Doctor Who Confidential (2005–2011): Season 2, Episode 10 - The New World of Who - full transcript
GATISS: It's a cold day
in a Cardiff back alley
and the Doctor Who team are making
one of the most unusual episodes
in the drama's history.
Whoa, whoa, hang on!
GATISS: For the first episode ever, the Doctor
and his companion barely make an appearance,
the monster has been designed
by a nine-year-old child,
and it's the comedian Peter Kay
who brings that ogre to life.
Hi.
Come on, join us. Dissolve into me.
So that's how it flies.
It's like a childish dream come true
to be in Doctor Who
and to be an alien.
-"Give me the cane!" Then he snaps it...
-Yeah.
...and I go, "You stupid, man! Oh!"
That's when I start getting sucked into...
It's not that we got lots of time off
while episode 10 was being filmed.
We were doing episodes 8 and 9 at the time.
So it was weird to think that there was a
whole other unit out and around Cardiff...
He'll die.
...making an episode of Doctor Who
that the Doctor and Rose
really had very little to do with.
I had to come up with a story
that had to have a logical reason for not
having much of the Doctor and Rose in it.
TENNANT: It's Marc Warren's episode.
It's his story that we follow.
And Billie and I are, you know,
visiting guest artistes, really.
He's a normal guy, he's a sweet guy. You
know, he's quite wide-eyed and innocent.
And he's, you know,
just looking for the truth
and trying to find out
what happened to him when he was younger.
He thinks he'll find that
by finding the Doctor
and I think he finally, you know,
finds a bit of wisdom at the end, you know.
It's like he sees the Doctor
and becomes enlightened.
Well, that's who I'm playing anyway.
GATISS: What appears
as only a few seconds on screen
actually involves an all-night shoot
on the streets of Cardiff
as Marc Warren begins his Doctor Who debut.
Today we've just done a scene
where I'm walking by a load of shops
and the window explodes
and these Autons come out.
ELTON: I was stocking up, you know,
nothing special, all the usual stuff.
When all of a sudden...
Action!
(PEOPLE SCREAMING)
WOMAN: ..so here?
Susie, the girl that's lying down
in front of the tables.
-Yeah.
-Can she be dead rather than in agony?
Actually still, totally still.
I had to run in front of that cab,
but it's a stuntman called Bill,
who I've worked with before actually.
He has to come up quite fast and you...
As long as you hit your mark,
he promises he won't break your legs.
(CAB HONKING)
MAN: Cut!
Again, one of the great things about
Doctor Who is that it can embrace actors,
every different type of actor.
You know, we can have someone like
Pauline Collins or Simon Callow
who are known as great, proper actors.
And then you can have Peter Kay,
who's known as a comedian, a comic actor.
And yet, there's something about
the elasticity of the show
that it can take both of them on board
and it seems equally right.
...it's some kind of herpes
and it's took over me body.
I don't know what it is.
I'm like a walking, talking cold sore.
-I can't compete with him.
-Look at me.
Well, first of all, I saw Peter Kay.
That made me laugh.
And then I saw Peter Kay in this big,
green, fat suit with a big, old mohican
that started here and ended up
halfway down his back. That was funny.
And then he was playing this monster
with a serious northern accent.
It was just one of the funniest days.
We meet at last, LINDA.
Back, back, all of you, further, further.
Thank you.
While the Abzorbaloff is in himself
very funny, he's also very threatening.
He also is a genuine
danger and ruins Elton's life.
So there is something genuine
behind the Abzorbaloff
and I wanted that for Blue Peter as well
Yes!
No, that's not fair!
She tastes like chicken.
(CREW CHATTERING)
GATISS: A year ago, the Abzorbaloff lived
only in the mind of a nine-year-old child
who had entered a Blue Peter competition.
Today, we go backstage as the Doctor goes
face-to-face with the monsters
he is yet to do battle with.
I'm on Blue Peter.
It's Wednesday, the something-th of August,
and it's the final of the Doctor
Who Design a Monster competition.
Okay, let's move on to
the eights, nines and tens.
The one who's gonna win this grand prize,
they're gonna come to the Doctor Who studios,
they're gonna see their monster being made,
come on set,
meet me and Billie and everyone else.
-Who is it?
-It is William from Colchester!
The Abzorbaloff is a green sumo creature
and he absorbs his prey and digests them.
This is Abzorbaloff
that was given to me by Peter Kay.
And it says here, "To William..."
"Best wishes, Peter
Abzorbaloff Kay. Peter Kay."
And we've kept certain aspects, you know,
he has, like, a mohawk hairstyle,
and he's a big, large character and these
funny black trousers and the faces in there,
and he's green, you know.
There's a lot of key elements.
But, obviously, we've just had to
tweak the look of him
to just make him work a bit more.
They had added an extra touch of detail
and done it well,
and made him really looking
like he's fat and everything.
And they made him look really fat
with all the flubber.
You've got to keep a certain amount of
Peter Kay, especially in the face, you know.
You can't change it so far
beyond just a regular face
that it becomes pointless having Peter Kay.
If you get Peter Kay being a Doctor
Who monster, you want it to be Peter Kay.
It's been absolutely fantastic. Fantastic.
And tomorrow, I get me alien costume.
GATISS: Something amazing happened
in the world of Doctor Who.
Because waiting for its return was the power of
the internet, mobile phones and interactive TV.
And this power is in the hands
of a brand-new generation.
Doctor Who was always ahead of its time.
It was about futuristic things
that we didn't understand.
Whereas now, some of those
futuristic things are just commonplace.
So you get extra bits of Doctor Who
by pressing the red button or whatever,
and that's only right.
Because Doctor Who, when it was off arr, off
the television, survived in different mediums.
You know, on the internet, in audio
adventures, it's always been there.
And so, it's back on the telly,
but all of these other avenues
are still available to it.
Before Doctor Who came back,
the BBC's Doctor Who website
had an enormous audience
of very, very dedicated
fans of the old series.
And your typical audience member
would be mid-20s, maybe up to mid-30s.
Most probably male.
Doctor!
(ALARM BLARING)
GOSS: But where it all changes
is the night the first episode went out,
because we got 900 emails that night.
A lot of them were from proud parents.
Some of them had even taken pictures
of terrified children.
That was week one.
By week three,
we were getting emails from the kids.
(PEOPLE SCREAMING)
That's more like it.
What I set out to do was to get people
watching who don't watch science fiction,
which is specifically women,
and specifically younger kids watching as
well, who wouldn't feel excluded from it.
So many young children are watching
Doctor Who these days
because it is so exciting.
It's just one big adventure for them.
It's very fast-paced,
there's lots of exciting colours,
the monsters are very scary,
children love to be scared.
There's lots of grossness in it,
and children, they love being grossed out.
Our readers are looking to read about
the Doctor and Rose.
So it's been really, really popular
in that sense. We get lots of mail,
lots of letters asking about Rose as a
character, also about Billie as an actress.
She's still got this young appeal about
her. She's almost like a teenager herself,
and I think that adds to her popularity.
And it's something that all of our readers
really identify with.
Back in a sec.
-He said not to look for it.
-Yeah, he did.
They really love Rose because she's
really cheeky and she's really daring.
And in their minds, they think
that they could possibly be like her.
Now you're getting it.
I imagine our readers are running around
attacking each other or trying to kill each other.
And it's always happened.
It goes back to when I was five, when
you would play Doctor Who in a playground
and have fun exterminating people
and who was going to be the Doctor,
who was gonna be the companion.
I imagine that's exactly the same
in a playground now,
thanks to Doctor Who coming back.
Is it flashing battery?
I'll be glad to see the back of it tonight
and I can be human tomorrow.
And eat me dinner and use me mobile.
in a Cardiff back alley
and the Doctor Who team are making
one of the most unusual episodes
in the drama's history.
Whoa, whoa, hang on!
GATISS: For the first episode ever, the Doctor
and his companion barely make an appearance,
the monster has been designed
by a nine-year-old child,
and it's the comedian Peter Kay
who brings that ogre to life.
Hi.
Come on, join us. Dissolve into me.
So that's how it flies.
It's like a childish dream come true
to be in Doctor Who
and to be an alien.
-"Give me the cane!" Then he snaps it...
-Yeah.
...and I go, "You stupid, man! Oh!"
That's when I start getting sucked into...
It's not that we got lots of time off
while episode 10 was being filmed.
We were doing episodes 8 and 9 at the time.
So it was weird to think that there was a
whole other unit out and around Cardiff...
He'll die.
...making an episode of Doctor Who
that the Doctor and Rose
really had very little to do with.
I had to come up with a story
that had to have a logical reason for not
having much of the Doctor and Rose in it.
TENNANT: It's Marc Warren's episode.
It's his story that we follow.
And Billie and I are, you know,
visiting guest artistes, really.
He's a normal guy, he's a sweet guy. You
know, he's quite wide-eyed and innocent.
And he's, you know,
just looking for the truth
and trying to find out
what happened to him when he was younger.
He thinks he'll find that
by finding the Doctor
and I think he finally, you know,
finds a bit of wisdom at the end, you know.
It's like he sees the Doctor
and becomes enlightened.
Well, that's who I'm playing anyway.
GATISS: What appears
as only a few seconds on screen
actually involves an all-night shoot
on the streets of Cardiff
as Marc Warren begins his Doctor Who debut.
Today we've just done a scene
where I'm walking by a load of shops
and the window explodes
and these Autons come out.
ELTON: I was stocking up, you know,
nothing special, all the usual stuff.
When all of a sudden...
Action!
(PEOPLE SCREAMING)
WOMAN: ..so here?
Susie, the girl that's lying down
in front of the tables.
-Yeah.
-Can she be dead rather than in agony?
Actually still, totally still.
I had to run in front of that cab,
but it's a stuntman called Bill,
who I've worked with before actually.
He has to come up quite fast and you...
As long as you hit your mark,
he promises he won't break your legs.
(CAB HONKING)
MAN: Cut!
Again, one of the great things about
Doctor Who is that it can embrace actors,
every different type of actor.
You know, we can have someone like
Pauline Collins or Simon Callow
who are known as great, proper actors.
And then you can have Peter Kay,
who's known as a comedian, a comic actor.
And yet, there's something about
the elasticity of the show
that it can take both of them on board
and it seems equally right.
...it's some kind of herpes
and it's took over me body.
I don't know what it is.
I'm like a walking, talking cold sore.
-I can't compete with him.
-Look at me.
Well, first of all, I saw Peter Kay.
That made me laugh.
And then I saw Peter Kay in this big,
green, fat suit with a big, old mohican
that started here and ended up
halfway down his back. That was funny.
And then he was playing this monster
with a serious northern accent.
It was just one of the funniest days.
We meet at last, LINDA.
Back, back, all of you, further, further.
Thank you.
While the Abzorbaloff is in himself
very funny, he's also very threatening.
He also is a genuine
danger and ruins Elton's life.
So there is something genuine
behind the Abzorbaloff
and I wanted that for Blue Peter as well
Yes!
No, that's not fair!
She tastes like chicken.
(CREW CHATTERING)
GATISS: A year ago, the Abzorbaloff lived
only in the mind of a nine-year-old child
who had entered a Blue Peter competition.
Today, we go backstage as the Doctor goes
face-to-face with the monsters
he is yet to do battle with.
I'm on Blue Peter.
It's Wednesday, the something-th of August,
and it's the final of the Doctor
Who Design a Monster competition.
Okay, let's move on to
the eights, nines and tens.
The one who's gonna win this grand prize,
they're gonna come to the Doctor Who studios,
they're gonna see their monster being made,
come on set,
meet me and Billie and everyone else.
-Who is it?
-It is William from Colchester!
The Abzorbaloff is a green sumo creature
and he absorbs his prey and digests them.
This is Abzorbaloff
that was given to me by Peter Kay.
And it says here, "To William..."
"Best wishes, Peter
Abzorbaloff Kay. Peter Kay."
And we've kept certain aspects, you know,
he has, like, a mohawk hairstyle,
and he's a big, large character and these
funny black trousers and the faces in there,
and he's green, you know.
There's a lot of key elements.
But, obviously, we've just had to
tweak the look of him
to just make him work a bit more.
They had added an extra touch of detail
and done it well,
and made him really looking
like he's fat and everything.
And they made him look really fat
with all the flubber.
You've got to keep a certain amount of
Peter Kay, especially in the face, you know.
You can't change it so far
beyond just a regular face
that it becomes pointless having Peter Kay.
If you get Peter Kay being a Doctor
Who monster, you want it to be Peter Kay.
It's been absolutely fantastic. Fantastic.
And tomorrow, I get me alien costume.
GATISS: Something amazing happened
in the world of Doctor Who.
Because waiting for its return was the power of
the internet, mobile phones and interactive TV.
And this power is in the hands
of a brand-new generation.
Doctor Who was always ahead of its time.
It was about futuristic things
that we didn't understand.
Whereas now, some of those
futuristic things are just commonplace.
So you get extra bits of Doctor Who
by pressing the red button or whatever,
and that's only right.
Because Doctor Who, when it was off arr, off
the television, survived in different mediums.
You know, on the internet, in audio
adventures, it's always been there.
And so, it's back on the telly,
but all of these other avenues
are still available to it.
Before Doctor Who came back,
the BBC's Doctor Who website
had an enormous audience
of very, very dedicated
fans of the old series.
And your typical audience member
would be mid-20s, maybe up to mid-30s.
Most probably male.
Doctor!
(ALARM BLARING)
GOSS: But where it all changes
is the night the first episode went out,
because we got 900 emails that night.
A lot of them were from proud parents.
Some of them had even taken pictures
of terrified children.
That was week one.
By week three,
we were getting emails from the kids.
(PEOPLE SCREAMING)
That's more like it.
What I set out to do was to get people
watching who don't watch science fiction,
which is specifically women,
and specifically younger kids watching as
well, who wouldn't feel excluded from it.
So many young children are watching
Doctor Who these days
because it is so exciting.
It's just one big adventure for them.
It's very fast-paced,
there's lots of exciting colours,
the monsters are very scary,
children love to be scared.
There's lots of grossness in it,
and children, they love being grossed out.
Our readers are looking to read about
the Doctor and Rose.
So it's been really, really popular
in that sense. We get lots of mail,
lots of letters asking about Rose as a
character, also about Billie as an actress.
She's still got this young appeal about
her. She's almost like a teenager herself,
and I think that adds to her popularity.
And it's something that all of our readers
really identify with.
Back in a sec.
-He said not to look for it.
-Yeah, he did.
They really love Rose because she's
really cheeky and she's really daring.
And in their minds, they think
that they could possibly be like her.
Now you're getting it.
I imagine our readers are running around
attacking each other or trying to kill each other.
And it's always happened.
It goes back to when I was five, when
you would play Doctor Who in a playground
and have fun exterminating people
and who was going to be the Doctor,
who was gonna be the companion.
I imagine that's exactly the same
in a playground now,
thanks to Doctor Who coming back.
Is it flashing battery?
I'll be glad to see the back of it tonight
and I can be human tomorrow.
And eat me dinner and use me mobile.