Moffat explained: “The big deal is Doctor No 12 (Peter Capaldi) encountering River and vice versa”. Moffat went with some of his trademark (and oft-repeated) timey-wimey stuff and tweaked the history of Who by establishing that there had actually been a Doctor between Eight (last seen in a TV movie) and Nine from the premiere of the reboot.
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Five million viewers tuned in to see the exit of Jenna Coleman’s Clara as she bowed out after 3 years, 31 episodes and countless adventures on Saturday night.
And who better to take on the role of the next companion that Maisie Williams, one of this country’s most shining examples of young actors for years, especially seeing as how she has always seemed pretty up for it, and now, by the sounds of it, so is Capaldi!
Moffat says the Christmas special will have a much lighter tone than the end of the current series. And even his grand idea of Clara and the Doctor whizzing back through the Doctor’s time line to undo the harm done by the Great Intelligence didn’t have a significant ending until quite late on in the planning stages. “It’s a one-hander, which is unusual for Doctor Who and I’m sure it will be interesting”.
Might he worry that the episode would be three hours long?
“When they told me it was just going to be me, I thought it was going to be pages and pages of dialogue, but it’s not”, he said. I believe he has his own Daleks which he can provide for us. I went for another meeting with him and he decided no. His reasons are his business and he’s a very private man. But it’s reasonable to say he really cares about Doctor Who. A production team is assembled, people are doing storyboards and I don’t even know if anyone who has ever played the Doctor is going to be in it.
Before arriving in Auckland Capaldi was guest of honour at a fan convention in Sydney.
The BBC has released two new official pics from the upcoming Doctor Who Christmas special featuring the return of the Doctor’s wife, River Song, while showrunner Steven Moffat has opened up about the story’s timeline.
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“But we were very very committed to trying to win once you get into it. There were hard questions”.
