Doctor Who is not for children, says Russell T Davies
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
Doctor Who is not a children’s show, its new boss has said, despite generations of viewers being reared on the sci-fi series.
Russell T Davies acknowledged that children do watch the series - it is the first programme he remembers watching - and said that the first of three 60th anniversary specials this year will be suitable for family viewing.
But the two subsequent specials will be “dark” and “weird”, with frightening and sometimes violent scenes.
All feature David Tennant making his return as the Doctor alongside Catherine Tate as Donna Noble.
“We do very scary stuff. Some stuff is quite violent. It’s not for children, it’s about children,” explained Davies, who has rejoined the show after stepping down in 2009.
Davies said that he had his eight-year-old self in mind when making the episodes, and the understanding that children do watch, explaining: “It’s not a children’s show but at the heart of it is an eight-year-old watching.”
The first special, The Star Beast, will air on November 25.
It features a furry and ostensibly cute creature called a Meep and is based on a 1979 comic strip.
“It is like a great big Pixar family film, like a bank holiday film - all the family watching, lots of laughs, a funny monster. The second one, Wild Blue Yonder, is darker. Not scary - it’s genuinely weird,” he said.
The third, The Giggle, features Neil Patrick Harris as a toymaker and is “scary, nuts, completely mad, frightening,” Davies said. “That one will scare you.”
The BBC said that Davies meant the show is not written exclusively for children.
Davies, who revived the franchise in 2005, persuaded Tennant and Tate to return to their roles as the Doctor and Donna Noble for the anniversary specials. Tennant will then make way for the 15th Doctor, played by Ncuti Gatwa.
The new Doctor’s companion, Ruby Sunday, will be played by Millie Gibson. Yasmin Finney, a transgender actress who recently made her screen debut in Netflix’s Heartstopper, will join the cast as a character called Rose.
Davies said of Finney’s casting: “It’s not just a Doctor Who thing - it’s something I and a lot of other writers are very keen to do, to be progressive and reflect more of society.
“I think she does the most amazing job and it’s an absolute privilege to work with her and get her on screen.”
Budgets for the new series will be significantly higher as the show is now a glossy co-production with Disney. However, Davies revealed that the Disney executives working on the series are not overly familiar with its history.
“Sometimes you have to explain things to them. They will say, ‘What’s this?’ and ‘What’s that?’ But they love it.
“There is one episode that references Blink [a 2007 episode considered to be one of Doctor Who’s best] and they had never watched Blink. They’d never watched Blink! So they went and watched it and said, ‘Oh my god, that’s a great episode.”
