Director confirms that the spectacular stage show does have a storyline inspired by the classic Jon Pertwee serial (as some fans speculated)
“When I first came aboard this project, it was a project very akin to the Prom offering,” says Brenton, whose background is in creating massive arena tour spectaculars. “And what I thought we needed to do was bring this space alive a lot more, by making it a narrative that takes place in real time, in that Arena at that moment. Which is what we’ve done.
“So we’ve created a brand new Doctor Who character – called Vorgenson [to be played by Nigel Planer - concept art below], but it is a character who grows out of previous Doctor Who story, called ‘Carnival Of Monsters’. All of its genealogy grows out of that episode. And the fans who spotted that reference will enjoy how it happens. It’s taken what happened in that episode and moved it on, and updated it and had some fun with it as well.
“And that’s the kind of collaboration that we’ve been having. I sat down with Steven and said, ‘I’ve got this Jurassic Park kind of feel, with a character who’s reeling out these characters,’ and he immediately said, ‘Well, ‘Carnival Of Monsters’! Let’s let it grow out of that.’”
In the Pertwee story a travelling showman has miniature monsters from all over the universe trapped in hi-tech sideshow viewing device… but then some of the monsters escape and grow back to full size.
So, does this make the new show canonical? Let the debate commence…
We’ve got loads more exciting news about Doctor Who Live coming up over the next few days, so stay tuned, including arranger and musical director Ben Foster on why this is the most rock’n’roll Doctor Who ever. It genuinely sounds like it’s going to be one hell of an experience.
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Doctor Who Live is on tour across the UK from Friday 8 October
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.
