Wondercon 2011 – Doctor Who Panel

When one of the longest running TV shows in the world shows up at your local convention, it can seem obligatory to show up and cover the panel. Doctor Who is a British Sci-Fi adventure series about a being simply called the Doctor, who is a Time Lord, the sole survivor of a race of Time Travelers. He travels through time and space in the TARDIS, having adventures with his human companions. At present the Doctor is played by Matt Smith who is now starting his second season as the Doctor. While Matt Smith was not present at the panel, one of the directors was there, Toby Haynes, Mark Sheppard who plays one of the antagonist, and Neil Gaiman who wrote one of the new episodes. On one final note before we get to the panel itself, they showed us a Doctor Who Confidental showing us something of the upcoming season from the main actors point of view.

Our panelist were managed by Chris Hardwick of Websoup and the Nerdist. It did help that our moderator was a Doctor Who fan himself. Toby explained that he directed the first two episodes of the coming season as well as the Christmas Special of the coming season. He got involved with the present season after he received the script. As a huge fan of the series he simply jumped at the opportunity to be part of such an immense and amazing series. A good example of things with him that he gave is he was at dinner with the producers and when he was given the Doctor Who Annual he immediately asked the highest ranked person there to autograph it (as he helped produce it). He was asked a bit about his travels for the series. For the first time, Doctor Who came to America to film. He commented that before when he was filming, he used wide angel lenses to make things look bigger, but when he came to the US he found out that the US was the reason that Wide Angle lenses came to be. He found he needed to use them just to get everything to fit into the shot! He wanted to make sure everyone understood where they were in America, Monument Valley, and they were not faking it at all. There were some jokes about how Vancouver looks like everywhere.

Next up was Mark who started talking about the roles that he played in the coming season. He was also involved in Supernatural at the time. When he was just being recruited to do any filming at all. They called him and asked if he was filming right then. He answered that he had ten days free at that point. They offered to have him fly out to Cardiff to do the filming and he took up on it. They redid the entire schedule to make sure that he could do all his parts in time. He commented that Stewart did a great job as Nixon. There was very little else that he said about the episode he was in.

Next up was Neil Gaiman who talked about the episode that he wrote called “The Doctor's Wife”. Unfortunately that was all that he could ever say about the episode itself. He said he could say it was the fourth episode. He added in that it was supposed to be the eleventh episode in the last season he then got a call explaining that they had run out of money. Here, there was a slight digression as they talked about the fact that Doctor Who has almost always run on a shoestring budget. Then again, they admitted that it created a particular charm to the series. The biggest difference that made to Gaiman was that it was placed during “Rory's Absence” so he had to rewrite the episode to include Rory. This brought him some pleasure as he got to have Amy tell off Rory for letting the Doctor just run off.

This was followed by Toby talking a bit about how he got involved with Doctor Who to start with. He said that he has Dyslexia. When he was young he eventually found a Doctor Who novel, picked it up and started reading it. His mother noticed this and it became financed as a way of getting him to read. It was as much about the pictures on the cover as the text itself. He told us that he had made his own Dalek costume. As he got older he sidelined his interest in the Doctor but after he was contacted his interest renewed fast.

One of the questions asked of everyone was how it was to work with a mythology that spans around forty seven years. Neil talked first about how his Doctor was Pat Trenton, though the first Doctor he saw was William Hurt. He explained that before he knew everything he did about mythology he knew about Daleks and the Doctor. He originally worried a bit about Daleks and the fact they could not apparently see Red. He joked a bit about how there were Red Daleks and how they would get around the ship with other Daleks around who could not see them. He then started talking about what it was to write for a series with such a history. Even with all that time there always the episode that was someone's first episode. His response after that was “Now sit down, shut up and watch 'Blink'!”. Mark talked next about working without the Who Universe. How Tom Baker was his Doctor. He talked a bit about how the original Cyber-men were the scariest. He did his best to preserve the things that made them just that. After that, they all started talking about their experiences going around the set. One of those thing was Neil who got to explore the whole TARDIS and see the plate showing where the TARDIS originated. While it has yet to make it onto TV it is still there and shows all the details. Mark was shown how the whole of the TARDIS worked.

Now is when the panel opened up to the floor. The first question was for the entire panel, about what was the hardest part working in the Doctor Who Universe and the easiest. Neil went first saying that it was the fact that no one ever tried to reign him in for his ideas. They simply wanted him to write. The hardest part for him was actually writing the episode. He admitted to being spoiled by comics that no matter he asked to be put on the page it would cost the same. He was slightly baffled by the constraints of cost and time. Later on he mentioned some things about his coming episode of Doctor Who where Michael Sheen shows up and a Jones will be showing up there as an old acquaintance showing up with a new face.

Toby talked about how all he had to do was just turn the camera onto them to start getting the magic to happen. That was the easy thing for him. The hard part was in the pre-production part of the episodes, having to go to the “Dream Killer Meeting”. He called it that because it called in reality on all the dreams of the episode, where the technical restrains, monetary restrictions and all other aspects of reality come in. However, he feels that this is also what makes him better because it pushes him. He later mentioned a few of the coming episode titles: “The Impossible Astronaut” and “The Day of the Moon”.

Mark took the question next, explaining that the passion was easy to work with. The hard part for him was the fact that not all of the work he did would make it into the show itself. He also told us that he does not get to see the full reaction of things until he makes it to a convention like WonderCon and other fan gatherings.

This was an exciting panel to attend. The fans were very excited to be there and every clip was met with simply more excitement. What little people there were able to gleam was very well received. For certain this is going to be an exciting season for the Doctor.