Still Ill

I am still. I am still so out of it I forgot my dinner meeting with my Brother last night because I was so interested in going to bed because I had laid on the couch all afternoon (it was my short day at work).

And thus I still have not processed the pictures and videos from this years Gally.

But I see The Fan Show has their Gally Episode out. I saw them several times. I even said “hi” to them “love the show” in full Sylvester McCoy 7th Doctor garp.

Nothing. Oh well.

The Fifth(ish) Doctor

Peter Davison is writing his autobiography, which is currently titled The Fifth(ish) Doctor and will be published in April 2016. The book will feature a foreword by his son-in-law and former Doctor, David Tennant.

Davison is only the third Doctor actor to write an autobiography. Jon Pertwee wrote two autobiographies; 1984’s Moon Boots and Dinner Suits (republished in 2013) and I am the Doctor in 1996, the year of his death. Tom Baker came out with Who on Earth is Tom Baker? in 1997, though he didn’t mention much of Doctor Who. While not autobiographies, Colin Baker released two books; Look Who’s Talking (2010) and Second Thoughts (2011) which were compilations of the columns he wrote for Bucks Free Press.

The Fifth(ish) Doctor
Written by Peter Davison, with Andrew Merriman
Foreword by David Tennant
Published on 7th April 2016 (available for pre-order)

‘Peter? It’s John Nathan Turner here. How would you like to be the next Doctor Who…’

After receiving this life-changing phone call in March 1980, actor Peter Davison would go on play the Doctor in the hit BBC series from 1981–84, fighting Daleks, Cybermen and the Master. Now, for the first time, Davison reveals what it was really like to take on this role of a lifetime.

Davison also talks exclusively about this childhood and personal life, as well as describing his work on shows such as All Creatures Great and Small, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Miranda, Sherlock and Law and Order UK.

An 8 page colour plate section will feature images of Davison in his most famous roles, including the Doctor, as well as photographs from his personal collection which have never been published before.

Peter Davison is one of Britain’s best-known actors, having starred in All Creatures Great and Small, Doctor Who, Miranda, New Tricks, Lewis and Law and Order UK. Peter also enjoys a successful career in the theatre, starring in Arsenic and Old Lace, Legally Blonde, Spamalot and Gypsy. He lives in London.

Specs
Format: Hardback, 304 Pages
ISBN: 9781781315163
Illustrations: 8 Page colour plate section
Size: 9.213 in x 6.024 in / 234 mm x 153 mm
Published: Apr. 7, 2016

Peter Davison Interview

The ‘Doctor Who Symphonic Spectacular’ star talks to Adam Sweeting about David Tennant and being happy to slag off ‘Doctor Who’

The actors who have played the title role in Doctor Who down the decades have learnt that, as the Eagles sang, “You can check out any time you like but you can never leave”. When Peter Davison signed on to play the fifth incarnation of the timeless Time Lord in 1981, he feared becoming typecast and opted to sign a contract for only three years. Yet, more than 30 years after he quit the role, the Doctor still looms large in his life.

He’s about to go out on a six-city UK tour as host of the Doctor Who Symphonic Spectacular, where the BBC National Orchestra of Wales will play music composed for the programme by Murray Gold, much of it for Peter Capaldi’s current embodiment of the Doctor.

“On the TV you have images on the screen and then you have the music in the background,” Davison points out. “Here you have the symphony orchestra on stage and the video clips in the background, so the focus is reversed. The music is great and it’s very powerful. It’s mainly families and children who come to these events, and they would probably never listen to a symphony orchestra play otherwise.”

Davison was born Peter Moffett in Streatham in 1951, the son of Claude, an electrical engineer from British Guiana, and his wife, Sheila. Growing up in Surrey, he wasn’t academically inclined but shone in school plays and amateur theatricals before attending the Central School of Speech and Drama in north London. You can still see vestiges of the boyish, blond Doctor in Davison, even if he has acquired a little more weight and lost a little hair.

Despite the fact that, after our interview, he’s due onstage at the Savoy Theatre, where he’s playing Herbie in the hit musical Gypsy (which received a five-star rave from the Telegraph’s theatre critic), he seems to have all the time in the world to reel off actorly anecdotes. A couple involve David Tennant, who not only played the 10th Doctor from 2005-10 but is also Davison’s son-in-law, having met his daughter Georgia when she appeared (as the Doctor’s daughter) in an episode of the series in 2008. They married three years later.

“David didn’t ask me for any tips on the role, but I took my two sons to the filming of his first episode in London, and he was fantastic, very nice and very welcoming,” Davison says. “Later on things changed when he married my daughter, and that is rather weird. I don’t know if either of us have really come to terms with it. But I think he did a great job in the show, and I do like the fact that I was ‘his’ Doctor Who when he was growing up.”

Although fate has decreed that Davison and the Doctor must remain umbilically linked, his CV is still like a mystery tour of 40 years of British television. Even before Doctor Who, he’d become a national favourite as daft-as-a-brush Tristan Farnon in the BBC’s vets series All Creatures Great and Small, and his credits stretch from A Very Peculiar Practice to At Home with the Braithwaites and ITV’s Law & Order: UK.

“I moved on quite easily from Doctor Who, but I’ve always been happy to do anything that was to do with it,” he says. “But Tom Baker, who played the Doctor before me for seven years, had to close the door for a good number of years. He wouldn’t do any appearances or talk about Doctor Who, because he just wanted to get rid of it.”

Davison often attends fan conventions and has made Who-related documentaries, not least his self-directed The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot, a comic account of several ex-Doctors trying to get roles in the 50th anniversary special, which was included in a “collector’s edition” box set. He particularly enjoys getting together with Janet Fielding, who played his on-screen companion Tegan, to record commentaries for DVD releases of vintage episodes. These have become celebrated for their satirical tone, with the pair happy to ridicule crude special effects or the overuse of the Doctor’s “sonic screwdriver”.

“We just sit there slagging the programme off, and the fans love it,” he says. “I kept saying to Janet, ‘We’d better tone it down a bit’, but you meet the fans and they go, ‘We loved that commentary because you’re so rude about the programme.'”

The Doctor Who Symphonic Spectacular, with its video clips of the various Doctors and walk-on appearances by such fabled adversaries as the Cybermen and the Daleks, has grown out of the Doctor Who Prom, which made its debut at the Royal Albert Hall in 2008. It’s making its first UK appearance after sell-out tours in Australia and New Zealand.

“I introduced a segment of the 2013 Doctor Who Prom onstage,” Davison says, “and I think because it went down rather well they said, ‘Do you fancy doing a tour of Australia?’ Doctor Who has always had a very high profile in Australia, and the 50th anniversary of the first-ever episode was while we were out there.”

Davison reckons the fundamental essence of Doctor Who hasn’t changed since his day, but following its relaunch in 2005 under the guidance of writer Russell T Davies, the once-ramshackle show, famous for wobbly sets and absurd costumes, has been transformed by generous budgets, cutting-edge computer effects and far more ambitious writing, with fanatics Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss now adding their idiosyncratic expertise to the mix.

Back in the Eighties, Davison recalls, “we were sold to 39 countries and we earned the BBC a lot of money, but all we got was budget cuts.”

He makes a point of keeping up with the revolving door of Doctors.

“I interviewed Peter Capaldi for a documentary, and he said, ‘I just wanted to play it like I didn’t know if the human race was worth saving. Why has the Doctor been running around for the last 50 years trying to save the human race?’ I thought it was a very interesting take, but again he’s a huge Doctor Who fan.”

Unlike (11th Doctor) Matt Smith, it seems. “Matt had never seen the series in his life! I had lunch with him at Steven Moffat’s house and he said, ‘When the Doctor meets his enemies, why doesn’t he just kill them?’ Steven sent him away with a huge carton of Doctor Who videos and said, ‘Watch these.'”

Meanwhile, Davison is looking for fresh challenges, like his role in Gypsy, the classic Jule Styne/ Stephen Sondheim musical based on the memoirs of striptease artist Gypsy Rose Lee. He’s such a familiar TV face that his stage career is often overlooked – his first professional job was at the Nottingham Playhouse, and he’s done his fair share of Shakespeare and Stoppard – and in his mid-60s, he has suddenly found himself turning into a song-and-dance man. He played King Arthur in Spamalot and Prof Callahan in Legally Blonde, opposite Sheridan Smith.

Davison claims modestly that “I don’t think I have a particularly pleasant voice, rather gruff and husky”, but he can claim some authentic musical credentials. He plays guitar and piano and has even composed TV theme tunes, including the title music of the children’s classic Button Moon.

He is modest, too, about his career. He suggests he got the role in All Creatures Great and Small because he happened to look as if he could be co-star Robert Hardy’s brother, and suspects he was cast in At Home With the Braithwaites because “they had this rather unpleasant character so they thought, ‘Let’s get someone who plays nice blokes and whom the audience will like.'”

He did go a bit quiet in the Nineties, but, nevertheless, his career batting average is a thespian marvel. He came out of drama school with the motto “never do a soap opera”, and it has served him well. Does he share the widespread actor’s terror of not working?

“I suppose I don’t, because I think you get to a certain point and you can always work,” he says. “It’s a question of whether that work is a slow spiral into oblivion over a number of years. But I hit retirement age next April so I’m not really worried about much really, except how long I can keep going.”

Doctor Who is a British superhero

Jill Castle

Assistant Digital Editor. Herald Scotland

Wednesday 27 May 2015

It’s been 31 years since Peter Davison put down his sonic screwdriver, Tardis key and celery stick and regenerated into Colin Baker.

He will now get the chance to come face to face with some of the Timelord’s most feared adversaries again when he hosts the Doctor Who Symphonic Spectacular at the SSE Hydro next week.

Davison, who played the fifth incarnation of the Timelord, was asked to host the spectacular, which combines Murray Gold’s music, played by a live orchestra, with some of the show’s favourite monsters, after introducing a segment at the Doctor Who Prom in the Royal Albert Hall. He toured Australia and New Zealand with the production before bringing it to Scotland for the first time.

He said: “The show is a bit of everything really. At its heart it’s a symphonic concert but behind the stage we run various clips and we have Doctor Who aliens and monsters creeping around the auditorium, sneaking up on you and I introduce pieces of music and have a bit of a joke.

“I think hearing a symphony orchestra play live is something really special. I just love the idea of these families coming along who would never go to an orchestral concert and hearing the power of that music being played.”

Davison took over the role of the Doctor from Tom Baker in 1981 and played the part for three years.

However, despite the BBC hit sci-fi show’s cancellation in 1989, he knew it would return.

He said: “I always thought it would come back because it was such a brilliant idea and it had been successful for so long and the fans are so devoted. I didn’t anticipate it would come back in the way that it did as the BBC’s number one prestigious show so that was a surprise but it was very nice because the first producer Russell T Davies was a big fan.”

The show began in 1963 and Davison believes the key to its longevity has been its creativity.

He said: “He’s sort of a British superhero. He doesn’t fit the mould of American superheroes, he doesn’t have special powers but he’s definitely a force for good.

“It’s such a wonderful idea and the scope of the programme is enormous. The genre of science fiction, love it or hate it, means you can tackle virtually any story in virtually any period of time. I think that’s been the secret of its success, it’s inspired creative parts of people’s brains.”

Davison has returned to the role a few times, appearing in the 1993 Children in Need special Dimensions in Time, 2007’s Timecrash with son-in-law David Tennant and the Five(ish) Doctors, which he wrote for the show’s 50th anniversary as well as numerous Big Finish audio adventures.

He has even influenced the new show, which returned to screens in 2005, with many people who work on it, including current showrunner Steven Moffat, saying he was ‘their Doctor’.

He said: “It’s great. I myself was influenced by an earlier Doctor. Patrick Troughton was my Doctor and he had an element of vulnerability which I wanted to bring back into the show and I think that’s something that people identify with.

“A lot of people have come up to me and said Doctor Who helped them through a difficult part in their childhood. I think he’s a great role model.”

Davison’s also a big fan of new Doctor, Peter Capaldi.

He said: “I like his portrayal enormously. I interviewed him for BBC America before it went out and he had some great ideas. He wanted to do a slightly different take and his was that his Doctor wasn’t entirely sure that the human race was worth bothering with. Obviously, in the end, he does but it’s an amusing take.”

However, he does not believe that the show is becoming too scary for children.

He said: “I think adults are the last people who can judge whether Doctor Who is scary, they have no qualifications at all. What we think our children find scary, they find tremendously exciting and invigorating. There are bound to be some people who are a bit scared and they might even have the odd nightmare and of course that’s unfortunate but it comes out of loving the series.

“It’s always had that effect really. In my day there were children who used to spend the entire series watching the programme from behind a sofa.”

The Doctor Who Symphonic Spectacular will visit the SSE Hydro in Glasgow on Friday, May 29.

My Close Encounter with a Dalek

At Wembly Arena, May 23rd 2015. 🙂

oh and Then there was Peter Davison:

Simply Spectacular

I was at the Doctor Who Symphonic Spectacular at Wembly Arena yesterday.

That was one hell of a good show.

Now it’s time to go home… Back to Reality…

Just a taste…

The Man with the Gold touch

The Telegraph:

Doctor Who Symphonic Spectacular: Murray Gold interview

As the tour begins, the prolific TV composer speaks to Benji Wilson about putting the ‘ooo’ in Doctor Who

Doctor Who director Murray Gold Photo: Photo Copyright John Chapple / http://www.JohnChapple.com

 By Benji Wilson

Murray Gold and I are singing at each other in a manner that I later realise is both slightly embarrassing and impossible to recreate in print. The subject is the Doctor Who theme tune. In 2005, when the sci-fi series was resurrected by Russell T Davies, Gold was asked to spruce up the famous opening. So how, I say, do you improve upon “Dun-der-dun, der-dun-der-dun, der-dun-der-dun, der OOO WAAA WAAAAAA?”

“The simplicity of that tune is what makes it so easy to change,” says Gold. “The only thing that’s annoying is that glam rock triplet beat, which makes it sound like The Sweet. As soon as you add drums to that you end up with a party tune from the Seventies. That’s why I broke that up on series one.”

Gold’s BBC paymasters evidently liked what he did, because he has been writing all of the music for Doctor Who ever since, including a second reworking of the theme tune in 2011. Although he is a prolific and successful composer – most recently he wrote the music for Last Tango in Halifax and The Musketeers – he describes Doctor Who as his main employment. His trademark, at least on Doctor Who, is epic, stirring anthems that drive the action forward while remaining eminently hummable in the playground the next day.

He says that his girlfriend “can’t stand” the programme and that he rarely meets people who like it in his daily life spent between New York and Los Angeles. Gold, 46, is a Doctor Who devotee and it’s an affection that stems back to his Seventies boyhood when he was obsessed with Tom Baker’s incarnation of the Time Lord.

“I get very sentimental when I talk about Doctor Who – he’s like an intergalactic Atticus Finch. It’s one of the last great morality tales out there but it also celebrates life. For that reason I think it’s a great show for kids. I couldn’t write this much music for it if I didn’t feel that way.”

The Doctor Who Symphonic Spectacular, hosted by the fifth doctor Peter Davison, takes this music around the world, and is touring the UK next month.

“We do it with the National Orchestra of Wales, plus a big choir, huge screens, monsters, the works – there are 150 people on stage. It’s anthemic music, so the emotional pitch of the show is like a rock gig. Because Doctor Who’s a geeky sort of show – one that celebrates wit and humour, rather than brawn and power – it’s a congregation of people who are revelling in their underdog status. I like that.”

As a TV critic, I tell Gold, I have heard several comments saying that certain TV series seem to have too much music, or that it is too loud and overbearing.

“Some people definitely have a language/music thing where it’s difficult in their brains for them to deal with both. I can’t play the piano and talk to somebody at the same time. A lot of people can. I think the people who say the music is too loud are expressing a subjective viewpoint and that is how they hear it – it’s a difficulty of processing the logic of language with the emotive language of music simultaneously.”

Gold is a funny, mischievous, self-deprecating presence. He characterises his path to his pre-eminence among screen composers as a matter of luck and good timing. He never attended music school, instead relying on piano lessons “from Mrs Winifred Ayling in Portchester”. Having taught his grandma, she refused on principle to raise her prices and charged him 25p per half-hour. He ended up at Corpus Christi, Cambridge, and immersed himself in theatre, becoming music director of Footlights after writing both plays and the music for them. Continuing in a similar vein after graduation, he got his big break when he met the director Marc Munden, who recommended him for the BBC’s 1998 adaptation of Thackeray’s Vanity Fair after turning him down for a previous gig. The result was one of the most innovative TV scores of the past 20 years.

“That score came about after Marc and I had been sitting around saying, ‘Well, this is about the death of the middle classes, this is about a bourgeois disaster and a woman claiming her stake in middle-class society – so let’s try to make it Brechtian, let’s try and make it a bit Kurt Weill’.”

“The BBC did get concerned about what was going on,” he admits of his decision to employ amateur musicians to record the soundtrack. But while the score was pilloried in some quarters, it got Gold noticed. The first of four Bafta nominations for Best Original Television Music followed.

The writer Paul Abbott (State of Play, Shameless) was an admirer, and suggested Gold to the television producer Nicola Shindler and writer Russell T Davies, who were looking for a composer for their new series, Queer as Folk, about a group of young gay men in Manchester. Gold became both Abbott and Davies’s composer of choice, creating the music for this and subsequent landmark dramas, including Clocking Off and Shameless.

“I came of age when a group of social realist, British, particularly Northern dramatists were coming into their own. Somehow I became their flagbearer,” he says. “I would write their anthems. There was so much passion in the first season of Shameless, so much fantastic stuff in Clocking Off. There’s nothing better than some of those shows I’ve worked on. America can’t come close. They’ve got a grit and an honesty about them.”

His method appears to be that he doesn’t have one, although when he stumbles upon a good tune he will try to find a place to use it.

“A lot of the time it’s just because I’ve been listening to something and I want to make some music like that,” he says.

For Doctor Who, however, he took a different tack, composing some of the music for the recent Doctors based on the actor’s personality.

“A lot of the music for Matt Smith and Peter Capaldi was written even prior to script; it came up through just watching the new actor in other things he’d been in.”

How would Gold describe these actors’ defining traits?

“Capaldi is direct, to the point, abrasive. Whereas Matt was gangly, awkward, eccentric. David Tennant was passionate, buccaneering. Sometimes parents tell me their kids can listen to one bit of music and know not only what doctor it is but what episode it’s from. That’s the highest praise.”

The Doctor Who Symphonic Spectacular tours the UK from May 23

And will be in New York City Later this year.

Forever WHO

The show’s producer Steven Moffat revealed earlier this year that the series would definitely continue for five more years, but it seems other people are much more confident than that. After BBC drama boss Ben Stephenson suggested it could go on another 50 years, former Doctor Peter Davison took it one step further insisting to BANG Showbiz that he thinks ‘it will go on fairly indefinitely’ as long as the fans stay devoted and the producers stay committed. We think he’s got a point and have come up with seven top reasons why the Timelord will continue to travel through time.

1. ‘Doctor Who’ is constantly re-inventing itself from the soundtrack right down to the intricate workings of the TARDIS. It saw a major renovation when it came back after 16 years (not including the 1996 TV movie) in 2005, and there’s no reason why it couldn’t be rebuilt again if ever there was another hiatus. A major example is the evolution of the Doctor’s main nemeses the Daleks, who maintained their shape over the years but have seen significant developments such as the ability to fly.

2. On a similar note, the stars are constantly changing. New Doctors every few years as well as even more frequent new companions. But the brilliant thing is, even though the Doctor is still the same person with each regeneration, we have a completely different take – introducing a whole new character each time. The effect works well for the audience; they might not like one Doctor, but come the next regeneration and they might totally fall in love with his next incarnation. Current star Peter Capaldi, for instance, is grumpy, cold and often mean – much unlike the warm-hearted, fez-loving extrovert that was Matt Smith’s portrayal. In every turn, though, the Doctor is still recognisable as every actor embraces those important constant qualities of a guarded, tortured soul with ideas above his station and too many dark secrets to name.

3. The series must have one of the largest demographics in history. It started out as a children’s program and has maintained interest for youngsters throughout the years, but now there’s also plenty for adults to love. It’s the perfect mix of whimsical comedy, sci-fi adventure, occasional horror and the odd smattering of romance. To be rather hackneyed, there’s literally something for everybody.

4. ‘Doctor Who’ have not only captivated British audiences for the last 50 years, but it’s also found a huge following in the United States, New Zealand, Australia and Mexico – to name but a few. Something so globally appreciated always have healthy futures, and we can’t see any nation losing interest in the series anytime soon. In every country in the world, there’s desire for adventure, an interest in extra-terrestrials and a passion for space.

5. This show will literally NEVER get boring. It is absolutely impossible to run out of new ideas when you’ve got the whole of space and time at your fingertips. The possibilities are endless; real life dramas have a disadvantage in this area in that they are forced to stick to the believable. But with ‘Doctor Who’, the more unbelievable it is, the more fans it gains.

6. Every important theme you can possibly think of is explored in this series. Predominantly racism, as we see a range of benign alien creatures that may appear as terrifying as the villainous ones as it presents this idea of tarring those different to us with the same brush. Then you’ve got LGBT issues – interestingly, lizard-like Silurian Madame Vastra is a top example of both these points, as she happens to be married to a human woman. War is a significant recurring issue facing the ‘Doctor Who’ world, of course, with the genocide of the Gallifreyans by the Daleks topping that list.

7. Whilst all these points predict continuity based on their viewability, our last point is less speculative. ‘Doctor Who’ is rare – possibly unique – in that ratings continue to rise rather than fall. Moffat previously admitted that he didn’t expect the series to run for more than 10 years, but, lo and behold, there are more and more Timelord fanatics with each series. (contactmusic.com)

I have mixed feelings about the show outliving me, mostly having to do with not being able to see them, so it largely narcissistic. 🙂

Simply Spectacular

It’s been 35 years since Peter Davison signed on the dotted line to become Doctor Who‘s then-youngest ever lead, at just 29 years old.

In the years since he played the first incarnation of the Time Lord, Peter has remained very much part of the Doctor Who world – and next month, he’ll be hosting a special concert tour celebrating the show’s iconic soundtrack.

Davison spoke to Digital Spy about fronting the 13-date Symphonic Spectacular, whether he’ll ever play the Doctor on-screen again and if the rumors about a ‘Five-ish Doctors Reboot’ sequel are true.

© Lucas Dawson

For fans who are unfamiliar, what can we expect from the Doctor Who Symphonic Spectacular?
It’s the music of Murray Gold, that he’s written for the series – a fair part of it is the music he’s written for Peter Capaldi’s series, but there’s also music from earlier Doctors.

It’s a shift in focus – when you see it on the television, the music is in the background – here, you have a symphony orchestra on-stage playing the music and you have clips in the background.

But also we have various creatures from Doctor Who wandering around the auditorium – and sneaking up on people when they least expect it. At one point, the Daleks try to take over the show – and I have to come on and save the day with a cup of tea!

So it’s a fun thing – and I come in and introduce the various pieces of music, with a little anecdote or two!

© Lucas Dawson

Doctor Who has taken you many places – but did you ever expect to be hosting an international arena tour?
No, not at all – I was asked in 2013 whether I would introduce a segment at the Doctor Who BBC Proms night – and I was slightly worried that I’d go out there and people wouldn’t know who I am!

But they did fortunately because what’s happened since the series came back is that fans have gone back and rediscovered the older series – and they’re very forgiving about the effects, I have to say!

They’ve rediscovered it, so they do know who you are – and they know what we look like now, so they’re not appalled when they see us! But no, I never would’ve dreamed I would be doing this. It’s great fun though!

© Lucas Dawson

Do you think the music from ‘classic’ Doctor Who – and the work of the Radiophonic Workshop – gets enough credit?
In a way, I do – they were hugely important to the show and the music for what’s now called the ‘classic’ Doctors is absolutely iconic. When the series came back, they decided to go with a more orchestra-based type of music… the music that was written by the Radiophonic Workshop was more incidental music, in the way it was put together.

They weren’t so much ‘compositions’ as they were wonderful… ‘tone poems’ almost. It was equally as important as the modern music, it just doesn’t lend itself quite so handily to doing a concert. But I wouldn’t downgrade the importance of the Radiophonic Workshop at all – still now, you just have to hear that music and it immediately takes you into Doctor Who – it was very iconic music.

© BBC

You’re still playing the Doctor – on audio for Big Finish Productions. How has playing the part changed since the ’80s?
It doesn’t really change – you just do it. Obviously you are older so it probably has changed from the way we were on the telly – but I don’t think about it.

I just play it as I probably would do now if I was appearing on the program – and we get some great scripts for those Big Finish shows, so it’s a pleasure to do.

We do them very quickly, that’s my only problem with them. When fans ask me about a certain Big Finish story, I rarely can remember which one they’re talking about – although I love doing them at the time!

You reprised the role on-screen for 2007’s ‘Time Crash’ – would you ever do something like that again?
Yeah, if they came up with a good enough reason why we don’t look exactly as we did when we left the series. That was a very clever script from Steven Moffat – with the 10th Doctor remembering the 5th Doctor, but also David Tennant remembering watching me on the TV – so it worked on two levels.

But that’s always been the problem with regards us older Doctors returning – theoretically we should look exactly the same, as we did. Of course, we don’t – as time has passed, cruelly!

If someone could come up with a good enough reason, then I would love the idea – but I’d never push it. I never thought we would get a look in at the 50th – and that was fair enough, I think.

© BBC

You had a brilliant retort to that, with ‘The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot’ – did you expect that to get such a big reaction?
Not as big as it did, no. I was very worried early on because I’d said that I was making something – and then I thought, well now I’ve got to come up with something good!

I’ve never worked so hard in my life as in that year – because I was writing the thing at night and we’d film something the next day… it was odd days here and there because everyone’s availability was very limited, but in a way that’s what made it so great.

Sylvester was in New Zealand – which gave me the idea to write a scene with Peter Jackson in it. We sent it to him and he loved it – so everything kind of fell into place.

I think I knew from my point of view that it had worked out… better than I’d hoped, really – but I didn’t know what the fans would think. You have to appreciate the joke – and I suppose they could’ve taken it quite badly, because we were sending up a lot of it. But the fans like that.

On the night that it went out, I remember we were all at the big 50th anniversary convention and I sat around the bar with Colin and Sylvester – and we were just seeing all these tweets coming in, and comments from the fans, saying it was brilliant – and we sat up til literally 1.30am, really excited, because it was just going down so well, much better than we thought it would!

© BBC

There’s been talk of a sequel – will it ever surface?
If I came up with a good enough idea. There are two problems, really, in my head. I wouldn’t want to do it if it was half-hearted and nowhere near as good as the other one, so it would have to be a good enough idea.

The other problem – and it’s a fairly major one – is we had probably the best cast you can imagine. Literally everyone said yes – with one exception – and it’s very difficult to imagine getting that cast together again… and not paying them!

I couldn’t really ring up people and ask them to do a day for no money at all – their patience might run out! So if I did come up with a good enough idea, I’d then have to figure out a way of actually paying them some money!

All these things are not impossible, but I wouldn’t even want to go down that road unless I thought it could be better!

Would you like to write something else Doctor Who-related – maybe a Big Finish audio?
I’d like to try – I don’t know if I could do it. I find that I instinctively don’t believe that I can do something – and then when I sit down and put my mind to it, things fairly often fall into place. But it’s not an easy process – it’s not like my brain is bubbling with ideas.

Sometimes if I sit down in front of a blank page, things fall into place – and, like what happened with ‘Five-ish Doctors’, once you start getting excited about a thing, then your brain goes into overdrive. So I’d lIke to do these things… but I’m instinctively a very lazy person!

The Doctor Who Symphonic Spectacular starts on Saturday, May 23. Tickets can be bought at doctorwhosymphonicspectacular.com.

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Happy Birthday, Peter

Davison, that is. 🙂

Peter Davison, who celebrates his 64th birthday today, is currently appearing in London’s West End in the revival of the Musical Gypsy.

Davison plays Herbie in the show, which is based upon the memoirs of the stripper Gypsy Rose Lee, and which is currently previewing at London’s Savoy Theatre. The cast is led by BAFTA award winning actress Imelda Staunton who was asked to take on the role of Rose by the play’s lyricist Stephen Sondheim, after he saw Staunton’s performance as Mrs Lovett in the 2012 production of Sweeney Todd.

The show’s cast album, featuring Davison, is released on 27th April.

Davison will take time off from the show to host Doctor Who Symphonic Spectacular’s UK tour this May.

Peter is one of my favorite Doctors, and one of my favorite people. Peter has a wicked sense of humor, especially about himself, as evidenced by The Five(ish) Doctors but also his little vignettes that he created for The Gallifrey One Conventions.

Though Tom Baker was my first doctor, and I loved the show before I saw any other Doctors, when I got to see Peter’s that was it for me at the time.

I love the guy, and his Doctor.