My review of Dr Who Season 27 (officially I suppose) Ep #1 "Rose"
A brisk, sometimes lightning quick adventure brings Dr Who back not with a bang but a flash. Sometimes too much to take in for any new Whovians, other times the attempts at pithiness (the Doc saying "Sort of, yeah" several times in succession for example, or his repeated "What?"s as Billie points out the Millennium Wheel) became almost too silly. But enjoyable, genuine scares with the Autons at the end, and man-eating wheelie bin aside, a faithful-to-Who-ethos story.
The lead writer on the new Doctor Who series, Queer as Folk creator Russell T Davies,
will be writing the Christmas special, which will be broadcast towards the end of this year
.
Well, that kind of makes sense doesn't it? You wouldn't go and make a Christmas special for transmission during the Summer Season would you now???
It'll be interesting to see what sort of ratings Doctor Who gets in a christmas holidays slot. If the new series impresses, it could be quite a ratings winner. Certainly no Only Fools and Horses figures by any means but still quite an impressive figure.
Have the beeb commissioned this series because of the ratings though or the critical acclaim? Surely they wouldn't commission a series based on the ratings for the first episode. Especially as the recent charter states not to make programming decisions purely on audience figures.
I suspect that this story of Eccleston quitting is quite true.
In an interview I saw with him he was quite clear that he wouldn't be drawn into talking about future series of the show. To me, this said he was either unsure that the show would be re-commissioned (which of course it has been), or that he would only do the one series.
I suppose there are worse things that could happen.
Could a Doctor regenerate back to a previous form?
The impression I get is that
a) the filming took up too much of the year and he wanted to be free to do other things
b) he was worried about getting typecast
Both valid concerns, I guess. But, seeing as he was the one who approached Russel T Davies and not the other way round, I really had hoped he would try and do 2 series.
As I suggested in my post yesterday- 8 months of solid filming for just 13 hours of tape does seem extraordinarily slow...I think this may have been the deciding factor here.
Remember the series was meant to hit our screens in January- i.e. finished after 6 months filming...I just wonder if a shorter committment would have enticed Ecclestone to stay on.
I think David Tennant is simply outstanding in Casanova...it takes a lot to out-do Peter O'Toole, but he's managed it. A definite for the Doctor in my opinion.
8 months of solid filming for just 13 hours of tape does seem extraordinarily slow...
It's less than 13 hours as each episode is 45 minutes long, but even so eight months sounds about right for a high-end drama production shot in the 'filmic' style. On the other hand, was it really eight months shooting or eight months in production?
8 months of solid filming for just 13 hours of tape does seem extraordinarily slow...
It's less than 13 hours as each episode is 45 minutes long, but even so eight months sounds about right for a high-end drama production shot in the 'filmic' style. On the other hand, was it really eight months shooting or eight months in production?
2 good points
Yes- it's only about 10 hours of film, and yes you're probably right that it's not 8 months solid filming, but they were certainly reshooting scenes throughout that 8 months. And it definitely over-ran the original estimates of filming time.
I'm just saying that if you compare it to something like "24"....they film 24x 43minute episodes in 8 months on a budget of $35m (about £20m compared to the reported £10m on Dr.Who). Yes, Dr.Who has CGI based special effects, which probably means more demanding shoots interacting with 'plain air'.
Given that, I still think the filming of Dr. Who does seem rather slow- I feel this was probably crucial in Ecclestone's decision.
Profiles of the candidates for the 10th Doctor are HERE
Richard E Grant was DEFINITELY going to be the doctor the first time around. He was even tipped to be the doctor in something else just after the comic relief special a few years ago.
Alan Davies has been mentioned before also. How can you follow Chris Eccleston with him!?
And that David Tennant looks camp! Something I thought Doctor Who was moving away from
