy Jar’s Head of Publishing, Shaun Russell. He says: “I’ve known Ben for thirty-two years, after a chance meeting at a Bristol sci-fi shop. Alongside Doctor Who, Ben has always had an interest in all things zombie. He has even made his own zombie puppet. It seems quite natural for him to combine his two loves in this book.”
Blurb:
While visiting his mother, Lethbridge-Stewart is a little perturbed when Harold Chorley calls to ask for his help. A train has gone missing near Bristol, and Chorley is convinced it has something to do with the Keynsham Triangle, where over fifty people have vanished without trace since the early 1800s.
Elsewhere, Anne Travers is coming to terms with a loss in her family, and sets about preparing for a funeral. However, news reaches her that both Lethbridge-Stewart and Chorley have gone missing, and her help is required to find them. And, hopefully, solve the mystery of the Keynsham Triangle.
What connects the missing train to the Triangle, what has it got to do with a Wren from World War II, and just why does it appear that Lethbridge-Stewart and Chorley are in the village of Keynsham in 1815?
The answers lie in the Dreamer’s Lament, and a strange being called the Loa.
The Dreamer’s Lament is available for pre-order now, for £8.99 (+ p&p). You can pre-order it individually or as part of the discounted UK bundle for only £26.25 (including postage), saving £9.72, or an international bundle for only £45.00 (including postage), saving £5.97. Or, you can buy it as part of our yearly subscription offer. Order early to avoid disappointment.
The Doctor Who finale is spinning closer towards us, accompanied by John Simm’s malevolent Master, a legion of Mondasian Cybermen and a 400-mile-long spaceship battling a black hole. But that’s not all.
In the introduction to series 10 episode 11, showrunner Steven Moffat promises plenty of death as the Doctor and Missy try to come to terms.
“The Doctor and Missy have been friends for an incredibly long time and he wants more than anything else for her to be a good person like him. And she’s starting to want that too,” he says, before adding ominously: “The consequences for that are going to cost a lot of lives.”
Doctor Who continues on BBC1 this Saturday 24th June at 6:45pm
OUT NOW! The Essential Doctor Who: Adventures in Space
From the makers of Doctor Who Magazine is a new bookazine celebrating the Time Lord’s stories in space. Check out all the details on The Essential Doctor Who: Adventures in Space and cover art below.
The Essential Doctor Who: Adventures in Space
The TARDIS doesn’t just travel through time – stories set in space have been an essential part of Doctor Who for six decades. The inhospitable void between the stars has served as the backdrop to epic space operas and nerve-racking thrillers, while harbouring some of the most fearsome adversaries the Doctor has ever encountered.
Panini’s latest entry in the Essential Doctor Who series navigates a revealing course through the space lanes of Doctor Who, with all-new articles, rare images and exclusive interviews with:
• Bob Baker (co-writer of The Three Doctors, The Invisible Enemy and many more)
• Nick Bullen (costume designer for The Space Pirates)
• Jamie Mathieson (writer of Oxygen)
• Pat Mills (comics legend and co-writer of The Song of the Space Whale)
• Hayley Nebauer (costume designer for the 2017 series)
• Louise Page (costume designer for the Ninth and Tenth Doctors)
• Charles Palmer (director of Oxygen)
• Sid Sutton (Doctor Who title sequence designer)
Other highlights include a look at the groundbreaking model shoot for The Trial of a Time Lord, a fresh insight into the career of the show’s original story editor David Whitaker and guides to acclaimed stories such as The Daleks’ Master Plan and The Ark in Space.
The Essential Doctor Who: Adventures in Space is on sale now
Doctor Who – Empress Of Mars had an official rating of 5.02 million viewers, a share of 25.9% of the total TV audience.
The episode was the 23rd most watched programme of the week, and the 11th highest rated programme on the BBC.
Top for the week was Monday’s edition of Coronation Street which had 8.39 million watching. Emmerdale and EastEnders also scored highly as did the ITV drama The Loch.
