RIGHT! List of titles is now available! Plus, SFX have published extracts of some Steven Moffat interviews. Plus my thoughts, 'cause I'm dead excited and want to talk about the episodes rather than just copying and pasting.
1. The Impossible Astronaut / 2. Day of the Moon
The big two-part opener. Set in the USA. "Four envelopes, numbered 2, 3 and 4, each containing a date, time and map reference, unsigned, but TARDIS blue. Who sent them? And who received the missing number one? This strange summons reunites the Doctor, Amy, Rory and River Song in the middle of the Utah desert and unveils a terrible secret the Doctor's friends must never reveal to him." Meant to be darker than any of the other openers, and genuinely scary. Reportedly, they wanted to do an opening story that feels like it could be a finale. And we get to see a powerful new enemy, who are apparently worse than the Weeping Angels. Oooooh I cannot wait.
3. The Curse of the Black Spot
This is the pirate story. Set in the 1600s. The Black Spot was a plot device in treasure island, I believe (although it's ages since I last read it), and it's written by a fella called Stephen Thompson, who worked with Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss on the fantastic Sherlock. Steven Moffat sez! “Steve Thompson’s pirate one is just a glorious, hugely clever, very funny but again properly scary adventure. I knew Steven from Sherlock and other projects, and he desperately wanted to do Doctor Who. So he brought all that wonderful giddy enthusiasm of someone who’s a hugely distinguished playwright and very much the coming man in television suddenly getting to play with Doctor Who. It’s just bursting with Doctor Whoness, and it’s so much fun, and a wonderful contrast to our opener, which is quite intense.”
4. The Doctor's Wife
Neil Gaiman! And that title! This was written for last series, but they didn't have the resources to film it, so it's coming out this year instead, with all the bells on. “It’s a killer idea. A killer idea, which he pitched to me shortly after I first met him. And if I summed it up in several words for you you’d think ‘Yes, of course…’.” Neil Gaiman, of course, is the man who wrote Coraline, Stardust, American Gods, etc. etc. He's one of the fantasy kings. One of the elder statesmen of fiction. And he adores Doctor Who. This is going to be exciting. Not going to spoil any monsters, but apparently we've got a lot of continuity on our hands.
5. The Rebel Flesh / 6. The Almost People
Matthew Graham's episode for series 2 was, frankly, pants - a combination of poor direction, rushed scriptwriting, and the fact that the production team were out of money, and had to pay for it using the fluff at the bottom of their wallets, some old receipts, a couple of sexual favours, and a Doctor Who Top Trumps card. (Mickey Smith, if you must know.) That said, the man is supremely talented, and was the head writer for Life on Mars and Ashes to Ashes - the latter of which almost managed to be better than Doctor Who in its last series, so I rate him massively. Plus, Marshall Lancaster! Who played DC Chris Skelton, and is a wonderful actor who I've wanted in the show since I first set eyes on Life on Mars.
Steven Moffat: “Oh yes, you’ll get a cliffhanger. In fact, you’re going to get several cliffhangers. You had two just there. And you’re going to get a couple of real belters. Not just episode seven. Episode six is an absolute cracker, isn’t it? If you run for 13 weeks you can start to feel as though you can miss one ep and it’ll be OK. We don’t want that – we stop for a few weeks and let you all worry about what’s happening and then come back. Of course we get then two finales and two first nights.”
Matt Smith: “At the end of six…we read it and went, ‘Oh my God!”
Plus, "The Almost People" is a phenomenal title. Love it. (Working title was "Gangers," which was a rubbish title.)
7. A Good Man Goes to War
Don't know much about this at all, and nor would I want to. According to Digital Spy, "The Doctor's darkest hour finally arrives, as the battle of Demon's Run begins! And as for the plot? We'll just say this - a shocking secret will finally be revealed, a familiar race of monsters (or maybe even two) will make an appearance, and silence will definitely fall..." Steven Moffat's one part finale, with a gamechanging cliffhanger.
This is going to be one hell of a tasty series.
Incidentally, Matt Smith and Karen Gillan have been talking - again, to SFX.co.uk - and both of their quotes make me brilliantly happy. Verbatim, from the website...
Matt Smith on possibly writing for the show: “I’d quite like to write a script one day, because I’m learning a lot from Steven. You’ve got to be really good to write a Doctor Who script, so it’s a long way off, but one day. I’ve never really shown anyone things I’ve written. And I’ve got to get over that, if I want to be a writer…”
Karen Gillan on Amy in series six: “I think she’s going to develop a lot. Amy’s very guarded, and doesn’t like to show her emotions, because she doesn’t want to show her vulnerability. She has trust issues with what happened with the Doctor when she met him as a little girl. And she’s kept that hidden in the last series… And I think we’re going to see that guard start to crack.”
Matt Smith for series 7!
Topic: Doctor Who (Read 216390 times)
