Tagged: Matt Smith

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Tweeks Get Their Whovian Geek On For The 50th

Doctor-Who-The-50th-Anniversary-Wallpaper-doctor-who-35308700-1920-1080The Tweeks enjoyed the Day of the Doctor in Los Angeles and today recap the Dr. Who 50th Anniversary, giving us their review and reactions.

And yes, they  manage to keep their squeeing over both their Doctors being onscreen at once to a minimum.

***Spoilers Alert!***

The Tweeks will return Tuesday morning with their special Hunger Games: Catching Fire review!

FRIDAY: Martha Thomases

SATURDAY: Marc Alan Fishman

 

 

First Look at Live-Action Maleficent

Malfcnt_Teaser1-Sht_v2_LgDisney has released the teaser poster and trailer for next year’s revisionist take on Sleeping Beauty’s opponent, Maleficent. While many have been focused on Angelina Jolie’s appearance as the fairy tale villain, other scholars have decided the focus on the witch actually works against the source material. You watch, read, and decide.

Genre:                          Action-Adventure
Rating:                          TBD
U.S. Release date:        May 30, 2014
Running time:

Cast:                            Angelina Jolie, Sharlto Copley, Elle Fanning, Sam Riley, Imelda Staunton, Juno Temple, Lesley Manville
Director:                       Robert Stromberg
Producer:                      Joe Roth
Executive Producers:    Angelina Jolie, Don Hahn, Matt Smith, Palak Patel, Sarah Bradshaw
Screenplay by:              Linda Woolverton

From Disney comes Maleficent—the untold story of Disney’s most iconic villain from the 1959 classic Sleeping Beauty. A beautiful, pure-hearted young woman, Maleficent has an idyllic life growing up in a peaceable forest kingdom, until one day when an invading army threatens the harmony of the land. Maleficent rises to be the land’s fiercest protector, but she ultimately suffers a ruthless betrayal—an act that begins to turn her pure heart to stone. Bent on revenge, Maleficent faces an epic battle with the invading king’s successor and, as a result, places a curse upon his newborn infant Aurora. As the child grows, Maleficent realizes that Aurora holds the key to peace in the kingdom—and perhaps to Maleficent’s true happiness as well.

Maleficent, the untold story of Disney’s most iconic villain from the 1959 classic Sleeping Beauty, reveals the events that hardened Maleficent’s heart and drove her to curse the baby, Aurora.

OFFICIAL BOILERPLATE:

From Disney comes Maleficent—the untold story of Disney’s most iconic villain from the 1959 classic Sleeping Beauty. A beautiful, pure-hearted young woman, Maleficent has an idyllic life growing up in a peaceable forest kingdom, until one day when an invading army threatens the harmony of the land. Maleficent rises to be the land’s fiercest protector, but she ultimately suffers a ruthless betrayal—an act that begins to turn her pure heart to stone. Bent on revenge, Maleficent faces an epic battle with the invading king’s successor and, as a result, places a curse upon his newborn infant Aurora. As the child grows, Maleficent realizes that Aurora holds the key to peace in the kingdom—and perhaps to Maleficent’s true happiness as well.

The film stars Angelina Jolie as Maleficent, Sharlto Copley, Elle Fanning, Sam Riley, Imelda Staunton, Juno Temple and Lesley Manville.

Maleficent  is produced by Joe Roth and directed by Robert Stromberg, with Angelina Jolie, Don Hahn, Matt Smith, Palak Patel and Sarah Bradshaw serving as executive producers. Linda Woolverton wrote the screenplay. Maleficent opens in theaters on May 30, 2014.

Watch the New Doctor Who Trailer: “The Day Of The Doctor”

Watch the specially-shot trailer for the Doctor Who 50th Anniversary adventure The Day of the Doctor, featuring all of the Doctor’s incarnations (and a selection of his friends and foes!)

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hRy2N2CMhQ[/youtube]

The Day of the Doctor, starring Matt Smith and David Tennant, airs worldwide on November 23, 2013 and will also be shown in 3D in select movie theaters.

 

Tweeks: Doctor Who and The New Doctor

Tweeks Art 130926Good afternoon, and welcome to the first of our weekly Tweeks video columns! The Tweeks are Maddy and Anya Ernst, the newest pop culture critics at ComicMix.com.

This week, the Tweeks discuss Peter Capaldi, the new Doctor who will be regenerating from Matt Smith on the Doctor Who 2013 Christmas Special— a spirited conversation about the new Doctor Who, as only a pair of 11 year old twins can do it. Enjoy!

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1AuuQtRJiY[/youtube]

 

John Ostrander: Broadchurch Secrets

Ostrander Art 130825Ordinarily, I wouldn’t “review” a TV miniseries or movie until it was completed. You should know the story before you comment on it. I know this is heresy these days but I feel you should know something about a topic before you drop an opinion bomb on it. I have no use for those who have decided they don’t like something without having bothered to experience it. That’s lazy and presumptive. I fully admit some things I have not sampled based on what I know of it, but I don’t render an verdict on it. If I hate something it’s because I tried it – like broccoli. Yuck. Broccoli.

However, I’m currently watching the BBC miniseries Broadchurch on BBC America. I’ve just seen the third episode of the eight part series and I think it’s incredible. I want to tell people about it. The series is set in a small coastal English town and follows the investigation into the murder of a ten-year old boy and the effects the murder and the investigation has on everyone – including the ones investigating.

The series was created, written, and executive produced by Chris Chibnall. ComicMix readers might know of his work on Doctor Who and Torchwood, among other things. Other Who influences include David Tennant (the Tenth Doctor) as the lead inspector and Arthur Darvill (Rory) as the local pastor. I’ll be honest, it was Tennant that first drew me to Broadchurch; I’ve been interested in seeing what else he could do as an actor although, being honest again, I was not crazy about his performance in another BBC miniseries, Spies of Warsaw. His performance there, to my mind, was very one note.

Not so here. This time, he plays Detective Inspector Alec Hardy, a haunted depressed man with secrets of his own; there are levels in his performance that show his talent and skill.

He is matched by Olivia Colman as Detective Sergeant Ellie Miller. (That’s another Who connection; in Matt Smith’s first outing as the Doctor, Ms. Colman plays “Mother” – one of the identities that the villain of the piece assumes.) DS Miller comes back from vacation expecting to be promoted to DI, only to find DI Hardy – an outsider – has gotten the job. And the best friend of her own son has been murdered.

For me, the biggest star is the writing. Everyone has secrets in this small town and they are gradually peeled back, revealing deeper and deeper levels of characterization. Grief is real and palpable. The mystery so far deepens with each episode and, at this writing, I have no idea who killed the boy or why.

There is a slight Twin Peaks vibe to the show – it’s deliberately paced and it has a slight undertone of supernatural in the person of a very odd man who claims he is getting messages from the dead boy. He seems sincere but – is he? Unlike Twin Peaks, however, I have the sense that the creator, Chris Chibnail, knows exactly where he’s going and how to wind it up. I trust him; OTOH, I also trusted the creators of The X-Files at the beginning. I thought they knew what they were doing; they fooled me.

The show isn’t simply about the murder, although that’s the engine that drives everything. It’s about secrets and that’s one of the most powerful narrative tools I know. Everyone has secrets and what gets revealed to whom, when, and how and is that a good idea really drives narrative and character. The revelation of secrets may answer some questions but may raise more.

It’s not only the secrets the characters reveal to one another, but the secrets that we learn as viewers, when do we learn them, what does that tell us. There’s more going on here than we initially know and it is only gradually unfolded to us.

The production values and the direction are all first rate. The acting is wonderful throughout. The show may not be to everyone’s taste – some might find it slow – and it demands that you pay attention but I’m riveted.

If you’re interested in the first three episodes (and I would not recommend you watch the show without seeing them), you can find them on BBC America On Demand, Amazon Instant Video and probably elsewhere. I’m certain it’ll also eventually be available on DVD and Blu-ray and such. I plan to own it when it does. It’s gotten excellent reviews both in the UK and the States. A second series of the show is reportedly in development and I’ve heard there are plans for an American adaptation.

For me, this is first class television and I can’t wait for the next episode. It’s not broccoli.

MONDAY MORNING: Mindy Newell

TUESDAY MORNING: Emily S. Whitten

 

The Question Will Be Answered – New Doctor to be announced Sunday on live show

Matt Smith as the Eleventh Doctor

After much discussion a more than a sizable amount of betting, the BBC have announced that the actor to play the 12th (that we know of) title character on Doctor Who will be introduced to the public this Sunday at 7PM in the UK.  Titled Doctor Who Live: The Next Doctor, and hosted by TV and radio show presenter Zoe Ball.  The show will feature current Eleventh Doctor Matt Smith and showrunner Steven Moffatt, and the new actor will make their first appearance.

Revelation of the new Doctor has always been a media circus in England – bookies regularly take bets on who the actor will be, and stories rife with rumors and predictions will always draw eyes.  Eleventh Doctor Matt Smith was introduced in a special episode of Doctor Who Confidential – this is seemingly the next logical step for dealing with the instantaneous dissemination world of just a few years later.

While this will answer the question that has been on fans’ lips for some weeks now, it’s only one of several that have cropped up since.  The most immediate is how much of the new Doctor will we see in the last of this year’s episodes?

Matt Smith seemingly slipped a couple of times in panels at San Diego, saying that he had already filmed “his last episode”, namely the anniversary special.  He followed up quickly that he’d be back for Christmas, and he promised it’d be “a real belter”, but considering there’s no guarantee when the regeneration will take place.  They’ve made sure to select the new Doctor before the filming of the Christmas episode begins.

While it’s traditional to show the regeneration at the end of a season, that’s not how it started.  William Hartnell regenerated into Patrick Troughton in the middle of the season, and Troughton got right to it the next week in Evil of the Daleks.  David Tennant got his first full episode as The Doctor in the first Christmas episode The Christmas Invasion, after Christopher Eccleston left and regenerated at the end of his first and only series.  Smith appeared for only seconds at the end of The End of Time, returning for his first episode the next Spring.

We’re already seeing a two-Doctor episode for the anniversary, namely Tennant and Smith. That’s with the potential of more – Moffatt claims to have been “lying through his teeth” about what’s in the special, and rumors of a brief cameo scene by Paul McGann have started popping up again.  What, dare I suggest, if the Doctor regenerates at the end of the Anniversary special, and Smith only appears as an unseen Tyler Durden like advisor in the new Doctor’s mind?

For all the frenzy Sunday’s announcement will make, it will only be met with equal madness over the next few months until both remaining Smith episodes will bring.

Come Along.

John Ostrander: Quo Vadis the TARDIS

Ostrander Art 130609The Beeb announced this week that Matt Smith, the current actor playing the Doctor on Doctor Who, its long running (50 years!) SF series, will be leaving the show with the Christmas Special this year. For those of you living outside the Whovian time-space continuum, the Doctor is a time traveling alien who can regenerate entirely at points of mortality. Different face, different body, largely different personality, completely different actor in the role. They’ve done this eleven times so far so, in general, they have the procedure down pat.

I’ve seen some interesting speculations as to who will be the next Doctor. While usually the actor cast as the Doctor is not so well known, a names of a lot of well known actors are being currently tossed around by that mysterious series of tubes running underground known as the Internet. Hugh Laurie, best known as Doctor House here in America was one name mentioned and I think he would be very highly entertaining. I’ve seen Mr. Laurie in any number of different roles and he was marvelous in all of them. I don’t think the Beeb can afford his salary but it’s still interesting to think what might happen.

I read an interview where Helen Mirren had voiced a desire to the play the Doctor. Could the Doctor change into a woman? In the first episode that Neil Gaiman wrote for Doctor Who, “The Doctor’s Wife”, the Doctor mentions in passing a fellow time-lord who did regenerate into a woman so we have to take it as a possibility. Dame Helen Mirren has done a switched character before when she played Prospera, a female version of the character Prospero, in Julie Taymor’s movie adaptation of Shakespeare’s The Tempest. If she could do that, I have a feeling she could do the Doctor with no problem.

At one point before Matt Smith was cast as the current Doctor, Idris Elba’s name was bounced around as a candidate for the role. Elba is a fine actor who happens to be black; some Americans will know him as the title character on the BBC series Luther while others might know him as the character Heimdall in 2011’s Thor, a fact that cheesed off some Aryan neo-Nazi types who whined that Heimdall was supposed to be white. Mr. Elba has tremendous strengths as an actor and incredible charisma; I would love to see what he would do rattling around in the TARDIS.

Especially interesting to me is that the last two candidates are very non-traditional approaches to the character of the Doctor. I think that would invigorate the show. For example, I would love to see Helen Mirren’s Doctor meeting River Song or, for that matter, Captain Jack Harkness. You could argue that  a show that’s hit 50 can use some fresh air and a dusting away of the cobwebs.

One person who will not be playing the Doctor, I can predict with some certainty, is – me. Not for want of trying. Years ago, during my acting days, the part I most wanted to play was the Doctor. I realized back then that the odds of an unknown American actor living in Chicago would ever be cast in the part were in the infinity range.

However, I was part of a vibrant Chicago theater scene – I was not only an actor but I had been a writer, a director, and a producer. What about the odds of my putting on an all-new Doctor Who play in Chicago? I could cast myself in the part and I knew the mythos well enough, I felt, to write a convincing new adventure.

Long and short, I did try and I very nearly succeeded – although I couldn’t get the part of the Doctor which explains part of the reason why I left acting far behind. I mean, if I couldn’t even get the part I wanted in a play that I has written and was producing, that was the epitome of futility, wasn’t it?

The play never got produced although we got close but all that will have to be a column for another day. One lasting thing did happen as a result of all that – I met and got to know Kimberly Ann Yale, my late wife.

And the Doctor was partially to thank for that. Thanks, Doc.

MONDAY MORNING: Mindy Newell

TUESDAY MORNING: Emily S. Whitten

 

Matt Smith leaving “Doctor Who” at Christmas, Internet asks for tissue

Matt Smith as the Eleventh DoctorThe BBC announced officially this weekend that Matt Smith, current star of Doctor Who, will be leaving the series in the Christmas episode.

Both Matt and showrunner Steven Moffat have already been quoted heaping glowing praise on each other, and rightly so.  Doctor Who fandom has already kicked into overdrive, showering tumblr and other blog pages with a deluge of tribute graphics, please to remain, and other spontaneous eruptions of raw emotion.

Doctor Who fans will now once again pass through the seven stages of grief, a process that some have never experienced, being new to the show, some have already seen once or twice, or for older fans (raises hand), seven, eight, or as many as eleven times.

One of the most amazing things about Doctor Who is this process of regeneration.  While other actors have been replaced on television shows, Doctor Who invented a process that made it a part of the narrative.  Time Lords, the Doctor’s people, have the ability to completely rejuvenate themselves in times of extreme trauma, completely reborn, with a new body and a new personalty.  It allows the show to not only move on past the departure of its star, but forge into brand new directions.

Along with the regeneration process will be an equally traditional series of events:

The news media will kick the rumor mills into high gear – Names will be floated, denials will be made, and actors will play coy, taking advantage of the publicity to get their name in the sun.

The betting will begin – Gambling is legal in the UK, and the local bookies have traditionally taken wagers on the identity of the new Doctor.  And the aforementioned media will report the current oddsmaking, as if it has some connection to reality. As in the rumor mill, new names will emerge and rise and fall in the rankings, and it’ll be a delight to watch.Unless you’ve put money down, in which case it’ll be harrowing.

The discussions about making The Doctor a woman will re-emerge – So too making him black, or Asian, or any of the other “types” of people a character can be.  Both Mike Gold and Yr obt svt. have discussed the recurring meme, more about the fervor and hysteria around it.

The fans will swear blind it will never be as good as (insert name here) – Nothing is ever as good as what you have now, or if you are older (just leaves hand in air), than what you had when you were younger.  Each Doctor was perfect, and nobody can ever replace him, until about five minutes into the first new episode when the new guy grabs you and rubs your tummy with his acting and makes you forget the last guy’s name for a moment.  The show will careen off in a new direction, just like a trip in the TARDIS itself, and the trip will be thrilling and terrifying, and ultimately satisfying.

Someone’s life will never be the same again – Moffat has it right – “Somewhere out there right now – all unknowing, just going about their business – is someone who’s about to become the Doctor“.  The show was popular during its original run, but now it’s dead center in popular culture, and the person selected to play The Doctor will shoot  to super-stardom before a frame’s been shot.  Matt Smith has already taken advantage of the opportunities the role has afforded him – he’s currently filming Ryan Gosling’s directorial debut How to Make a Monster, and plans to direct himself.

With six months to go before the final Smith adventure airs, and several weeks before it starts filming, fandom will be filled with many emotions, a rampant desire to learn new details, and will spent a great deal of time trying to separate reality from fantasy.  Moffat and the BBC will begin the arduous process of choosing the actor to entrust with their golden franchise (if, indeed, they haven’t already started…or even finished), all the time trying to ride the line between keeping it all a secret and letting just enough details slip to keep the media hungry.

There may be an important wrinkle to the new Doctor’s story that may take the show in a dramatic direction.  Matt’s Doctor is the eleventh regeneration, but events at the end of the final episode of the series suggest that there’s one more to be accounted for.  John Hurt was revealed to be playing The Doctor as well, and fans has surmised he may be (have been) a regeneration between Eight (Paul McGann) and Nine (Christopher Eccleston).  If so, even though Matt’s calls himself the eleventh Doctor, he’d be the twelfth…and the next one would be the thirteenth.  According to the show’s history, a Time Lord can only regenerate twelve times, for a total of thirteen bodies, which would make the next Doctor…the last.

Which will likely never occur.  Russell T. Davies has already said that when the time to get around that little plot device that seemed SO far away when they came up with it decades ago, “I’m sure someone will wave the Amulet of Zog and sort it all out”.  But it’ll be the process to get to that eventual happy end that will make the show all the more exciting,.

New Who Review – Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS

She’s the only character on the show to appear in almost every episode.  She’s the TARDIS and she’s as important to the series as The Doctor himself.  So it’s nice when we get a story that features her  in a major way.

JOURNEY TO THE CENTRE OF THE TARDIS
by Stephen Thompson
Directed by Mat King

Trying to get Clara and the TARDIS to get along,  The Doctor tries letting her fly the ship, shutting off some of the higher more complex functions…like the shields.  This exposes the ship to outside detection, and detected it gets, but space salvage collectors the Van Baalen Brothers.  Using an illegal magna-grab system, they grab the TARDIS, causing a massive overload in the ship, one that flings The Doctor out of the doors, and Clara rolling back deep into its corridors.  The Doctor is forced to engage the brothers to help him save Clara, and later, keep the TARDIS from exploding and destroying much of the universe.

The main threat of the episode is effectively a condensed version of the arc plot from Matt Smith’s first series – the destruction of the TARDIS causing a rift in time, and held in stasis by the TARDIS itself.  Even the solution – the Doctor telling himself what to do to fix it has been done in Moffat’s two-part short for Comic Relief Time and Space, and to a more in your face level, the earlier special Time Crash.

THE MONSTER FILES – The TARDIS is both the setting and primary antagonist of the episode, trying to keep itself safe as well as keep the Van Baalen Brothers powerless.  There have been a number of TARDIS-centric episodes of the series, in an attempt to give some glimpse into its workings. The Edge of Destruction was way back in the first series, and was the first opportunity to both open up the backstory of the show, and the first time it was suggested that the TARDIS was at least some form of sentience – it tries to warn the crew that it was heading back to the beginning of time. We got a mini-tour of the ship in The Masque of Mandragora in which we first see the second control room, and a very large boot cupboard.  The Invasion of Time promised a deep look inside the TARDIS as The Doctor must face invading Sontarans- alas, a strike meant that the planned TARDIS sets were never built, leaving them to film in a disused hospital. We saw sevela new rooms, including a wardrobe and the Zero Room in Castrovalva.  Neil Gaiman’s previous episode The Doctor’s Wife showed a lot of the interior of the ship, as well as a major insight into her character. One of the downloadable video games, simply titled TARDIS, gave a look at many of the rooms in the ship as well,

GUEST STAR REPORT

Steven Thompson (Writer) has admitted in interviews that he has a handful of dream episode he planned to pitch for the show, including a way to bring back the Krynoids from The Seeds of Doom. Moffat pithced this story to him, he decided it was a much better idea, and went off to write it. Thompson  has written three episodes of Sherlock, last coming over to Doctor Who for The Curse of the Black Spot.

BACKGROUND BITS AND BOBS – Trivia and production details

A WHOLE LOT OF RUNNING – Last seen in the aforementioned The Doctor’s Wife, we get another iteration of the classic “endless corridor” gag in this episode.  Doctor Who is notorious for this set-up – a simple set of two or three corridors, set at an angle to each other, and with a bit of careful cinematography, you can make them look like an endless set of twists and turns.  At least a couple of these corridors were built right along with the new set – we see The Doctor head down one to look for his the garage in The Bells of Saint John.  In the case of The Doctor’s Wife, the corridors were built expressly for the episode.  They also knew the episode was coming, so they left the Tennant control room set standing expressly for its use.…AND A ROOM AND A ROOM – We get a fleeting look at the swimming pool (last seen in Invasion of Time), the library (and a VERY interesting book), and what looks like an observatory.  The Telescope within is very reminiscent to the light collection weapon from Tooth and Claw.  It’s likely that it’s just a quick re-use of the model by the special effects team as opposed to it being the actual device from that episode.WE NEVER THROW ANYTHING AWAY – In that storage room Clara enters we see The Doctor’s (and River’s) crib, one of Amy’s hand-crafted TARDIS toys, a magnifying glass used (among other times) by Donna Noble in The Unicorn and the Wasp, and an umbrella that many presume is Victorian Clara’s from The Snowmen, it actually more closely resembles the umbrella carried by the eighth Doctor in Paradise Towers. VOICES FROM THE PAST – As Bram starts to dismantle the console, we hear voices from past adventures, including Susan, The Third, Fourth, Ninth and Eleventh Doctors, a couple of the Companions, and finally Five, complaining that Ten had “changed the desktop settings”.  Susan was allegedly the one to name the TARDIS, but in later adventures the name seems to be an official one.  Pertwee was the first to use the term “dimensionally transcendental”, techspeak for “bigger on the inside.  Baker’s line is from the single best explanation of  dimensional mechanics ever, given to Leela in Robots of Death.

“Basic mode? What, because I’m a girl?” – Well, The Doctor tried to teach Rose to fly the ship once, tho just as practice, and if she’d been actually been doing it, she’d have killed them both.  So for The Doctor to actually let Clara try flying the ship at all if quite a gesture of trust.  Glad it went so well.

“Well put – ‘Whoa’ and “awesome’.” – The Doctor describes the TARDIS as “infinite” – likely he’s either just engaging in hyperbole to make a point, or he’s referring to it being infinitely configurable.

“So that’s who…” – The mystery of The Doctor’s name has been a running theme for most of the current run of the show, and has become a major plot thread since the end of last season, supposedly culminating in the last episode of this series, The Name of the Doctor.  Theories have flown thick and fast as to the secret – is he hiding an act of evil in his past, or is he simply keeping it a secret so he can’t be traced back to his youth and destroyed?  In many cultures, knowing an enemy’s true name is the key to controlling or destroying them.

“The Eye of Harmony – exploding star in the act of becoming a black hole” – Mentioned just last week, the Eye of Harmony was first mentioned in The Deadly Assassin as the primary power source of the Time Lords.  Initially described as an actual black hole, here tweaked to be one in the act of a-borning.  Also, while initially described as being buried under the council chamber of Gallifrey, here we see the Eye is within, or at least accessible from, the interior of the TARDIS.

BIG BAD WOLF REPORT / CLEVER THEORY DEPARTMENT

Many have expressed regret that all of the events have been forgotten by The Doctor’s companion and the Van Baalen brothers, to which I retort, exactly how much have been forgotten?  Gregor doesn’t remember the events of the adventure, but certainly recalls his shred of decency, resulting in him treating tricky with more…humanity.  And Clara says she doesn’t want to forget “all” of what’s happened.  She’s traveled in time enough that she’s potentially able to keep events erased from time in her mind, as The Doctor tries to do with Amy about Rory at the end of Cold Blood.

“What are you? A trick? A trap?” – For two weeks running we get validation that there’s nothing special about Clara, save for being a strong feisty girl.  Here she gets told about her other iterations, and doesn’t know a thing about them.  But again, it’s not known how much of this revelation she’ll remember.

NEXT TIME ON DOCTOR WHO – Mark Gatiss, Diana Rigg, Strax, Jenny and Madame Vastra.  The Crimson Horror, one weekend hence.

New Who Companion To Be Selected “Idol”-Style

aa_womenofdoctorwho_01_web-1-480x270-9063810

Riding the wave of major West End productions being cast by popular vote on television, the BBC announced today that the next co-star for the popular science-fiction program Doctor Who will be selected on a new reality show talent competition.

The show, “No Xenon Impact” (An anagram of “Next Companion”) will be executive produced by Caro Skinner and Andrew Lloyd Webber, based on the format of his reality show “How do you solve a problem like Maria?“, which cast the lead of the Sound of Music revival. The show will be co-hosted by John “Captain Jack” Barrowman and long-time Doctor Who fan and guest-star David Walliams.

DW Showrunner Steven Moffat admitted he was first “hesitant” at the idea, but admitted “It gives the show a mad new challenge – The Doctor never knows who his new friends will be, and now neither will we.”

The show will premiere on May 25th, a week after the second half of the current series of Doctor Who ends, and will run for six weeks.  Contestants (eight female, four male) will be drilled weekly on their acting and improv skill, their knowledge of the program, and what Walliams describes as “A whole lot of running.” Contestants will be voted on weekly by the viewing audience, and a different “guest alien” who “Exterminate” one or two hopefuls live on the program. Matt Smith and current companion (already confirmed to be returning for the eighth series) Jenna-Louise Coleman have agreed to appear for the series finale, where Matt will present a key to the TARDIS to the lucky winner.

Filming for the new eighth series of Doctor Who has yet to be scheduled; it is believed by many that this competition has been in the planning for some time, and the eighth series production has been scheduled to accommodate it.