12th Doctor Announcement Coming In October?

[Iamnotspock]

Starkers wrote:

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Finally the Doctor could go back to using Venusian Akido!

"Hai!!!"

[Allyn Gibson]

Blogtor Who is reporting that Moffat says Matt Smith will be back after filming the Gosling film. Source.

I've come to think the break wasn't planned, but since it's there Matt Smith took advantage of it by lining up another short-term job. Hey, an actor's gotta eat.

Here's my theory.

Last fall, as Moffat was struggling to finish series 7b he got behind on his Sherlock planning, and he realized he couldn't go straight from Doctor Who filming into Sherlock filming as he'd originally planned. Working backwards from when Peter Jackson had set filming dates on The Hobbit (late May), Moffat pushed Sherlock filming off as late as he could -- the first week of March -- to give him time to finish his script, give Gatiss time to finish his script, and for them both to do the pre-production work. Also, moving Sherlock two months freed up Cumberbatch to take another offer for the Julian Assange film.

We reach January. As Moffat and Gatiss are working on their Sherlock scripts, Moffat recognizes that he's not going to be ready for post-Anniversary special Doctor Who filming, especially since the FX house is still going to be working on series 7b through May and post-production on the Anniversary special. He and Caroline Skinner decide to push off filming for the post-Anniversary episodes (which we know have already been discussed with Smith) to July. (Why July? Series 5 filming began in July. July is a good start date for filming for an April launch.) Now that there's a two month break (May and June), Moffat tells Matt that he can take another project (and a short one!) if he can find one.

This is just a theory, and it makes several assumptions. Sherlock Holmes would tell me not to theorize in this way, as I've invariably biased the evidence.

[diankra]

As said before, he and Caroline Skinner aren't senior enough to make these decisions. They can go to the next layer up the power structure and say "Sorry, we're not going to be ready in time, you'll have to postpone filming," and win the argument, but that'd be a bad black mark on their record.
Now that might not matter so much for him, assuming he can always go back and write Tintin 3, and so on, but for Caro Skinner it'd be career suicide (at least if she's planning on staying inside the BBC). It'd be the very last thing she'd do.

[Lonemagpie]

^ Looks about right, and fits the dates for Gosling's film's shooting schedule.

I suspect also that it show a high likelihood that DW will have shorter seasons in future, though - partly to accomodate Sherlock and Matt's availability, and partly because eight episodes seems to be becoming the standard for the Beeb's prime shows.

Of course, Moffat's spouted so much in the past couple of years that has proven to be "apocryphal, or at least wildly inaccurate" that we could just assume he's crying wolf yet again and Matt has fucked off.

[Atticus]

Allyn Gibson wrote:

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Blogtor Who is reporting that Moffat says Matt Smith will be back after filming the Gosling film. Source.

I've come to think the break wasn't planned, but since it's there Matt Smith took advantage of it by lining up another short-term job. Hey, an actor's gotta eat.

Here's my theory.

Last fall, as Moffat was struggling to finish series 7b he got behind on his Sherlock planning, and he realized he couldn't go straight from Doctor Who filming into Sherlock filming as he'd originally planned. Working backwards from when Peter Jackson had set filming dates on The Hobbit (late May), Moffat pushed Sherlock filming off as late as he could -- the first week of March -- to give him time to finish his script, give Gatiss time to finish his script, and for them both to do the pre-production work. Also, moving Sherlock two months freed up Cumberbatch to take another offer for the Julian Assange film.

We reach January. As Moffat and Gatiss are working on their Sherlock scripts, Moffat recognizes that he's not going to be ready for post-Anniversary special Doctor Who filming, especially since the FX house is still going to be working on series 7b through May and post-production on the Anniversary special. He and Caroline Skinner decide to push off filming for the post-Anniversary episodes (which we know have already been discussed with Smith) to July. (Why July? Series 5 filming began in July. July is a good start date for filming for an April launch.) Now that there's a two month break (May and June), Moffat tells Matt that he can take another project (and a short one!) if he can find one.

This is just a theory, and it makes several assumptions. Sherlock Holmes would tell me not to theorize in this way, as I've invariably biased the evidence.

The difficulty with this theory is that Moffat isn't writing Season 8 alone. If he wasn't going to be ready at the start of the block, they could put in another's, ala the Snowmen. It's probably something else...

[StCoop]

Allyn Gibson wrote:

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Blogtor Who is reporting that Moffat says Matt Smith will be back after filming the Gosling film. Source.

Much like the BBC's "he'll still be the Doctor for a while" statement it's lacking in any useful context though. All that can be taken from that is that he'll be back to shoot this year's Xmas Special.

Why, oh why don't people ask follow-up questions?

[Allyn Gibson]

Atticus wrote:

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The difficulty with this theory is that Moffat isn't writing Season 8 alone. If he wasn't going to be ready at the start of the block, they could put in another's, ala the Snowmen. It's probably something else...

Jon Blum said the same thing at Gallifrey Base.

The objection I have to that objection is that Moffat isn't just the writer, he's also the executive producer and he would have pre-, mid-, and post-production responsibilities. If they were going to film Who in May, then he'd be looking at this kind of schedule...

In February he would be looking at post-production on Who and pre-production on Sherlock. In March he would be looking at post-production on Who 7b, production on Sherlock 8, and pre-production on Who Anniv/8. In April he would be looking at pre-production on Who series 8, production on Who 8 and Sherlock 3, and post-production on Who 7b. In May he would be looking at production production on Who 8 and Sherlock 3, and post-production on Who 7b/Anniv/8 and Sherlock 3. For June, repeat May.

Even if he could push all of his writing off to the last production blocks, he still has hands-on production responsibilities at and before the start.

I do agree with the point Diankra danced around -- if there was to be Who filming in May and now there's clearly not, then why aren't Moffat and Skinner being shown the door?

The other possibility that occurs to me is that Moffat never intended for series 8 filming before series 7b finishes airing because the location filming would be spoilerific, such as Jenna-Louise Coleman leaving the series. (And Moffat could cover that spoiler by doing pick-up shots for a 7b episode on location for one day during the anniversary special filming.)

So either there was supposed to be filming in May and now there's not or there was never supposed to be filming in May.

[Jim Gamma]

I know it's bad form to bump but I guess, after last night's series finale, we have a pretty good idea who that twelfth TARDIS model is going to be for...

John Hurt