#whoBts

[mizgnomer]

Behind the Scenes of The Star Beast - Part Seventeen

Excerpt from Paul Kirkley's interview with the directors of the three 60th Anniversary Specials from DWM #589

Question: Tell us about working with David and Catherine. It seems they came back to Doctor Who for the sheer love of it. Was that obvious on set? Rachel Talalay [ director of The Star Beast ]: They couldn't have been more joyful. The second that David opened his mouth as the Doctor in the readthrough, you could just hear the entire room sigh with the joy of having him back. I have this very strong image. We were in this underground parking lot in London, which is the most annoying location. Because we're in London! Why are we in an underground parking lot? They're not fun places to start with, plus it was really noisy, and it was a night shoot, so I was dreading everything to do with it. And we're setting up, and I turn around, and running down the ramp, there's David - in complete joy. And I suddenly felt like, "David's here, it's all going to be fine, it's all going to be fun." And it was.

Additional parts of this set are in the #whoBtsBeast tag. The full episode list is [ here ]

Thank you to everyone who shared set photos!

[vypridae]

ONE OF MY MOOTS GAVE ME SOENBODY WHOBT TRANSLATED IT A BIR

SCREAMING SCREAMING SVREAMING LOOK AG THEMMMMMM🫂🫂🫂🫂🫂🫂🫂🫂🫂🫂🫂

HOM OASGJSDHKHSGHAJDF I LOVE THEM LOE THEM THEYRE SO SILYL . I AM OBSESSED WITH THEM DID U KNOW

[fatcatcooper]

How do I see this peoeplt whobt froellyme who retweetedd meeee

How did you start simping for Jax?

I thought of a character who was irredeemable, and then I designed him, and I was like yeaaaa...

[mizgnomer]

David Tennant dancing on the set of The Giggle - Doctor Who 60th Anniversary Specials

The Doctor doesn't even dance in the UNIT scene - this is all pure, joyous David Tennant

also featuring Neil Patrick Harris, Ncuti Gatwa, and Ruth Madeley (who are all glorious)

[mizgnomer]

Behind the Scenes of The 60th Anniversary Specials - Part Six

From Doctor Who Magazine 599:

DWM sits down with David Tennant on the set of The Giggle to talk retro chic, running, and roundels DWM: Big, isn't it? David: Yeah. When I first come onto it, I run a circuit of it. Which was great, but by the fifth take, I was feeling it. DWM: Proper roundels, too... David: Absolutely. And there's like, 850 of them or something? DWM: Is roundel even a word? David: I think so. That's what everyone's been calling them. Is that not a word? DWM: It is - but does anyone who isn't a Doctor Who fan ever use it? David: Well, words have to start somewhere, don't they? I'm going to go look up that word and it's origins now...

The 60th Anniversary Specials each have their own tag, but the #whoBts60th tag is for general photos and behind the scenes information that span multiple episodes.  The full episode list is [ here ]

[mizgnomer]

Behind the Scenes of The Giggle - Part 17

Excerpt from Benjamin Cook's interview with Catherine Tate (and David Tennant because he's also in the room) in DWM #597:

“Of course, all this is happening because of Catherine,” David reminds us. “It was her idea.”

“It was my idea,” she says proudly. “Well, prompted by Russell. I didn’t just ring him up out of the blue and go, ‘Listen, come on.’” Well. No, but not far off. In December 2020, after a lockdown tweetalong of Catherine’s Doctor Who debut, 2006’s The Runaway Bride, organised by DWM’s Emily Cook – where the cast and crew watched and tweeted simultaneously with fans worldwide - Catherine messaged Russell to say how wonderful it was to see the episode again.

He messaged back: “God, let’s get David to do some more Doctor & Donna.”

“Let’s do it!!!” replied Catherine, then a few days later: “David said he’d do it in a heartbeat. Who do we need to speak to? Come on, let’s get the old band back together.”

And so they did. “But obviously it had to be with David,” says Catherine, when asked if either of them would have returned without the other. “I mean, it would have been weird if Russell had gone, ‘Let’s stick her with Chris Eccleston!’ Or if I’d said I’ll come back, but ���”

“– only with Sylvester McCoy,” suggests David.

“I’d have LOVED that,” insists Catherine. (David nods as if to say, actually, no, fair enough. “Do you know, Sylvester hasn’t aged,” he adds. “If I were Russell, I’d bring him back tomorrow.” Now, there’s a thought.) “But there was never any suggestion that it wouldn’t be the two of us, which made it all the more appealing,” continues Catherine. “For years it was like ‘if wishing made it so’ that we could come back and do this again. Then against all odds, we have. You wouldn’t have bet on it, would you? Although, I do think I always held on to the idea. I used to say sporadically, ‘Oh, let’s just do a lost adventure. The Doctor and Donna: The Lost Adventures.’”

“Before it’s implausible,” says David. “Before we get too old.”

“Before no-one believes that we were ever in it in the first place,” says Catherine, laughing.

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For other posts in this set, please see the #whoBtsGiggle tag. The full episode list is [ here ]

[mizgnomer]

The gymnastics of playing ball Doctor Who style Behind the Scenes of The Giggle with David Tennant as the fourteenth Doctor

Bonus: Ncuti's impressive one-handed cartwheel:

[mizgnomer]

Behind the Scenes of the Thirteenth-to-Fourteenth Doctor Regeneration in Power of the Doctor - Part Two

Bonus: David watching the regeneration as it's broadcast (photo care of former Doctor Who assistant director & long-time friend, Jennie Fava):

Excerpt from Benjamin Cook's article in DWM #584:

It had just turned 6.00pm when David went for his first take. Wrap is at 7.00pm. It’s now 20-to. Soak up the history, guys. “And… cut,” says Rachel [Talalay, director]. “Beautiful. David, do you want to see it back?” David: “Would I!” As he watches the latest take replayed on the camera monitor, he laughs away happily to himself. “That’s good!” “The quiff’s brilliant, isn’t it?” says Phil [Collinson, producer]. “And look at the coat!!” Then another take. And another. Matt, the director of photography, asks: “Could the wind just be a little bit stronger, picking up the coat?” A cry goes up from somewhere in the studio: “STRONGER ON THE WIND!!!” The man with the wind machine yanks it up to 11. “Are my arms open wide enough?” David asks. “I think so. It’s ballet! We’ll shoot a head-to-toe for the outfit next, so people can cosplay,” says Rachel. “Then we’ll shoot something close. Then we’re done. How does that sound, David?” “Can I drop to my knees and do a Shawshank Redemption?” “You can. I’ll pass.” [...] “And this is the shot that will be rewatched a gazillion times,” says Rachel, checking back the final take of David, with his arms aloft, on the camera monitor before she calls a wrap. “But that’s what regeneration is. And pause it there.” She leans in close to the screen, as though trying to take in every pixel. “Yes. Good. David, are you happy?” “Are you happy?” David replies. “It’s been a long time since I’ve done one of these. But it does feel much more familiar than I thought it would.” He stares at the monitor. His Doctor superimposed over Jodie’s. Two Doctors, in one frozen image. Their arms flung wide open. Embracing the future. “Yes,” he says. “I’m happy.”

For other posts in this set, please see the #whoBtsPower tag. The full episode behind-the-scenes list is [ here ]

[mizgnomer]

David Tennant and Catherine Tate having fun on the set of Wild Blue Yonder / Doctor Who 60th Anniversary

(and Bernard Cribbins too)

[mizgnomer]

Time Crash - Behind the Scenes - Part Nine

Excerpts from Benjamin Cook’s interview with Peter Davison and David Tennant in DWM #389:

DWM: Famously, Peter, you were advised by Patrick Troughton to do three years in this role and then leave, which is what you did. David, you're coming up to three years. Is that the optimum tenure for a Doctor, do you think?

DT: That's a very leading question! [Laughs] When I think back to The Christmas Invasion, it does feel like a lifetime ago - not in a bad way, but so much has happened, and so much has moved on and changed. It's been an action-packed three years so far.

PD: I might as well have done another year, except in those days we were very pushed on budgets and time, so you were faced with stories that were a little substandard. That was part of the frustration. It's a different world now. You can go off and do other things without feeling that Doctor Who is going to stick with you. That's the biggest fear. It's not exactly typecasting, it's people just not employing you because you were the Doctor

DT: I would agree with that reading of events, but I suppose time will tell. I'll probably need to look back objectively in days to come

PD: I don't think it will be a problem for you, David. It wasn't so much a problem for me, because I was, like you, kind of known before I did Doctor Who. As long as you're enjoying yourself, there's no reason to worry about when or when not to leave.

DT: I'm still having a great time. In some ways, playing the Doctor will always feel like a novelty.

PD: One gets used to it.

DT: One does, I suppose. But I don't mean one gets blasé. Last year, I still felt a bit like the new boy, but now I'm positively an old hand, aren't I? [Chuckles] I'm not really a new boy now. It's funny how three years can change your perspective. It's an overused phrase in terms of film crews and stuff, but there's such a sense of family now, and so many people have been here for as long as I have, if not longer. Even people who are new just fall into the sort of bosom of it, which I'm really pleased about. It makes it a great thing to return to. It's nice when guests come in - like you, Peter, coming back to do this - and seem to get a sense of that, and kind of become part of that as well. It's a very happy place to be.

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Link to [ part one ] of the Time Crash Behind-the-scenes posts, or click the #whoBtsCrash tag, or the full episode list [ here ]

[mizgnomer]

Doctor Who - Wild Blue Yonder - Visual Effects - Part Two

Link to [ Part One ]

[mizgnomer]

David Tennant - the Fourteenth Doctor Photoshoot

source [ youtube ]

Pam Downe [ Costume Designer ] - It's a fabric that David chose, actually. He's probably got four or five sets of the trousers and the jacket, and maybe four coats.

Russell T. Davies [ Showrunner/writer ] - David's whole look is a nod to the old.

David Tennant: That was important, to find something that very much had the same flavor and the same feel, but also marked a sense that this is not quite the same story that we're telling

Russell T. Davies: The look of him is very precise, it's very Doctor-y but new. It's not the old look reproduced. It's a suit. It's a tight suit, but it's a different pattern. He insisted on doing that top button up and I don't know why he did that. I don't know what he was thinking but I love it. Moments like that you trust your lead actor. We all had input into it, we all have a say, but at the same time, we actually kind of sat back and went, "You're the man"

[mizgnomer]

Behind the Scenes of The Star Beast - Part Sixteen

Many of these photos are care of Star Beast director Rachael Talalay

Excerpt from Benjamin Cook's interview with Catherine Tate (and David Tennant) from DWM 597:

===========================

It’s Tuesday, 26 July 2022, and Catherine might be playing Donna Noble for the last time. Oh, and she’s on the new TARDIS set. NO SPOILERS! We’re telling you nothing. AVERT YOUR EYES!!

During a break in filming, I catch up with Catherine in the Make-Up tent next to the TARDIS, on Wolf Studios’ Stage 6. David is here too. “Don’t mind me,” he says, whipping out his phone. “I’m just gonna sit here on Wordle.”

Wordle isn’t really Catherine’s thing. Neither is sci-fi (this is the woman who, famously, thought the Sontarans weren’t played by actors but “ran on electricity”) – “I feel my comprehension is a bit too lowbrow for sci-fi. It just baffles me,” she told The One Show in June – so dare I ask: what does she make of this shiny new TARDIS control room? “Oh! It’s fantastic,” she beams. “It’s impressive in its vastness.

“I realised, when I walked onto it yesterday, I’d not seen it. We kept walking past it [while it was being constructed] and I’ve been peeking in, but it all seemed to come together very, very quickly. For ages, it was just this shell, this massive shell, and then when we stepped on yesterday… it’s something else. I’m going to say… splendid. I’m going to say luminous.”

“Ooh, that’s good,” says David.

“Mm, I’m going to say that, then.”

“The luminousness really elevates it,” he says. “They switch on the lights and it… glows. Oh! GLOWS.” Well, that’s his first Wordle attempt sorted.

===========================

Additional parts of this set are in the #whoBtsBeast tag. The full episode list is [ here ]

[mizgnomer]

Behind the Scenes of The Giggle - Part Fourteen

Excerpt from Benjamin Cook’s article in DWM 599:

In the back garden of a lovely detached house in the Cardiff suburbs – “Not a mansion, but enough to make you go ‘Ooh’,” Russell’s script specifies – David Tennant is giving Bonnie Langford a bear hug. “Welcome back!” he’s saying. “How long’s it been? Thirty-four years?” What a touching moment. “Yeah! And then she sort of blew it,” David tells me later, laughing, “and said, ‘Oh, no, I was here last year!’”

In a timey-wimey twist, today – Friday, 17 June 2022, another scorcher – is Bonnie first time back on Doctor Who since 1987… bar a fleeting cameo in 2022’s The Power of the Doctor. She’s carrying an apple crumble through some patio doors.

And there are the Nobles – Donna, Rose, Sylvia and Shaun – gathered around the garden table, beneath the pergola, about to tuck into pots of curry and cauliflower cheese. (Anything but tuna madras, please.) Sat with them, joining the familial fray at Donna’s new gaff, is the Nobles’ lodger: the Doctor, like we’ve never seen him before. So relaxed. So happy. “He’s not really save-the-world Doctor right now,” Chanya tells David. “This is an off-duty Doctor.” He’s regaling his adopted family with The Eyebrows Story that he’s probably spun a hundred times before. He’s almost at the bit with the Warrior Queen of the Felooth when –

“Am I late?” Enter: Mel, wearing a Reiss dress covered in pink and white flowers. It’s a floral riff of her Time and the Rani ensemble (“They put me in white trousers in a quarry,” winces Bonnie, when I ask her about that ’87 gear. “What the hell was that about??”). “Sorry, the door was open, you don’t mind?”

“Mad Aunty Mel!! I was so happy when I thought of that,” says Russell. “At last she’s got a home, a story, a history. I suppose this house is Donna and Shaun’s, living with mum and grandad, and the Doctor as the strange lodger in the attic. They were promised compensation by UNIT at the end of The Star Beast [after their home was ravaged by Wrarth Warriors].

“Or maybe Bonnie Langford should move into Bannerman Road?” adds Russell, tantalisingly. “I wouldn’t object. MAD AUNTY MEL.”

For Catherine, working with Bonnie must be the equivalent of David partnering with Ncuti? Is there a sense that they’re kindred souls? “Oh I mean,” she says, “I’m just not as deep as that.” She explodes with laughter. “We didn’t even discuss it. I didn’t know she was a companion! I was literally going to David, ‘Bonnie Langford was in Doctor Who?!’”

“Bonnie’s quite unusual, certainly from the old show, in that she was probably better known for other things,” David reasons. “That’s quite rare. This show tends to cling to you.”

“That’s the thing about Doctor Who. You can run, but you can’t hide,” says Catherine. “It’ll get you. It’ll bring you back in the end – happily.”

Catherine has no regrets, then, about returning for these 60th Anniversary Specials? No, not one, she insists. Best of all, Donna finally gets the happy ending she deserves – the delightful fate of Donna Noble. “I think it’s just amazing that Russell has found a way to do that,” says Catherine. “I was convinced he was going to have the Doctor and Donna die in some terrible, spectacular way and everyone would be sobbing. But no. We sit in a garden and eat apple crumble with Bonnie Langford. Ha! Which is so perfect.”

When Catherine read the script for The Giggle, she was “a little bit taken aback, actually, at what happens,” she told us two issues back. Now she explains: “That was when it fell into place for me. I realised, the need to want the monumental was the actor in me. That’s not what Donna wants. Donna doesn’t want the drama. What she wants is to bring the Doctor home and to ground him the way she needed to ground herself. That’s how she saves him. For me that’s Russell’s brilliance, that he sees beyond the showiness.”

Catherine texted Russell after reading the script. “I was like, ‘Oh my God, we sit in a garden having a barbecue,’ and he goes, ‘Yeah, Donna gets the ending she always wanted.’ I thought, of course, that’s what she wants. She wants her best friend. And obviously,” says Catherine, smiling cheerily, “they get the best of both worlds, because there’s a TARDIS in the garden as well.”

“I really like that this is part of the garden,” says David, pointing across the lawn to where his TARDIS is stood. The Doctor’s TARDIS, by the patio windows. For now. (He took Mel to New York last week. And Rose Noble to Mars.)

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For other posts in this set, please see the #whoBtsGiggle tag. The full episode list is [ here ]

[mizgnomer]

Behind the Scenes of The Next Doctor (Part 23)

From a Benjamin Cook's interview with David Morrisey for the Radio Times:

In Cyber HQ, the Cyberleader is in a bit of a pickle. His arm keeps falling off. (Well, part of his arm.) Not so scary now, eh? "He's a decomposing Cyber Controller," quips David Tennant. "Hang on. No, he's a Cyberleader, isn't he? Easy mistake to make." "Call yourself the Doctor?" David Morrissey tuts in mock disgust. Would Morrissey consider a return to Doctor Who? "Oh yeah. Definitely. I love it. I've had a great time." As speculation gathers pace about who'll take over from Tennant, Morrissey is, perhaps unsurprisingly, the bookies' favourite. "If they asked me back," he says, with a twinkle in his eye, "I'd jump at it. I think it's a great character, and I've loved every minute."

Additional parts of this set are in the #whoBtsNext tag. The full episode list is [ here ]

[mizgnomer]

Behind the Scenes of The Star Beast - Part Fifteen

Excerpt from Benjamin Cook’s Star Beast Set Visit in Doctor Who Magazine 597:

Will David be playing the new, Fourteenth Doctor differently? “Part of the fun is that you’re a Doctor that the audience – and the Doctor himself – recognises,” he says. “Even when it came to the costume, we thought, how do we make it immediately recognisable, and yet not be the same thing? Which felt impossible, but it actually came together quite brilliantly. I like the idea that people who aren’t paying close attention will think it’s the same costume, but the more educated fan will be interested in all the differences.” He gestures at the suit. “It’s a little more distressed than before.” Is that true of his performance too? “Well. Ha. Hmm. Inevitably it will be different, because… he is a different man. He’s older, I’m older, so I am coming at it from a different place. You never stick your foot in the same river twice, as they say.” Do they say that? “They do, yeah. I don’t know who they are, but they’re very wise. Also, Russell’s writing is a little bit different. It has a slightly different energy to it, I think. But what I’m not doing is spending a lot of time self-consciously finding different notes. If anything, I’ve spent the time trying to recapture that sense of what it was before, which I would say is probably what Russell has done in the writing of it, too.”

Additional parts of this set are in the #whoBtsBeast tag. The full episode list is [ here ]