- 21 hours ago
Amy Pond's Raggedy Doctor almost looked very different indeed...
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00:00Hello everybody, Ellie here for Who Culture, and completely not related to Doctor Who, although I guess if we go down the route of David Tennant and Scrooge McDuck, maybe it is, but beyond that, how cool is my jumper? How cute is this? He's so cute. Is it new? No, it's been sat in my wardrobe for about two years since I went to Disney World, but have I worn it more than once? No, don't ask me why, I have no idea. Anyway, I digress, that's not why we're here.
00:26What I actually want to talk to you about is a story that some of you might know, some of you might not know, and it's the tale of how David Tennant very nearly stuck around for one more series.
00:36Almost from the very beginning of Russell T. Davis' time as showrunner, he kind of had a rough idea of when he planned to leave, the first time round in 2005 as opposed to now, and had this idea of some specials around the end of series 4 and the beginning of series 5, although he wasn't entirely certain quite how they would look at this point.
00:55But obviously one of the big questions when Russell was announced to be leaving, or when the decision was made that he was going to be stepping away, was who was going to take over the role of showrunner.
01:05But obviously as we all know, it was Stephen Moffat who actually won the role of showrunner moving forward, probably off the back of his work such as The Empty Child and the Doctor Dances, Blink, Silence in the Library two-parter, I mean he wrote some pretty good episodes, let's be honest.
01:20It was announced in May 2008 that he would be taking over the role of showrunner from Russell T. Davis for series 5 in 2010, but this was not the only thing going on behind the scenes at the time.
01:33So while the whole plan for Russell's departure and for these special episodes was being formulated, it was kind of just assumed that David Tennant would also be leaving with Russell T. Davis, and David Tennant kind of indicated this himself towards the end of 2007, but then very quickly afterwards started to rethink his decision and very nearly changed his mind.
01:55First and foremost, he kind of, he liked the direction that Stephen Moffat had planned to take Doctor Who in, but probably a bigger factor than that is that maybe he just wasn't sure if he was ready to go.
02:05See what I did there? I don't want to go.
02:08But what is interesting is when Moffat came to the time of his own departure, he kind of reflected on this, and this is what he said.
02:14David was just going through the now-to-me-very-familiar angst about leaving.
02:19Piers Wenger, who was one of the executive producers for the early Matt Smith years, and I went to talk to David, and I ran him through what that series would be if it was him.
02:27The thing is, as a long-standing fan of Doctor Who, you can see why David Tennant would struggle with this decision to leave.
02:34I mean, can you imagine if you had landed your dream job? Could you step away from it? Would you want to step away from it?
02:40But, if he did remain, then he still would have only been staying for one more series, so the end would still have been coming close, even if he'd stayed for one more series.
02:51He was still going to be leaving.
02:52But then the question arises of what would Series 5 have looked like if it had been David Tennant in the role of the Doctor still, as opposed to Matt Smith?
02:59Well, Stephen Moffat did actually start to formulate a very basic idea of what this would look like, and I'm going to read it out here.
03:06It's quite a long quote, but it's full of detail, so just bear with.
03:09I only had the roughest idea. My pitch was that it would start with the TARDIS crashing in Amelia's back garden, and a terribly battered and bruised Tenth Doctor staggering out.
03:19Amelia finds him, feeds him fish custard. Actually, no, that was for Matt. It would have been something more David-y, and generally helps him.
03:26That's very interesting, though. What would David Tennant's Doctor have been fed, as opposed to fish fingers and custard?
03:32In my mind, I'm kind of thinking, well, David Tennant is Scottish, Karen Gillan and Amy Pond is Scottish, Stephen Moffat is Scottish.
03:39Would it have been something like haggis? I don't know. Let me know in the comments, what do you think David Tennant's Doctor would have eaten in place of Matt Smith in that scene?
03:47But we, the audience, can see he's in a truly bad way. Dying, maybe. Eventually, he heads back to his TARDIS and flies off.
03:54But when he returns many years later for Amy, he seems perfectly fine, and indeed doesn't remember any of those events.
04:01Over time, we realise what we saw was the Tenth Doctor at the end of his life, about to regenerate, events that we return to in Episode 13.
04:09So basically, the beginning would have been exactly the same as what we did eventually get in the Eleventh Hour, with the Doctor crashing into Amelia's garden, kind of stumbling around her house, talking about the swimming pool, going into the kitchen, having the weird food situation going on, and then getting back in the TARDIS and flying away.
04:27But unlike the Eleventh Hour, when he then returns, and Amy is older, he doesn't remember anything about that previous encounter, because the Doctor that Amy meets as a child is a future version of the Doctor.
04:40Dun-dun-dun!
04:42So then in the finale, we might even have seen the Doctor regenerate, maybe in Amelia's back garden, maybe she would have witnessed that regeneration.
04:49It's so interesting, really, if we ponder it, see what I did there? Ponder it?
04:56Oh, I make myself chuckle sometimes.
04:58But it basically is a combination of Series 5 and Series 6, the Series 5 and 6 that we actually got, that's basically what this idea is.
05:05If you think of Series 6, we open with a future version of the Doctor instigating the situation, and then we follow a younger version until we catch up with events.
05:16It's also very interesting that Stephen Moffat seemingly always planned for Amy Pond to be the companion, no matter which Doctor she was with.
05:24It's quite hard to imagine that, actually, because the character of Amy Pond is so intrinsically linked to the Doctor she meets as a child.
05:32It's kind of interesting to imagine what Amy would have been like as a multi-Doctor companion, because she's so well linked with Matt Smith's incarnation, and that whole influence on her childhood is so important to the character.
05:49And this whole story could have been massively different.
05:51So David Tennant did meet with Stephen Moffat and discuss this pitch and this idea, and he really, really did like it, and he thought very, very hard about it.
05:59But eventually he did decide that he would be stepping away at the end of Series 4, or the Series 4 specials.
06:06It was announced that he, or he announced at the National Television Awards that he would be stepping away from the role.
06:11Now, while this whole idea does sound really interesting, and I would love to see a kind of what-if version of this, personally, I think this was the right move to make.
06:23I think having Matt Smith arrive with Stephen Moffat, it felt like a kind of soft reboot of the show.
06:29I know we've discussed this before, as, you know, was Series 5 a reboot?
06:33It happens quite often, but I think it worked well that it was kind of a clean break, and Tennant left with Russell T. Davis, and we kind of moved into this soft reboot, this kind of new imagining of how Doctor Who would be.
06:46And the way that Series 5 did end up going, I do find it hard to kind of imagine how that would have worked with David Tennant in the role.
06:55You know, Matt Smith just makes that so fantastical and whimsical.
06:57But one of the shocking things is that Tennant's decision to leave Doctor Who very nearly meant that Doctor Who itself ended.
07:04So Moffat later revealed in a quote, which I'm going to read here,
07:07I think there were plans maybe to consider ending it.
07:09The idea that Doctor Who could go on at all in the absence of David Tennant was a huge question.
07:14That's very, very baffling. A very baffling train of thought to have. Could you imagine?
07:19I mean, I think Matt Smith's first series in particular was so successful and so wonderful.
07:24But the fact that we may not have had that, and the idea that Doctor Who was so reliant on David Tennant to succeed.
07:33Now I can see why, because David Tennant is fantastic in the role, and every time people ask me who my favourite Doctor is,
07:38I'm always like, yeah, it's predictable, it's the most common answer, but it is David Tennant.
07:42I mean, there's a reason he's so popular.
07:45But the idea that the show wouldn't work without him?
07:48I don't know.
07:49I mean, it's been proved wrong, because look how many wonderful Doctors we've had since, but I digress.
07:54Now there's one other element of series 5, and this whole idea of whether David Tennant remained, that does need to be mentioned.
08:03Why? Because A, this is Who culture, B, this is me, and so C, the reason being, River Song.
08:09Obviously River was very involved from series 5, series 6 very centred around the character.
08:14What would it have looked like if we had David Tennant in series 5 interacting with River?
08:19Would we have seen that?
08:21Now I find it very interesting, because, um, someone correct me if I'm wrong,
08:24but I'm fairly certain that the creation of Amy Pond was completely linked to River Song.
08:31And the fact that Stephen Moffat always planned to have Amy in series 5,
08:35kind of highlights to me that the River Song story was always the direction he was going to go in.
08:41Um, and as we, yeah, as we know, the character of Amy was created because she was then going to be
08:46the mother of this mysterious character who we'd met previously.
08:49But it would have been very interesting to see the, the, the angel two-parter with David Tennant as the Doctor.
08:57I mean, the Crash of the Byzantium is literally mentioned in the library.
09:01Crash of the Byzantium, have we done that yet?
09:03I do find it odd that whilst we did see River meet the Doctor for the first time in the library,
09:12she didn't look at him and go, you've got a different face.
09:14And so it's very clear that although she didn't know much about this incarnation of the Doctor,
09:19she didn't seem confused by his appearance.
09:22So that suggests that there have been other meetings between this incarnation of the Doctor and River.
09:26And so, while obviously there have been big Finnish audios that explore that relationship a bit more,
09:32it would have been really great to see more of these two versions of the, of the characters interacting.
09:37To see David Tennant and Alex Kingston working alongside each other, um, in this relationship.
09:43That is one of the things that, uh, I wish, if we could go back and change something,
09:49I wish we had seen one more episode after the library between David Tennant's incarnation and River Song.
09:57That's something I think is missing, and I'd love to see.
10:01In the meantime, I've been Ellie for WhoCulture,
10:03and seeing as we've just been talking about her in the words of River Song herself,
10:06goodbye, sweeties.
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