Dr Who Revival To Hold Higher Production Values
Source Sci Fi Pulse
18 January 2004
As the excitement about a new BBC production of Dr Who, so do the rumours. In a recent interview for ITV's Teletext service producer Mal Young revealed that great care is being taken to give Dr Who the best possible revival.
"Viewers are used to the production values of Buffy and sci-fi movies and if we do it in a studio with a cardboard cut-out and a rubber monster, viewers will shoot us down. They are sophisticated enough to want quality.
"It is expensive but technology now allows you to do things with
computers that weren't possible five years ago."
Young also touched on how production values and things pertaining to the
spirit of Dr Who would need to be altered to appeal to younger viewers, in
an interview he did earlier this week for BBC Radio 1. "The trick
that we have to pull off is stay true to the original spirit of the show and
the original character, but make it for the 21st century and a younger audience
now who have been brought up watching some fantastic sci-fi films and TV shows.
Televisions changed; films have changed so we have to move with the times".
As to any radical changes, Young is tight lipped, but he reiterated the importance of higher production values in order to bring the Dr into the 21st century. "There's always different visions of it, but we just wanted to say well look lets go back to the TV original...when you watch it today the stories are great, the characters are great but the young viewers today wouldn't stand for those kind of production values...we need to have film-ic values, we need to bring production values to it that they expect now from shows like 'Buffy'".
As the where the project is at present Young has revealed that several scripts are in the works, "Where we're up to at the moment is, Russell [T. Davies] is writing the scripts now and we have some other writers working with him. We'll be making around about 12 or 13 episodes, that's quite a big body of work so that's going to take some time to get right. We want to aim for that quality and make sure we've got good scripts. Then when we've got scripts, then we can start approaching actors.
"We've drawn up a long short list of who'd we would like to see in the role - the consideration is that the expectation from the audience will be so high, that the pressure on the actor whoever that may be will be so great to carry off this iconic character that it will have to be someone who can really pull it off....Its probably not realistic to think that we're going to take a chance on someone whose never worked on television before, they're going to have to know what they're doing."
At present rumours are rife, some speculation is with regards to the actual costs of each individual episode, one piece of rumour in particular is that each episode will cost about £4 Million pounds, however at this time no information in regards to the BBC's Budget is actually known, but the BBC are going to be using both Australian and American funds on the production, but the series itself will be totally produced by the BBC.
Young has stated that no expense will be spared, and it is likely that Paul McGann will return as the 8th Dr briefly so that he can regenerate to the as yet unknown actor who will take over.
"He will regenerate but we will bring it up to date, modernise the storytelling." Young told TV Plus. "People will expect great monsters, battles and saving the world." Young said: "It isn't as expensive as it could have been. But we're not going to scrimp on this because the viewers won't like it."
One thing that held up any revival of DR Who was a matter of rights issues pertaining to the use of the Daleks, there is a strong chance that enemy's such as the Daleks and the Cybermen will be returning to scare a whole new audience into hiding behind their sofa's on a Saturday Evening. Young is looking to bring back as many of the DR's Enemy's back into this production as possible, and is even looking to develop new ones.
"We're not ruling out any characters. We have a great central character and we want to remain true to his spirit."
In the meantime Dr Who fans will have to sit and wait patiently, however this has not prevented speculation on who will be playing the 9th incarnation of the DR. Several actors have been touted about by fans, the strongest fan favourites are Richard E. Grant, Anthony Stewart Head, and strongest amongst them all is Bill Nighy who will be a part of the new 'Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy' movie. At present no actual casting decisions have been made, but what is known is the name of the Dr's new assistant, who will be called Rose, the fan favourite to portray her is none other than Rachel Stirling (daughter of Diana Rigg). Scripts are being written by award winner Russell T Davies, and the show will be produced by BBC Wale's but as Mal Young has pointed out, there is world interest in this revival.
"The speculation around this show has gobsmacked us. The minute we announced this show we were getting hundreds of e-mails from Australia and New Zealand."
You can read more of what Mal Young had to say here at Teletext.co.uk and here at Cylon Alliance. You can also read further comments by Writer and producer Russell T Davies here at SciFiPulse.