Doctor Who Preview

Some tantalising titbits from SFX 208’s exclusive Doctor Who coverage for series six

Steven Moffat on a darker Doctor: “There’s some extraordinary stuff coming from Matt this year. When he goes dark – the Doctor should never be that dark, he’s not a dark man – but when he goes dark it’s properly tingly, properly exciting. We’re certainly seeing sides of him and parts of his behaviour and some of his heart that we haven’t seen in the previous year.”

Steven Moffat on “The Curse Of The Black Spot”: “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 Who ness, and it’s so much fun, and a wonderful contrast to our opener, which is quite intense.”

Steven Moffat on Neil Gaiman’s “The Doctor’s Wife”: “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…’.”

Steven Moffat on the second half of series six: “There’s some really very clever science fictiony stuff going on in the second chunk. We probably wouldn’t have done that a couple of years ago. But our audience is now so literate with that stuff that we’re actually pushing it towards very clever science fiction stories of a kind that would have been inconceivable in a mainstream British TV show five years ago.”

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.”

Dave Golder
Freelance Writer

Dave is a TV and film journalist who specializes in the science fiction and fantasy genres. He's written books about film posters and post-apocalypses, alongside writing for SFX Magazine for many years.