Big Bad Hints, Regenerations and Musicals?!

For promotion of the US launch of the fifth series this weekend, Matt Smith, Karen Gillan and Steven Moffat have been touring the States all week. Here’s a round-up of some of the more interesting stories to come out of the numerous press discussions.

In a Q&A session for Paley Centre for Media (transcribed by Newsarama), Matt Smith gave some hints about years ‘big bad’.

Smith told the crowd it’s seen in the very first episode. “Albeit, not in the most conventional form. You’re going to have to think about it and find out what it is, but it’s in there,” he said. “And that’s the one, that’s what takes us through the whole series and my god, it’s bad.”

Steven Moffat said the regeneration limit (by which Timelord can regenerate twelve times before finally dying) will be ‘addressed’.

“It’s been addressed in a very, very cheeky way by an old friend of mine and I’m not going to tell you any more about that,” said Moffat, telling us to “wait and see.”

In an interview with Fearnet.com Moffat discussed bringing back the Weeping Angels –

I had a bunch of ideas that I never managed to squeeze into “Blink”, scary-angel things that I’d like to try. So I just thought it was worth it – people would like to see them again. I think the [new] two-parter – “The Time of Angels” and “Flesh and Stone” – is an absolute stormer; I think it’s an absolute belter of a two-parter, and I’m really thrilled with it. The thing is, it’s so completely different from “Blink” – in style, tone, pace, approach – that it rarely feels like a sequel to it at all. Hopefully it won’t feel like a sequel to anything. It just feels like a cracking good Doctor Who yarn, which I genuinely think it is. A great example of how to do a sequel right is probably Aliens coming after Alien. I think this is the equivalent of that. It’s a brand new use of the same monster.

He also talked briefly about Neil Gaiman writing for Series 6 –

I knew Neil as far as email exchanges went, and we’ve been out for dinner a couple of times. He’s a big fan of the show. I think he was a shoe-in for it in the sense that if you’re familiar with Neil Gaiman’s work, you can tell he’s a Doctor Who fan, just from his work. It made sense to go in that direction. He was keen, I was keen. That wasn’t a hard sell. That was one of the easier hirings. We were happy to have him on board.

Finally the trio had a chat with the New York Times and whilst talking about the versatility of the show Moffat said, “Every genre we could do. We haven’t done a musical yet – but we could!” Karen Gillan was enthused, “I’d love that, so much!” she said. Smith wasn’t as keen though, “We need to hold fire on this people. I can’t sing!”

The Eleventh Hour premieres this Saturday 17th April on BBC America at 9pm/8c.