"I have known for ages that I am leaving and it’s such a massive relief that it is out and I can speak freely about it. I'm back next year for a few episodes, but it's not actually confirmed when I go."
"I don’t know - it could be possible".
This years Christmas edition of the Radio Times features interviews with Matt Smith and Steven Moffat! Inside the TV guide Matt Smith reveals his most treasured Christmas presents as a child: “I got a mini snooker table that I loved, lots of football-y things, and I once got a Sega Mega Drive, which I loved. That was pretty epic.” Writer Steven Moffat reveals how inspiration for the Doctor Who special came from Sherlock, “the most unexpected source and possibly the least Christmassy man in all fiction.”
The Christmas issue of Radio Times is on sale now in the UK, but we have scans of the Doctor Who feature below for those outside the UK thanks to Combom.co.uk (click to enlarge).
Eve Myles and Kai Owen spoke to the Independent to talk about what’s next for Torchwood, and the possibility of Torchwood crossing over into Doctor Who for the 50th anniversary in 2013. See what they had to say below:
What’s next for ‘Torchwood’?
KO: Who knows? It would be different. It might come back as a special.
EM: I think the next step would be a movie. We change every year. We have to change every year to keep it fresh and different and keep people interested because by the third, fourth, fifth series of ‘Lost’, ‘Sopranos’ however good they are, they’re extraordinary, but you know what you’re going to get. With ‘Torchwood’ we can live up to the name that you never know what you’re going to get.
KO: They can do whatever they want with the show.
EM: He [Russell T. Davies] amalgamated a wonderful kind of genre and it has been done before with ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’. He amalgamated Sci-Fi with really strong domestic drama and you’ve got characters in there that are normal and ordinary dealing with extraordinary circumstances which people find fascinating. We had 5 million every week, watching it and dedicated fans, people who had never seen Sci-Fi in their life. My mum’s in her 60s, my father’s in his 60s, they’ve never watched ‘Star Trek’ and they just got it. They had people within it that they could connect with.
KO: Because it has that real heart in the middle of it that Russell writes, real people and the fantastical element of it all. People who have no interest in Sci-Fi will sit and watch and be glued to ‘Torchwood’.
EM: I feel very honoured to be a part of it and whatever happens in the future happens. But up to this point, I’m very honoured to have played Gwen Cooper and am very honoured to have been led by John Barrowman and Russell T. Davies and Julie Gardner.
KO: I completely second that. It’s the best job ever and if they wanted to do five more years of ‘Torchwood’ or ten more years of ‘Torchwood’ and they wanted me in as part of it, if I was lucky enough to be a part of it, I would do it every time.
In 2013 ‘Doctor Who’ will be celebrating its 50th anniversary, will ‘Torchwood’ be playing a part in it?
EM: I wouldn’t have thought so. We have lots of adult themes running in ‘Torchwood’ and I think it would be inappropriate for us to have anything to do with ‘Doctor Who’ because it’s predominantly a family programme. I think that where ‘Torchwood’ is, it deals with darker subjects and I think inter-mixing them, if they want to do that, then fine but I can tell you that I’m not involved in it – they won’t give me guns or a bazooka.
Read the full interview here.
Elisabeth Sladens daughter Sadie Miller appeared on BBC Breakfast this morning to talk about Elisabeth Sladens upcoming autobiography, which due to unforeseen circumstances could not be completed by Lis, so was finished with the help of Sadie and Elisabeths husband Brian Miller. Check out the interview below:
Elisabeth Sladen: The Autobiography is released on Monday.
Karen Gillan talked about Amys future in Doctor Who with Graham Norton on BBC Radio 2 this morning, revealing how she will “welcome the new companion with open arms”, but also says her character will be back next year alongside Rory, but she’s “not really sure when”.
“I don’t really know what’s going on, I think that’s all up in the air at the moment. I know I’m going to be coming back, but I’m not really sure when. But I know that the time will come where Amy and Rory have to leave. It’s inevitable and sad, but that’s the nature of the show, and I’ll welcome the new companion with open arms. I think it’s important to do other things and establish myself in other ways.”
Actor Mark Sheppard hinted that his character of Canton Delaware III could return to the show in the future. He told entertainment website Stuff that “Canton is in fact one of the friends that the Doctor deemed should be present at his death eludes to perhaps some further involvement”. See a video of the interview below:
Would you like Canton to return to Doctor Who?
Torchwood producer Julie Gardner spoke to Assignment X about the future of the show, revealing how she “doesn’t know if there will be more”.
“Time will tell. It’s always had a labyrinthine history. I think Torchwood is so elastic in some ways and has had such a strange peculiar life. It was born out of Doctor Who, and has been across so many different channels and so many international audiences, across so many different story structures, and so many numbers of episodes. There have been many number of different network executives across that whole span of years, and there’s no single way forward for the show. All options are possible.”
“It seems hard to grasp. All shows have their time, and all shows end, but not, in all sanity, while people still watch and love them, and going by the numbers and the outcry, this show was watched and loved everywhere.”“I’m not supposed to say it, but I’m going to anyway: bad day, bad decision. I know these are straitened times. I know we’re all at sea and the night is colder – but you don’t start burning the lifeboats to keep warm. Or to put it another way, you might want to think about the future if you’re planning to live there.”
Matt Smith appeared on The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson once again last night during his latest trip to America. Watch the interview in the player below:
'Oh God no, it's a family show. Perhaps there might be a DVD for the over-18s, you're not going to see any of that funny flirty business in the Tardis. River Song was conceived on the Tardis. It’s kind of insinuated, but never actually said. They did well to have sex because Amy and Rory have bunk beds on the Tardis. The Doctor finds it funny because it’s a bed with a ladder.'
It's always surprising. And I'm right with the viewers eager to find out how these things will get resolved. Whenever we would get an episode [script] I'd flip through it straightaway to see how it ends.
From Episode 5 on, my God, it goes into a rollercoaster ride and climaxes in the most incredible way possible. Only Russell T Davies could come up with it. And obviously, the fantastic Jane Espenson, who is working the majority of this season with Russell. If people are gripped now, they’re going to be even more gripped watching the rest of the episodes…
How does Russell’s mind work? I hope he wants to do another season, because obviously he has another story. But how does he come up with them? We all want to do another season. What will he do? What will he write? It’s so exciting.”
Warner Brothers, it was like a dream come true. We were filming on a [sound]stage that was constructed in 1935, that "Casablanca" was shot on. It was where "Two and a Half Men" had been shot--obviously it was shut down at the time--and where "E.R." stage that was home to Mekhi for eight years. We saw the "Friends" stage; it was like a dream come true. We were still making "Torchwood," but we were filming in Hollywood. It was bizarre. It's like a big dream now. It was amazing.
