- 11 minutes 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
00:06down the route of David Tennant and Scrooge McDuck, maybe it is, but beyond that, how cool is my jumper?
00:12How cute is this? He's so cute. Is it new? No, it's been sat in my wardrobe for about two
00:17years since I went to Disney World, but have I worn it more than once? No, don't ask me why,
00:22I 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
00:30you 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
00:41when he planned to leave, the first time round in 2005 as opposed to now, and had this idea of
00:48some specials around the end of series 4 and the beginning of series 5, although he wasn't entirely certain quite
00:53how 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
01:01that 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
01:12off the back of his work such as The Empty Child and the Doctor Dances, Blink, Silence in the Library
01:17two-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
01:26for 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
01:39just assumed that David Tennant would also be leaving with Russell T. Davis, and David Tennant kind of indicated this
01:45himself towards the end of 2007, but then very quickly afterwards started to rethink his decision and very nearly changed
01:54his mind.
01:55First and foremost, he kind of, he liked the direction that Stephen Moffat had planned to take Doctor Who in,
02:00but 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
02:13this, 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
02:23to 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
02:32this decision to leave.
02:34I mean, can you imagine if you had landed your dream job? Could you step away from it? Would you
02:39want to step away from it?
02:41But, if he did remain, then he still would have only been staying for one more series, so the end
02:47would 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
02:57the 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
03:05going 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.
03:11My pitch was that it would start with the TARDIS crashing in Amelia's back garden, and a terribly battered and
03:16bruised Tenth Doctor staggering out.
03:18Amelia finds him, feeds him Fish Custard, actually no, that was for Matt, it would have been something more David
03:24-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
03:38Moffat is Scottish,
03:39would it have been something like haggis? I don't know.
03:41Let me know in the comments, what do you think David Tennant's Doctor would have eaten in place of Matt
03:46Smith in that scene?
03:47But we, the audience, can see he's in a truly bad way, dying maybe.
03:51Eventually, 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
04:00events.
04:01Over time, we realise what we saw was the Tenth Doctor at the end of his life, about to regenerate,
04:07events 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,
04:15with the Doctor crashing into Amelia's garden, kind of stumbling around her house, talking about the swimming pool,
04:21going into the kitchen, having the weird food situation going on, and then getting back in the TARDIS and flying
04:27away.
04:27But unlike the Eleventh Hour, when he then returns, and Amy is older, he doesn't remember anything about that previous
04:34encounter,
04:34because 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,
04:47maybe she would have witnessed that regeneration.
04:49It's so interesting, really, if we ponder it.
04:52See what I did there? Ponder it.
04:55Oh, I make myself chuckle sometimes.
04:58But it basically is a combination of Series 5 and Series 6.
05:01The 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,
05:12and 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,
05:21no matter which Doctor she was with.
05:23It's quite hard to imagine that, actually, because the character of Amy Pond is so intrinsically linked
05:30to the Doctor she meets as a child,
05:33and it's kind of interesting to imagine what Amy would have been like as a multi-Doctor companion,
05:40because she's so well linked with Matt Smith's incarnation,
05:43and 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,
05:55and 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,
06:04or the Series 4 specials.
06:06It was announced that he, or he announced at the National Television Awards,
06:09that he would be stepping away from the role.
06:11Now, while this whole idea does sound really interesting,
06:14and I would love to see a kind of what-if version of this,
06:19personally, I think this was the right move to make.
06:23I think having Matt Smith arrive with Stephen Moffat,
06:27it 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,
06:39and Tennant left with Russell T. Davis, and we kind of moved into this soft reboot,
06:43this kind of new imagining of how Doctor Who would be.
06:46And the way that Series 5 did end up going,
06:50I 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
07:01very 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.
07:16A very baffling train of thought to have.
07:18Could 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,
07:27and the idea that Doctor Who was so reliant on David Tennant to succeed.
07:32Now I can see why, because David Tennant is fantastic in the role,
07:35and 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,
07:44but 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,
07:53but I digress.
07:54Now there's one other element of series 5 and this whole idea of whether David Tennant remained
08:01that does need to be mentioned.
08:03Why?
08:03Because A, this is Who culture,
08:06B, this is me,
08:07and so C, the reason being, River Song.
08:09Obviously River was very involved from series 5,
08:12series 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?
08:20Now I find it very interesting, because, um,
08:23someone correct me if I'm wrong,
08:24but I'm fairly certain that the creation of Amy Pond
08:29was 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
08:44because she was then going to be the 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
08:54with 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?
09:05I do find it odd that whilst we did see River meet the Doctor for the first time in the
09:10library,
09:11she 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.
10:00In the meantime, I've been Ellie for Who Culture and seeing as we've just been talking about her,
10:04in the words of River Song herself, goodbye, sweeties.
10:08Who Culture and seeing as we've been talking about her,
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