- 10 months ago
Will a Doctor Who movie ever happen again? David Tennant and Billie Piper certainly hope so. And the TARDIS gets a royal visit, but is it more significant than we realise? Here's Ellie with the latest Doctor Who news!
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00:00Hello everybody, Ellie here for WhoCulture, and we have another weekly roundup, so I have a few
00:05things I want to talk to you about. As usual, there'll be timestamps in this video, so jump
00:09around if you want to, and let's get straight into it, shall we? Quickly, before we get into
00:14any of the main topics, just a quick shout out and congratulations to Russell T. Davis,
00:19who actually won the Outstanding Contribution to Television Award at the BAFTA Cymru Awards
00:25last night, so well done RTD, Welsh recognition, we love to see it. Another thing I want to quickly
00:32talk about, of course, it was week two of Strictly Come Dancing, which if you're not familiar, if
00:37you're in the US, it's basically the UK version of Dancing with the Stars. It's a dancing competition
00:42where they have non-dancers celebrities paired up with a professional dancer, and each week they
00:47are challenged with different dancers, and it's a lot of fun. And Alex Kingston is a contestant this
00:53year. Now, last week I thought her dance was absolutely wonderful, she did the Viennese
00:58Waltz, and I think she was criminally underscored, and to a person, everyone I've spoken to about it
01:04is in agreement. Now, I might be slightly biased, but even people who have absolutely no care in the
01:10world also agreed that she was underscored last week. Now, this week they absolutely made up for it
01:16because she had the highest scores of the evening for her Samba, and she looked like she was having a
01:22really great time, it was a wonderful dance, and I'm so excited to see her doing more dances.
01:27Next week is movie week, and it's already been revealed that they are doing The Devil Wears Prada,
01:33and she will be playing Miranda Priestly, so she's basically embodying her inner Meryl Streep
01:37next week, and I can't wait to see it. I'm not sure what dance she's doing, but whatever it is,
01:42it's gonna be great. Very excited. Come on, Alex, please make sure you are voting. You can vote just
01:49after the episode finishes airing on Saturday evenings via the BBC website. This sounds like
01:55an ad, it's not. I just want everyone to vote for Alex Kingston because she deserves to stay
01:59in the competition. Anyway, moving on. Did anyone else notice the new Doctor's been cast?
02:06Only kidding, only kidding, but I'm sure many of you have seen over the weekend some images surfacing
02:12of Prince William visiting the set of The TARDIS. So he visited Bad Wolf Studios on the 10th of
02:20September, so coming up to almost a month ago at this point, and it was part of the 10th anniversary
02:26celebrations of Bad Wolf Studios, and as part of that he was given a tour of The TARDIS set. Now
02:32obviously Prince William is not playing the 16th Doctor, although what a curveball that would be.
02:37Could you imagine? But obviously it does say something for how much of a British mainstay,
02:43how much, how big a part of British culture Doctor Who is to have literally the Prince of Wales
02:49visiting the set of the show. I can't imagine they visit many sets. I mean, they do visit sets,
02:54don't get me wrong, but it just speaks to how much of a British icon, how much, how much it is
03:01ingrained within British culture that the Prince of Wales is visiting the set. But that's not really
03:06the important focus of this here. What really is the focus here is there had been a lot of
03:11rather dubious rumours floating around that they'd torn down the TARDIS set. Evidently,
03:17as of a month ago, that is not the case. TARDIS still standing, so Prince William could walk across
03:25it. Now to be honest, I wouldn't necessarily say this is a positive thing to take away or a negative
03:29thing to take away. Obviously, I didn't really take much heed to rumours that the TARDIS had been
03:34dismantled. The thing is, they've never ever said they've cancelled Doctor Who. We might be in a
03:40little bit of limbo at the moment, but I think we're all in agreement that the show hasn't
03:44completely disappeared. It will be back. So it stands to reason that they're not going to tear
03:47down the sets until they know exactly what it is that they're doing. And even if Disney does decide to
03:53pull the plug and does decide, well, I think we're kind of all maybe on the same page that Disney are
03:58moving forwards. But regardless of Disney's involvement, presumably Bad Wolf Studios is
04:03still going to be the location where Doctor Who has filmed. So it makes sense that the TARDIS set
04:07is still going to be standing. You know, whether there's a gap, whether there's a wait or a delay,
04:11they're still presumably going to need the TARDIS set. And it's going to cost a lot of money if they
04:15dismantle it prematurely and then go, oh, we needed that. So yes, we may be in a time of uncertainty,
04:21but I guess we can take it as a positive in as much as they clearly have confidence the show is
04:27going to continue. We should have that as well. The TARDIS is still standing. Once they rip down
04:32the sets, that's when we should start worrying. But as it stands, the TARDIS is still there.
04:37So the other thing I want to talk about is LA Comic Con, of which some guests may be familiar to you.
04:44We had David Tennant and Billy Piper both in attendance at LA Comic Con this year,
04:49and they were asked about a potential Doctor Who movie. This is what they said, okay? Billy
04:55Piper, yes. David Tennant, sure. Billy Piper, I always was pitching for that. Where's the film?
05:02And DT says, where's the movie? Billy Piper says, I just love that. I would love the Doctor Who
05:07experience on the big screen. But yeah, I'd do that, wouldn't you? And DT says, oh, for sure.
05:12Yeah, we're available. A David Tennant and Billy Piper Doctor Who movie? I'm here for it.
05:19For as much as I've been saying, give David Tennant a rest, I actually genuinely think if we went down
05:25a route of having a standalone film separate from everything else, I wouldn't be mad about it.
05:31I genuinely wouldn't. I don't know how it would work. Obviously, you'd have to find a way for it
05:35to make sense either as a story that fits in amongst kind of the Series 2 timeline, whether
05:41you made it a Rose and Metacrisis Doctor story in the parallel universe. I'm not totally against it.
05:50For as much as I've said, David Tennant needs to stop for a while. For some reason, in my mind,
05:56as a film, it would be different. It kind of would be separate. But okay, even if we take the David
06:01Tennant and Rose, David Tennant and Rose Tyler, David Tennant and Billy Piper element of it away,
06:07the idea of a Doctor Who movie? Hmm. There's lots of questions that come with a Doctor Who movie.
06:14Is it a good idea? Is it a bad idea? Would it help the show maybe go a little bit more mainstream?
06:20Obviously, before anyone says anything, yes, I know we have had Doctor Who movies. We had the TV
06:24movie, the 1996 TV movie. We also had the Peter Cushing films as well. So, you know, there is
06:30precedent for it. But in this day and age, it could be a game changer. And there have been
06:36ideas of Doctor Who films flirted about many times in the past. You know, there's been lots and lots of
06:43nearly Doctor Who films. And we actually have an entire article about those exact things. So do check
06:50that out. I'm hoping Danny has linked it somewhere on the screen. But yeah, there have been conversations
06:55throughout Doctor Who history of films happening. You know, at one point, maybe quite recently actually,
07:01well, I say recently, during the Matt Smith era, which to me is recently, but I guess maybe isn't
07:06actually recently anymore, but whatever. During the Matt Smith era, there was rumours floating around
07:13of a film being directed by Harry Potter director David Yates. So there's been lots of ideas. There was
07:19another idea floated around in the past that involved Leonard Nimoy. Obviously, Star Trek fame. He was
07:25responsible for a lot of the Star Trek films. So that could have been really interesting as well.
07:30And I guess Star Trek is a really good example here of how this could be successful. The Star Trek
07:35franchise has survived for almost as long as Doctor Who. It's only a couple of years behind Doctor Who.
07:42And it's been very successful as a television series or multiple television series. But it also
07:50has had success, a lot of success with its films as well. You've had films, you know, with the original
07:55series cast. You then had films with the Next Generation cast. Then you jumped to kind of 2009,
08:00and you have the new films with Chris Pine. Star Trek and both television and film have worked
08:06incredibly well together. So it's not unreasonable to assume that perhaps we could have the same
08:11success with Doctor Who. My only concern being that because it's not something that has happened
08:17for the majority of Doctor Who's runtime, the kind of the way that film in particular works now,
08:25you then have the question of would it be a full-on blockbuster in the cinema film? Or are we talking
08:31TV movie similar to the 1996 TV movie? Where I would say Star Trek has been successful with this
08:39is where we've had, you know, full-on go to the cinema, watch a Star Trek movie. If you want to
08:46look at something more recent, we had the Star Trek Section 31 movie, which only aired on Paramount+. There
08:54was no theatrical release for it. And to say it died a death would be a bit of an understatement.
09:00It was not very well received. But to be fair, I don't think that has anything to do with whether
09:06it was put in the cinema or not, and a lot to do with the content. Which brings me to my next point
09:11is what kind of film would it be? Would we go down the route of the Peter Cushing films where it's
09:17completely stripped away and taken out of canon and it's its own standalone thing and it's a Doctor
09:22Who story? I'm not sure if that would work. I don't know if there would be much interest in that.
09:27I think a lot of people maybe would get a little bit confused or irate about us having a different
09:32Doctor. Having said that, if it perhaps followed Joe Martin and we had a Fugitive Doctor movie,
09:39that could work very well. That could be really, really interesting actually because we've had a
09:44lot of conversations about where does Joe Martin fit in the timeline? Where does she fit in terms of,
09:52we see her pop up every now and then, but we don't really have a lot of her story? And how do you slot
09:57that into the rest of Doctor Who canon and lore without disrupting the show as a whole? Now,
10:07personally, I've spoken about how I feel, you know, having either a spin-off series or having
10:11a series as a kind of placeholder in between the season we've just had and whatever we're going to
10:17get in the future to something there. But equally, I think a movie would actually be very good. Give
10:22us something to tell a story for this character that we have so much potential and so many questions
10:27about. There is a really good area that could work for a Doctor Who movie. Where it needs to be very
10:33careful is in what story it tells and it not interfering too much with canon retroactively.
10:40We've seen a lot of that in the past and it can rub people up the wrong way. Equally,
10:44maybe taking the cinema element out of it, but we've had feature-length Doctor Who episodes in
10:49the past. The Power of the Doctor, The Day of the Doctor. You know, feature-length episodes can be
10:53very, very good. I mean, in fact, right, here's the thing as well. If you've got fans of a franchise,
11:00they will go and see the things. This weekend, I went to see the new Downton Abbey film.
11:07Was it essentially a feature-length Downton Abbey episode? Absolutely. But I still enjoyed it and I
11:13still went to watch it because I'm a fan of Downton Abbey. So it doesn't have to be some major
11:18blockbuster event in the same vein as a Marvel film. That's not necessarily what we want from
11:24Doctor Who and, you know, you've heard me say time and time again that I don't want Doctor Who to be
11:28all about spectacle. But just make it something that feels like, yes, I want to go and watch that
11:33in the cinema. Basically make a feature-length episode. But I can say I would allow for a bigger
11:40budget in terms of making a film than what I've been saying in the past about kind of reducing
11:45the budget of the more recent seasons of Doctor Who. I think though what it really comes down to
11:49as well is once Doctor Who has found its new distributor. Because when it comes to making a
11:54film, you've then got the question of who's going to handle those kind of the global distribution of
11:59it. In terms of, if we go back to Star Trek as an example, Paramount is the home of Star Trek,
12:04or supposedly. Paramount is the home of Star Trek. So you know where it's going to be,
12:08whether it's going to be a film in the cinema or whether it's going to be something on their
12:12own streaming platform, you know that Paramount have got it covered. Similarly, if Disney were
12:17still involved, you'd know that Disney are going to be the distributors, handle the global
12:20distribution, they might opt for a theatrical release, but you've also got it streaming on
12:25Disney+. So I think what really needs to happen is let's let them sort out what the hell is going
12:30on with the actual show itself. But I am not against a film. I would actually be quite interested
12:35to see. What do you guys think? Let me know in the comments down below. Your thoughts on
12:41a potential Doctor Who movie going forwards. If you're here for it, if you're up for it,
12:46tell me what you want it to be. Do you want it to be the current Doctor in their own film?
12:52Do you want it to be a previous Doctor in an unseen story? You know, similar to what Big Finish
12:57have done. Would you like it to be a completely standalone character that's completely away from
13:02the rest of the canon, like the Peter Cushing movies? Let me know in the comments down below
13:06what would you like a Doctor Who movie to look like. In the meantime though, I've been
13:10Ellie for Who Culture, and in the words of Riversong herself, goodbye, sweeties.