Doctor, doctor, give me the news.
The BBC reports that the identity of the eleventh Doctor Who will be announced tomorrow on Doctor Who Confidential. OooOOOoooh. Speculation right damn here.
First of all, I don't think they're done filming the specials yet, so I wonder if this means that the transition could happen before the end of this year? Filming on the new series starts in the summer; why not hold off on the casting announcement for at least a few more months?
But more importantly, who is it going to be? Rich Johnston assures me that he thinks it'll be Paterson Joseph, and certainly that's the name floated in the article. I don't personally much rate Joseph as an actor, but I'm all in favour of a black Doctor (Oh no, he'd stand out in historical settings, whatever would we do with plot points in a work of narrative fiction?). My fear is that Joseph can come across a bit like a 1980s Playschool presenter. I fear he would have just one setting, 'manic', and it would grate very quickly.
If we are going the black Doctor route, well, Chiwetel Ejiofor has also been hotly tipped, and he would be a much better choice. Joseph looks more plausibly like the Doctor (I don't even know what I mean by that, I just know that it's true), but Ejiofor is a terrific actor. He might be a bit too grown-up for a teatime family show, though. He has gravitas and everything! Does one need gravitas to fight a giant crab?
It won't be Robert Carlyle, who just got cast in Stargate: Ad Nauseam. James Nesbitt has been mentioned, and if you're looking for a diabolical ham who chews scenery so fast that he's officially banned from Tokyo, you couldn't do much better that Nesbitt! If Nesbitt gets it I may actually have to stop watching. Which would probably be a relief to people who think I'm too critical of the show.
It won't be Jason Statham. I've no idea where that rumour came from, but I think that would be hilarious if it were true.
More explicable rumours are the raft of people who have already been in the show, and they could easily justify such a choice with some babble about an unstable morphic field imprinting on blah blah blah. Those names include Anthony Head, Harry Lloyd, Russell Tovey, John Simm, David Morrissey and John Barrowman.
Now, Head and Tovey already have BBC shows to keep them busy, and it wouldn't be Barrowman even if he weren't too insanely busy. Simm is the one person who has said he wouldn't do it whom I actually believe, and I suspect he'll be back as the Master anyway. He says he's Tennant's Master, and I think that means he'll be back in the specials for a final face-off, at the end of which he'll regenerate into the next Doctor's Master.
Morrissey would be great in the role, as we've seen, but that ship sailed with The Next Doctor; it's not impossible that Morrissey's character was in fact the next Doctor, having lost his memory, but we do not want a Doctor with a heavily mascara'd urchin companion, and anyway it would rather undermine the emotional strength of that story.
If it were up to me, I'd go with Harry Lloyd. He was great as Baines in Family of Blood, and he is rather lovely, and he looks impeccable in a suit. He is rather young, though, so while I'll be overjoyed if it's Lloyd, I don't think it will be. I think it'll be Paterson Joseph. That would be a... consistent choice, and not a terrible one if he can keep his theatrical flourishes under control. Casting a black actor is of course a bold move (and it sort of amuses me that we'd have a black Doctor and a black president - can a black James Bond be far behind?). A woman would be bolder (and wouldn't Jennifer Saunders be great?), and if we get Joseph I'll always wonder what might have been with Ejiofor. But we'll find out in about 24 hours, and then the internet will melt, and then we'll have a year to wait before it will actually mean anything. Woo-hoo!
ETA: Betfair has Matt Smith (of Party Animals and Ruby in the Smoke) as a late favourite, and if that's true it'll be the very definition of a damp squib. That kid? Come on!
First of all, I don't think they're done filming the specials yet, so I wonder if this means that the transition could happen before the end of this year? Filming on the new series starts in the summer; why not hold off on the casting announcement for at least a few more months?
But more importantly, who is it going to be? Rich Johnston assures me that he thinks it'll be Paterson Joseph, and certainly that's the name floated in the article. I don't personally much rate Joseph as an actor, but I'm all in favour of a black Doctor (Oh no, he'd stand out in historical settings, whatever would we do with plot points in a work of narrative fiction?). My fear is that Joseph can come across a bit like a 1980s Playschool presenter. I fear he would have just one setting, 'manic', and it would grate very quickly.
If we are going the black Doctor route, well, Chiwetel Ejiofor has also been hotly tipped, and he would be a much better choice. Joseph looks more plausibly like the Doctor (I don't even know what I mean by that, I just know that it's true), but Ejiofor is a terrific actor. He might be a bit too grown-up for a teatime family show, though. He has gravitas and everything! Does one need gravitas to fight a giant crab?
It won't be Robert Carlyle, who just got cast in Stargate: Ad Nauseam. James Nesbitt has been mentioned, and if you're looking for a diabolical ham who chews scenery so fast that he's officially banned from Tokyo, you couldn't do much better that Nesbitt! If Nesbitt gets it I may actually have to stop watching. Which would probably be a relief to people who think I'm too critical of the show.
It won't be Jason Statham. I've no idea where that rumour came from, but I think that would be hilarious if it were true.
More explicable rumours are the raft of people who have already been in the show, and they could easily justify such a choice with some babble about an unstable morphic field imprinting on blah blah blah. Those names include Anthony Head, Harry Lloyd, Russell Tovey, John Simm, David Morrissey and John Barrowman.
Now, Head and Tovey already have BBC shows to keep them busy, and it wouldn't be Barrowman even if he weren't too insanely busy. Simm is the one person who has said he wouldn't do it whom I actually believe, and I suspect he'll be back as the Master anyway. He says he's Tennant's Master, and I think that means he'll be back in the specials for a final face-off, at the end of which he'll regenerate into the next Doctor's Master.
Morrissey would be great in the role, as we've seen, but that ship sailed with The Next Doctor; it's not impossible that Morrissey's character was in fact the next Doctor, having lost his memory, but we do not want a Doctor with a heavily mascara'd urchin companion, and anyway it would rather undermine the emotional strength of that story.
If it were up to me, I'd go with Harry Lloyd. He was great as Baines in Family of Blood, and he is rather lovely, and he looks impeccable in a suit. He is rather young, though, so while I'll be overjoyed if it's Lloyd, I don't think it will be. I think it'll be Paterson Joseph. That would be a... consistent choice, and not a terrible one if he can keep his theatrical flourishes under control. Casting a black actor is of course a bold move (and it sort of amuses me that we'd have a black Doctor and a black president - can a black James Bond be far behind?). A woman would be bolder (and wouldn't Jennifer Saunders be great?), and if we get Joseph I'll always wonder what might have been with Ejiofor. But we'll find out in about 24 hours, and then the internet will melt, and then we'll have a year to wait before it will actually mean anything. Woo-hoo!
ETA: Betfair has Matt Smith (of Party Animals and Ruby in the Smoke) as a late favourite, and if that's true it'll be the very definition of a damp squib. That kid? Come on!