You were fantastic! The Doctor Who story that didn’t leak out
by Cathy Loughran
If you want to keep the lid on a great tabloid story, like the identity of the next Doctor Who, keep it simple, keep it verbal and stay off email. That – along with a large dose of luck and some tight team work – was how BBC One, BBC drama and a small band of marketers pulled off the publicity event of the season with Saturday’s heavily trailed but unleaked announcement that Matt Smith will fill David Tennant’s shoes in 2010 as the 11th and youngest ever timelord.
Ever since Tennant revealed in October that he was to give up the part, press speculation put names like Paterson Joseph, David Morrissey and Catherine Zeta Jones in the frame.
The much lesser known Smith, star of the BBC’s Party Animals and The Ruby in the Smoke, was offered the role in mid-December, after new chief writer Stephen Moffat and exec Piers Wenger were ‘blown away’ by the 26’s year old’s audition.
It wasn’t yet a done deal, but the BBC publicity machine moved into overdrive at the prospect of the big news and how best to break it, says Julian Payne, communications chief for BBC One and drama. One conversation with Wenger, BBC One controller Jay Hunt, fiction controller Jane Tranter and George Dixon, head of scheduling, was enough to green light a special, half-hour Doctor Who Confidential that would look back on the ten previous Doctors and unveil the new man.
‘If the story leaked, we’d still have the first interview with Matt, if it didn’t, it would be so much better,’ Payne told Ariel.
On the day, just before Christmas, that the deal was signed Smith was smuggled to a secret location to record with a trusted two-man crew from Doctor Who Confidential. On Christmas Eve, the actor was whisked into a Television Centre basement for a secret photo shoot – with both photographer and stylist still in the dark – and the Tardis computer generated later.
‘Everything was done by phone call or face to face. There were no emails,’ says Payne, who admits spending Christmas sweating over every press call to his mobile.
Between Christmas and New Year, Reemah Sakaan, head of hd and multiplatform marketing and brand executive Georgina Gardner recorded secret trails for the January 3 show and booked space on every one of the BBC big screens, without revealing the content. ‘Right up until the show went out newspapers were firing names at me but in the end, the media too were excited by how the announcement happened,’ Payne says. ‘Luck undoubtedly played a part but it was testament to a great team effort, including by BBC Wales, BBC Worldwide, the big screens team and the Doctor Who website who all swung into action.’
Several Doctor Who online forums crashed under the weight of traffic after Saturday’s announcement. Almost 7m people tuned in to find out the news first from BBC One.
If I didn't like you I wouldn't have said anything (get a room! - everyone). So quit being a big girl 
fair point, ok the slightly younger "Van Statann" but it would point to where he got all his alien stuff from.
