50th Anniversary, the 11 Doctors?

[JRoss]

Truthfully, it's not likely. Not remotely. But wouldn't that be something? Instead of a single special, though, how about an entire series, pairing up old Doctors a few at a time, with a big climax featuring them all.

Obviously 1, 2 and 3 couldn't participate, but imagine other actors standing in for them, in the style of Hurndall as Hartnell. Maybe Bill Nighy as 3 and I don't know, Alun Armstrong as 2?

 

[Sindatur]

Truthfully, it's not likely. Not remotely. But wouldn't that be something? Instead of a single special, though, how about an entire series, pairing up old Doctors a few at a time, with a big climax featuring them all.

Obviously 1, 2 and 3 couldn't participate, but imagine other actors standing in for them, in the style of Hurndall as Hartnell. Maybe Bill Nighy as 3 and I don't know, Alun Armstrong as 2?

I'd definitely be up for it, but, I think better to not include 1-3.

 

[The Nth Doctor]

I certainly hope something will be made but I have greater hopes with Big Finish, especially now they've finally got Tom Baker on board.

 

[The Wormhole]

I fully expect (or rather hope) to see The Eight Doctors, since there are eight actors still living.

I don't care what was done in The Five Doctors, I don't want the first three re-cast. Just throw some bogus wibbly-wobbly crap excuse for why they can't show up.

 

[BlastHardcheese]

If they looked for someone to play the first doctor for the 50th anniversary, I'd pick Robert Carlyle. Why?

He's 49 right now. By the 50th Anniversary, he'll be 54-55. William Hartnell was 55 when he started playing the Doctor.

I'm aware that Carlyle seems younger now than Hartnell was. Sadly, that's what living in the UK will do to you in the pre and post WWII era when you're a starving actor.

 

[Ar-Pharazon]

^ Isn't the anniversary in 2 - 2.5 years?

 

[Haggis and tatties]

I am actually of the opinion that the 50th anniversary will indeed bring some kind of multiple Dr Who story to celebrate it.

 

[Starkers]

Truthfully, it's not likely. Not remotely. But wouldn't that be something? Instead of a single special, though, how about an entire series, pairing up old Doctors a few at a time, with a big climax featuring them all.

Obviously 1, 2 and 3 couldn't participate, but imagine other actors standing in for them, in the style of Hurndall as Hartnell. Maybe Bill Nighy as 3 and I don't know, Alun Armstrong as 2?

I can't see the BBC doing that. I fully expect there to be some kind of special, but it might not even feature older Doctors outside of flashbacks, I expect there'll be a documentarty, or series of documentaries, about the series that'll hopefully involve everyone on the acting and production side of the show still living.

 

[BlastHardcheese]

^ Isn't the anniversary in 2 - 2.5 years?

Oops, you are correct sir. Well put some makeup on him and he'll look old enough anyway.

 

[Ar-Pharazon]

^ Isn't the anniversary in 2 - 2.5 years?

Oops, you are correct sir. Well put some makeup on him and he'll look old enough anyway.

And hope they can do "older" makeup better than TNG.

 

[23skidoo]

They will never recast the first three Doctors, don't even think about that. Yes, they managed, barely, to get away with it with Richard Hurndall, but that was in 1983; today's audiences wouldn't stand for it. Personally I don't care if Sean Connery were cast - I don't want to ever see anyone but Jon Pertwee playing the 3rd Doctor. Or Troughton or Hartnell as the first two. I'd actually boycott the thing, quite frankly, and this is coming from someone who otherwise thinks boycotts of such nature are stupid.

If there's a multi-Doctor scenario devised for the 50th, it'll be for the novels, or the comics. Big Finish will probably do something for the audios, unless their licence isn't renewed. Best we can hope for as far as TV goes is maybe a Tennant-Smith pairing, in my opinion. Documentaries, special DVD or Blu-ray releases, and probably a ton of rebroadcasts of older stories are a given.

One thing's for certain: considering Steven Moffat reportedly began working on his first Matt Smith episode as early as 2008 (possibly even earlier) you can bet someone's starting to sketch out a game plan.

Alex

 

[C.E. Evans]

I think if there is an 11th Doctors story, it will be told with a series of brief flashbacks--perhaps little more than snippets displayed on a monitor somewhere--with something moving through Time connecting the First Doctor's era with the Eleventh's...

 

[Peacemaker]

They will never recast the first three Doctors, don't even think about that. Yes, they managed, barely, to get away with it with Richard Hurndall, but that was in 1983; today's audiences wouldn't stand for it. Personally I don't care if Sean Connery were cast - I don't want to ever see anyone but Jon Pertwee playing the 3rd Doctor. Or Troughton or Hartnell as the first two. I'd actually boycott the thing, quite frankly, and this is coming from someone who otherwise thinks boycotts of such nature are stupid.

If there's a multi-Doctor scenario devised for the 50th, it'll be for the novels, or the comics. Big Finish will probably do something for the audios, unless their licence isn't renewed. Best we can hope for as far as TV goes is maybe a Tennant-Smith pairing, in my opinion. Documentaries, special DVD or Blu-ray releases, and probably a ton of rebroadcasts of older stories are a given.

One thing's for certain: considering Steven Moffat reportedly began working on his first Matt Smith episode as early as 2008 (possibly even earlier) you can bet someone's starting to sketch out a game plan.

Alex

Hmmm, dunno if I'd boycott it altogether...but I would be unhappy if they kept to a 2 part story; even less so with a single parter. I'd be prone to spend several episodes on an arc or make it at least 3 parts long - to give screentime to each of the involved actors. Another way to do it might be to tell the same story repeatedly from different angles, making each Doctor the primary Doctor and telling and retelling the story from different points of view, then culminating in them each meeting in the finale. That may fit well with Moffat's penchant for paradox.

They've done Peter. If they followed the same model explaining the actor/Doctor's relative age, it could be done again. They'd have to put Colin on P90X for like a year before he could do the role properly IMO (age has not been kind, poor fellow). The others I can see them bringing back relatively easily, particularly McGann, since he's the one that could actually appear at any time from now on, since we don't know how relatively aged he appeared when his Doctor regenerated into 9. I would be reticent to bring back Tom at all (age) except as a disembodied voice or in a Hartnell-like time eddy. The first three, the ones I call "The Three Gentlemen," should be left out...considered too far back in the Doctor's timeline to recall without them aging out of existence, or somehow captured, or left intact to anchor the others' existence...give them honorable mention through flashbacks, perhaps.

 

[Mark_Nguyen]

I find it much more likely that they'll do something with only the 9th-11th Doctors, with the convincing of Chris to come back as the REAL miracle in casting.

Alternatively, something with Matt Smith meeting Paul McGann and closing that part of the franchise would be a better valentine to the fans than marching out a bunch of geriatric actors, sqeezing them into their old costumes and making them out as though no time has past. I know they explained it away in "Time Crash", but I think that the same suspension of disbelief couldn't be applied to EVERYONE who'd look 18+ years older than the last time we'd saw them. Didn't work with "Dimensions In Time", IMO won't work here.

I'm a Who fan of the 80s, but even I have my limits. Let Big Finish have their fun, I want to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary with something special, and yet something believeable in today's TV environment.

Mark

 

[captcalhoun]

bring back McGann, Tennant and Aldred. We never saw Ace leave, so she could be older too.

 

[The Nth Doctor]

Realistically, I hope for a special with McGann, Eccleston, Tennant and Smith but I dream the dream for all of the living Doctor actors to reunite (and maybe a few companions, too). Either way, I don't want the first three Doctors recast. The only way I could possibly accept that if David Troughton and Sean Pertwee portrayed their respective fathers but both have gone on the record that they would never do that.

 

[Dukhat]

Recasting: Bad, bad, bad idea. Even in The Five Doctors, Hurndall is NOTHING like Hartnell was.

Bringing back multiple older Doctors: I personally would like to remember the older Doctors as they were, and not shoehorning them into a present production just for fanwank purposes (I'm probably the only one who didn't care to see Davison again in that special, although I didn't have a problem with McCoy returning in the 1996 movie).

However...I've always believed that Colin Baker got totally screwed, and would love it if he were to reprise his role in the new series one last time to give him a more fitting end. Since we never saw him between the end of TOATL and McCoy's first ep (except for McCoy face-down in Baker's costume), we never really found out the ultimate fate of Baker's Doctor, or how old he got. I also thought that the Valeyard could have been brought back, as it was kind of ambiguous as to who he actually was. Was he the 13th Doctor gone bananas, or just some quasi-Doctor?

 

[Australis]

I really don't get the hole "recasting is bad" thing. Why not? Sure they'd have to be close, but keep in mind:

-- Who time is always in flux. Maybe they can change just as history does, in some cases.

- most people watching Who today have NEVER seen 1-7 in action. They won't care. And there's more of them than us.

-- whoever is in charge would do their best to get it right.

 

[Mark_Nguyen]

I always figured that the Valeyard was not a proper Doctor, but a Watcher-esque projection of the Doctor's darker side that COULD have been the thirteenth Doctor. The Master said as much and that the Valeyard came from somewhere "between (his) twelfth and final incarnations". They never went into too much detail, but they were pretty clear that it wasn't REALLY a future incarnation of the Doctor. If anything, I hope a future (sic) storyline will address this, possibly tying in the Dream Lord established last year as it was obstensibly the same concept.

I actually watched "The Five Doctors" in '83 when it first came out on PBS, and I hadn't yet seen any of Hartnell's stories. As such, Hurndall may as well have been THE first Doctor for all I knew, and I expect that should they really want to do so, recasting any previous Doctor wouldn't be caught by the majority of the current audience (who in general don't give a flip about the classic series). But given that any sort of multi-Doctor story would by necessity HAVE to please fans of the classic series were it to broach that era, and not jsut stick with the "modern" Doctors as I would suspect they will do instead, there's no way they'd recast anyone.

Mark

 

[The Wormhole]

I really don't get the hole "recasting is bad" thing. Why not? Sure they'd have to be close, but keep in mind:

-- Who time is always in flux. Maybe they can change just as history does, in some cases.

- most people watching Who today have NEVER seen 1-7 in action. They won't care. And there's more of them than us.

-- whoever is in charge would do their best to get it right.

The point of doing these multi-Doctor reunions is because we want to see those particular actors again, not see someone else doing an impersonation of them. If certain actors are unavailable, that's unfortunate, but better to leave them out than to have a poser filing in for them.