The new issue of Doctor Who Magazine not only features a fresh interview with the new Doctor herself, Jodie Whittaker. But it also has Twice Upon A Time director Rachel Talalay chatting about the Christmas special, and a spoiler-y moment that originally was just a little different.
It’s the bit at the end of the episode where Jenna Coleman’s Clara returns to bid farewell to Peter Capaldi’s Doctor. Coleman’s footage was actually shot in the Top Gear offices in London, the article reveals, as the production worked around Coleman’s extensive commitments to filming ITV’s Victoria.
“We couldn’t get Jenna to our set. We couldn’t have the three companions there together. But she does make a magical appearance on the battlefield, which we had to shoot separately a few days after the rest of the episode had wrapped”, Talalay confirmed. Capaldi and Coleman didn’t record the scene together, as it happened. “But I think we pulled it off”, Talalay said.
The recording of Coleman’s moment was outgoing showrunner Steven Moffat’s final piece of physical production that he oversaw, after the main shoot was complete. And he admitted that Clara’s moment in the episode was originally a lot longer, but “I rewrote, and rewrote, and rewrote for everything we could do with Jenna’s schedule”.
Originally, Clara was set to appear in the scene where Bill and Nardole big farewell to the Doctor, with the Doctor hinting that he’s about to pick his favourite (although none of them can work out who he picked). But that was, as you more than likely guessed, changed for what we got. Which was hardly shabby!
THIRTEENTH DOCTOR JODIE WHITTAKER AND SHOWRUNNER CHRIS CHIBNALL IN DOCTOR WHO MAGAZINE EXCLUSIVES!
“There is no other job in the world like this,” Jodie Whittaker tells the new issue of DWM. Jodie also discusses her regeneration scene and working with costume designer Ray Holman: “The very first meeting we had was all very secret and incognito. As we were talking I was completely distracted by the colour of the wallpaper behind us. I told Roy I absolutely loved that colour, and that’s the colour of the trousers.”
Also in this issue, Chris Chibnall looks forward to a new era: “What’s evident is Doctor Who’s extraordinary ability to embrace change while remaining exactly the same show that people love.”
OTHER HIGHLIGHTS INCLUDE…
RACHEL TALALAY
The director of Twice Upon a Time on the filming of Peter Capaldi and Jodie Whittaker’s regeneration scene.
TWICE UPON A TIME
Exclusive set report and unseen images from the 2017 Christmas Special.
WHO IS JOHN SMITH?
The fan turned visual effects pro who worked on the Twelfth Doctor’s final adventures.
DUDLEY SIMPSON
Tributes to the composer who wrote some of Doctor Who’s best-loved scores.
TARDIS BUILDING
A first-hand account of how the 1960s TARDIS prop was recreated for Twice Upon a Time.
MEET THE DR MEN
Writer and illustrator Adam Hargreaves explains how his Mr Men entered the world of Doctor Who.
THE FACE OF EVIL The Fact of Fiction explores the 1977 story that introduced the Fourth Doctor’s companion Leela.
THE PHANTOM PIPER
Part Three of The Phantom Piper, a new comic strip adventure featuring the Twelfth Doctor and Bill.
PLUS… The Blogs of Doom, previews, reviews, news, the DWM Christmas Quiz answers and prize-winning competitions!
Doctor Who Magazine 521 is on sale from Thursday 11 January, price £5.99.
The decision to use Jodie Whittaker’s Yorkshire accent
The new issue of Doctor Who Magazine goes on sale this week, and in it, Jodie Whittaker has been chatting about her take on the Doctor, introduced on Christmas Day. She gets the cover of the magazine too, and rightly so.
In particular, she’s been chatting about her Doctor using her Yorkshire accent, a decision that seemed very matter of fact.
“All the Doctors’ voices have been different”, Whittaker said. “There have been various dialects and I knew coming into it that there wasn’t a rule that you had to speak in a certain way. I auditioned in my accent and at no point did anyone say to do anything different”.
“In fact, they said ‘use your own voice’”.
And that’s exactly what Jodie Whittaker did. She goes on to say in the magazine that she would have been comfortable doing different accents too if that was what was required for the role. But it was never a problem. “In a strange way I don’t know how much of an actual decision it was … I think it happened before I was even cast!”, Whittaker said of the Doctor’s new Yorkshire accent!
Find more on Doctor Who Magazine here. The issue goes on sale from Thursday.
At the end of 2017 a remarkable chapter in the history of Doctor Who draw to a close. Two incarnations of the Time Lord overcame an existential threat… before the arrival of the Thirteenth Doctor heralded a bold new era for the programme.
The latest Special Edition of Doctor Who Magazine is a unique celebration of the Twelfth Doctor’s final adventures, from The Return of Doctor Mysterio through to Twice Upon a Time. Packed full of all-new features and previously unseen images, this is the essential guide to the year in Doctor Who.
Highlights include exclusive new interviews with:
Joe Browning, Jimmy Mann, Gary Pollard and Kate Walshe (Millennium FX)
Ysanne Churchman (the voice of Alpha Centauri in Empress of Mars)
Matthew Clark (graphic designer, 2017 series)
Rachel Denning (Erica in The Pyramid at the End of the World)
Mark Gatiss (Captain Lethbridge-Stewart in Twice Upon a Time)
Stephanie Hyam (Heather in The Pilot and The Doctor Falls)
Adele Lynch (Iraxxa in Empress of Mars)
Rove McManus (host of Australian show Whovians)
Rachel Talalay (director of three episodes in the 2017 series)
Alexandra Tynan (designer of the original Cybermen)
Editor Marcus Hearn says: “The latest Yearbook is out a little later than usual, because we wanted to complete our coverage of the Twelfth Doctor’s stories by including Twice Upon a Time. This issue covers more episodes than any previous Yearbooks, but there are many other fantastic articles in there too. We hope this is a great souvenir of an incredible era.”
The Doctor Who Magazine Yearbook 2018 is on sale now at WH Smith and all good newsagents, price £5.99.
A few months ago, the first look at Jodie Whittaker’s Doctor Who costume was revealed and it’s fair to say there was a lot to digest in it.
But it wasn’t until later that we learned one crucial detail wasn’t as it seemed, with the new Thirteenth Doctor’s coat actually a shade of light blue rather than the brown or beige it appears in the official photo.
Now, a new photos of the current Time Lord’s outfit have emerged on Twitter as part of an upcoming feature in the official Doctor Magazine that show Whittaker in all her glory – and as rumoured, her coat IS blue after all.
Jodie Whittaker is the Doctor! The next issue of DWM will be out on Thursday 11 January. pic.twitter.com/CkOON5EdAG
Apart from that, there’ not much to glean from these photos, but it’s another step forward in the exciting march towards Whittaker’s first Doctor Who series this autumn. We can hardly wait to see her in action.
Doctor Who Magazine’s latest issue will be on sale from Thursday 11thJanuary, and will include interviews with Jodie Whittaker and new showrunner Chris Chibnall.
THE LATEST ISSUE OF DOCTOR WHO MAGAZINE INCLUDES A FREE THIRTEENTH DOCTOR POSTER/TWELFTH DOCTOR WALLCHART AND A REVEALING PREVIEW OF THE CHRISTMAS SPECIAL!
Also in this issue…
PEARL MACKIE
Pearl talks to DWM about saying goodbye to companion Bill Potts.
MARK GATISS
An interview with Mark Gatiss, who plays the Captain in the 2017 Christmas Special.
STEVEN MOFFAT Doctor Who’s outgoing showrunner previews his final story, Twice Upon a Time.
EARL CAMERON
Actor Earl Cameron – 100 years old this year! – recalls playing astronaut Glyn Williams in the 1966 story The Tenth Planet.
PHILIP HINCHCLIFFE
The legendary Doctor Who producer explains how the series’ feature-length omnibus repeats were created in the 1970s.
PADDY RUSSELL
A tribute to the late Paddy Russell, Doctor Who’s first female director and one of British television’s pioneers.
INSIDE SHADA
The team behind the new version of Shada reveal how Douglas Adams’ ‘lost’ 1979 story was finally completed.
DANIEL HILL AND OLIVIA BAZALGETTE
Actor Daniel Hill and production assistant Olivia Bazalgette tell DWM how the filming of Shada marked the beginning of their long relationship.
SHADA ON LOCATION
Memories of the making of Shada from special effects assistant Steve Cambden, along with rare and
previously unseen images from the 1979 location shoot.
THE FACT OF FICTION
This issue’s festive Fact of Fiction explores the 2011 Christmas Special The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe.
THE PHANTOM PIPER
Part Two of the Doctor and Bill’s latest comic strip adventure, written by Scott Gray and illustrated by Martin Geraghty.
PLUS… The Blogs of Doom, previews, book and audio reviews, news, the DWM Christmas Quiz and prize-winning competitions!
Doctor Who Magazine 520 is on sale from Thursday 14 December, price £5.99.
Steven Moffat on Thirteenth Doctor: Jodie Whittaker ‘put a smile on my face immediately’
Doctor Who Magazine issue 520 (out Dec 14) features an in-depth and exclusive interview with outgoing showrunner Steven Moffat.
Steven, who leaves his post as Doctor Who boss this month, chatted with DWM about his very last story, the 2017 Christmas Special, Twice Upon A Time. This was also be the final outing for Peter Capaldi as the Twelfth Doctor and will see the debut of the Thirteenth Doctor, Jodie Whittaker.
From Doctor Who Magazine 520:
“I must be honest, everyone’s watching for the last minute,” chuckles Steven, “and people are going to absolutely love Jodie. Then they’ll notice that, at the same time, they miss Peter, but it’s not like it’ll be a grieving process. Or rather, with a new Doctor, it’s always grieving and falling in love simultaneously.”
Discussing the handover to his successor Chris Chibnall, whose first series in charge airs in 2018, Moffat admits the process was emotional:
“It’s an odd feeling. It’s just weird. You suddenly realise that the new guy, the new showrunner, has to come barreling through the door and take over. It’s a slightly bewildering feeling. But it’s an amazing process.”
Although Steven wasn’t on set for filming on Jodie’s first scene as the Thirteenth Doctor, he has seen the finished product. He told DWM:
“It’s slightly strange and very, very good. Jodie put a smile on my face immediately. She was funny from the off. I thought that was great.”
You can read the full interview with Steven Moffat and Bill actress Pearl Mackie in the latest edition of Doctor Who Magazine along with a Christmas Special preview and much, much more.
Doctor Who Magazine 520 is on sale from Dec 14, 2017.
Steven Moffat unveils his final Doctor Who episode – and reveals why Carey Mulligan said no to the Tardis
In a special souvenir issue of Radio Times magazine, Steven Moffat previews his final Doctor Who episode – Christmas special Twice upon a Time, starring departing 12th Doctor Peter Capaldi and David Bradley as the first Doctor. He considers the future of Doctor Who and his own career and reveals some juicy nuggets of information from his eight years on the show.
Below are some excerpts from the interview – to read the whole thing, including Steven’s thoughts on more Sherlock and his upcoming new series Dracula, get the new issue of Radio Times, on sale from Saturday 2nd December.
Patrick Mulkern: Let’s kick off with Twice upon a Time, your final Christmas special. How would you set it?
Steven Moffat: We ended the last series with Peter Capaldi’s 12th Doctor about to regenerate and refusing. He’s had enough of becoming other people. A subject he expands on in the special. He’s having a strop. In a wintry landscape he meets the first Doctor [David Bradley taking on the role from William Hartnell, who died in 1975], who is also refusing to change.
But how can the Doctor put his regeneration on hold? We’re going with the idea that it is at some level voluntary. Remember the John Simm Master refused to regenerate at the end of The Last of the Time Lords [in 2007]. So you have to commit and choose to change rather than die. In the bonkers science of regeneration, gender doesn’t seem to be a problem, but what has always puzzled me is: how does he change height? That means between Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy a hell of a lot of matter goes missing from the universe. Where is it?
Indeed! OK, back to the special… It starts with a reprise of The Tenth Planet [the first Doctor’s finale from 1966]. We do the “Previously on Doctor Who…” and follow the first Doctor out of that adventure, having left his companions Ben and Polly behind. So then it’s the 12th Doctor telling the first that he has to regenerate, and realising he must as well. This is the moment where he decides whether or not to go on. And it will mark the only time that David Bradley has played a younger version of Jodie Whittaker.
But it’s not just about two old men dying. You’re making this one more comedic and fun. Yes, we got to a very dark and angst-y place at the end of the last series. This is Christmas Day so we’re not going to have an hour of two suicidal Doctors. That’s not appropriate for Christmas Day or Doctor Who. There’s a tradition of the Doctors being funny when they get together. When Doctors meet, it’s a laugh. And I suppose at the back of my mind I’ve known for ages the next Doctor was going to be a woman – although I didn’t know which woman – so I was thinking, “Why does he subconsciously make that choice?” Maybe seeing the whole span of his life as a man, seeing himself as the Hartnell Doctor, might make him think maybe it’s time to be a bit more progressive. Looking at how the first Doctor was, he’s hilariously not progressive.
Without being too outrageous I think we have re-created that version of Hartnell’s Doctor, with all the 1960s political incorrectness in place. At the same time the original Doctor has a lot of fun at the expense of the modern one’s sonic glasses and electric guitar. There’s something funny about the 12th Doctor realising that he came from this politically incorrect, funny old man. This is who he was.
Were the Tenth Planet scripts I gave you useful? Yes they were. We don’t use all that much in the finished show and the trouble is most of those actors didn’t stick rigidly to the script anyway. Michael Craze and Anneke Wills [companions Ben and Polly] improvised a lot of it and it’s better. As you know in the original script there’s a line they dropped where the Doctor is resisting his regeneration. It’s currently in the special but we might drop it because it makes it slightly different from the scene at the end of The Doctor Falls as it was shown.
Peter Capaldi as the 12th Doctor
The sets from The Tenth Planet – the Snowcap polar base and the Cybership – have been impressively re-created [above]. In the finished cut you only glimpse the polar base. The only thing that we do more or less in its entirety is when Ben and Polly get the Doctor out of his cage on the Cyberman spaceship and he says, “It’s far from being all over.”
So you’ve cast Mark Gatiss in it and Toby Whithouse [Doctor Who and Being Human writer] as First World War soldiers. I asked Mark a long time ago to make sure he’d be available and then I needed another actor to lie in a bomb crater and talk in German. I thought, “Wouldn’t it be great if we got Toby?” who is also a very fine actor. So we have the two principals of my writing room sitting with guns drawn on each other.
Were you tempted to plonk Chris Chibnall in there as well? He and I are not actors so we shouldn’t be in it. There’s a possible world where we could’ve been corpses if only we had the time. And those two are terrific actors.
Why does the first Doctor lend himself to being played by other actors more than any other Doctor? A weird thing happened with the first Doctor. In The Five Doctors [1993], which I love, we didn’t really remember what Hartnell was like. Somebody else turned up who didn’t look like him or behave like him, and wore a strikingly different costume but was close enough to the general silhouette. Richard Hurndall was rather good and very engaging, but the fact is he was not the Hartnell Doctor.
William Hartnell, Richard Hurndall and David Bradley as versions of the first Doctor
But even before that during the mid 60s, when Hartnell was still the Doctor on TV, we had Peter Cushing in the two Dalek feature films playing a version of that grandfatherly Doctor. That’s different. I adore Peter Cushing but I think, outside the charmed circle of the insane – and I mean US and those like us – people don’t know that he was the Doctor. They know he was Sherlock Holmes, they know he was Van Helsing. They don’t know he was Doctor Who.
I’m sure at the time they did. They were very popular films in their day. So it was acceptable even in the 60s that you could do that with the character. Yeah but that happened with Quatermass too. And when something jumps medium, you’re more likely to accept a recast. And they rebooted it and made Cushing’s Doctor human. By the time they made The Five Doctors, enough time had passed and we weren’t so aware of him. I have to say they made an incredibly classy decision to have a clip of William Hartnell introducing it. It weirdly sanctified Richard Hurndall taking on the role. As if to say: “We’re not kidding you on, we’re not pretending it’s the same man. We acknowledge the original.”
So much so that in this Christmas special when it starts we have Hartnell and the original companions and then it becomes David Bradley. So we say, “Here’s the real original one. Here is our one and, oddly enough, don’t they look similar?” Anneke’s character Polly is in it and Anneke herself is in it with the line, “Have you got no feelings?”
How far back did you plan to bring back the first Doctor? In the last series there seemed to be lots of references. For a start you named the companion Bill and her girlfriend was Heather like Bill Hartnell and his wife Heather. Oh, that was a happy accident. Absolutely accidental.
So you didn’t name Bill after Hartnell – or even after your father, Bill? No, if she’s named after anyone it’s that I liked the fact that, when we were doing The Day of the Doctor [2013], David Tennant called Billie [Piper] Bill. I thought that was a good name for somebody so I logged it then.
I wasn’t especially building towards the return of the first Doctor. Available on videotape is the exact moment where it became possible. At the New York ComicCon last year someone was asking me about which Doctors I wanted to be in The Day of the Doctor. And the Doctor you’d really like to meet the modern Doctor is the William Hartnell Doctor because he’s moved on so much, because that would be the entire span of the character’s life. The first Doctor would be so shocked that he is going to become this strutting megalomaniac. And so I said, “But we can’t do it,” and then Peter said, “We could get David Bradley.” “Oh yeah…!”
Pearl Mackie is back as Bill – are you surprised how popular she’s been? No, you know a star when you see one. She’s great. People responded strongly to her and they like the contrast between her and Peter. They liked Nardole and the little family unit together in the university. You could have watched them for five years in that set-up. And seen more of his lectures and the scenes in my head I never got to write, which were the Doctor taking his role in university very seriously and going to budget meetings and arguing for a new science block. He’s not a pretend professor; he’s a real one and he’s got serious views about his job.
Is that your early years as a teacher coming to the surface? No, not really. I was a very indifferent teacher and would have run away as soon as I could in my time machine. That was a lifetime ago anyway. I left in the late 80s.
Have any of your students ever got in touch with you? Rarely. I’ve met a couple. Of course they seem about the same age as me because I was a young teacher in my early 20s and a lot of the ones I’d remember were then in their late teens.
Doctor Who has a knack of spotting talent, actors who are just starting out, like Andrew Garfield who was in Daleks in Manhattan [2007] and now has a huge Hollywood career and was in Angels in America. Our casting director Andy Pryor is so assiduous on who’s coming up. We’d never have seen Matt Smith but for him. We had Olivia Colman [in 2010] a heartbeat before she became a goddess. She was already regarded as a genuinely great actress but within a year of that she was the darling of the nation.
It was the same with Carey Mulligan as Sally Sparrow in Blink (the Weeping Angels’ debut and Radio Times readers’ favourite episode). Oh my God, Carey Mulligan! It’s funny but Blink, I say immodestly, is a very famous episode of television and yet Carey Mulligan, who was the star of it, I’m almost certain wouldn’t even remember being in Doctor Who. I don’t think she was much of a fan, or anything. They liked her so much, they said, “Do you want to be the next companion?” but she said no. God, she was amazing.
Carey Mulligan as Sally Sparrow in Blink
So you’ve never tried to get her back in any capacity? No. I know it’s a no.
What a shame! I agree. But then does that character become more special because you never see her again? She just passes through the Doctor’s life. It’s surprising the people who do love being part of it. John Hurt loved being the Doctor and was quite insistent, asking, “Am I a real Doctor? Do I really count?” And we said, “Yes, you count. You’re on the poster. It is definitely you.” David Bradley is so thrilled that he is really the Doctor now. Because obviously he was sort of the Doctor in An Adventure in Space and Time [2013]. He’s been a star for ever, but being the Doctor is special, somehow. He’s a bit like Hartnell in a way. He’s got a mean face but he’s the nicest man alive, so sweet and generous.
Doctor Who: Twice upon a Time will air on BBC1 on Christmas Day
This year’s annual Doctor Who cover for the Radio Times appears on the issue covering 9th-15th December, and features an image of Peter Capaldi in an ‘exclusive souvenir issue’.
Inside the magazine there is a six page feature on the show, including interviews with the show’s outgoing lead writer Steven Moffat, alternative first Doctor David Bradley, plus an item on Radio Times coverage of the twelfth Doctor’s era over the last few years.
Speaking about the arrival of the new Doctor in the form of Jodie Whitaker, Moffat explained why casting a woman hadn’t occured when he first took over, even though he had previously introduced a female Doctor in the form of Joanna Lumley in The Curse of Fatal Death:
If we’d replaced David Tennant with a woman it wouldn’t have worked. It was too early. We could have replaced Matt Smith with a woman, given that his Doctor was more sexless and less of a lad, but then I got obsessed with seeing Peter in the Tardis.
Bradley thinks she is a good casting choice:
When I heard it was Jodie I thought, “Well, that’s perfect” – because she’s got the range and she’s funny. They just need to keep that sense of fun and not forget the comic energy. You can read the full interviews in the Radio Times, on general release in the United Kingdom tomorrow, 2nd December.
The ‘legendary’ Christmas edition of the Radio Times (23rd December – 5th January) will of course feature Twice Upon A Time, and will be on sale from Saturday 9th December in London and the South East, and nationwide by Tuesday 12th December.