New Series News Clippings

From the Sunday Mirror (January 1): "Never has a TV series been so shrouded in secrecy," referring to the new series, "but soon we"ll be able to see how Christopher Eccleston fares as the travelling timelord, and whether Billie Piper measures up as his assistant. A few facts have emerged. The Tardis, which transports the Doctor through time and the universe, is made of coral on the inside and is a living organism which can grow and change shape. But don"t worry, the outside still looks like an old blue police box. On his journeys he will come across Simon Callow as Charles Dickens and Zoe Wanamaker as a very old woman. There is also more than a hint of romance this time around. Eccleston says: 'Doctor Who has two hearts and they can both be broken.' Ahhh." The comment about the TARDIS being "made of coral on the inside" has raised some eyebrows from Doctor Who fans online.

Item to watch in the US: BBC America is advertising the airing of "The Canterbury Tales" beginning Saturday, January 8th, at 8pm. The episode in which new series companion Billie Piper features, 'The Miller's Tale' is scheduled to first air on Jan 29, 2005.

The Sunday Independent (January 2) called Billie Piper a "talent to watch." "Billie Piper is out to prove her mettle as Doctor Who's new sidekick," says the article. Also, the Sunday Times (January 2) noted the BBC was "is in full charter-renewal mode. ... Then there is the BBC's remake of Doctor Who (BBC1), with Christopher Eccleston as the time lord. 'Everyone was expecting him to be dour, and he's so funny. I think we can do extraordinary things with it,' says the writer, Russell T Davies. 'It's classy, eccentric, there's a lot of satire, and I think it's going to work.'"

Billie Piper's film Spirit Trap will be premiered at the prestigious Sundance Film Festival in the spring, before a general release across Britain and the United States. Piper and Luke Mably star in the supernatural chiller based around scary goings on in a seedy London student bedsit land, alongside Sam Troughton and Russian rock star Alsou.

From a syndicated interview with fifth Doctor Peter Davison that circulated around January 1: "People keep asking if I've got any inside information," he says. "But I don't at all. I do the odd convention from time to time, and I still play the Doctor on audio CDs but that's it. I'll be very interested to see it myself. Hopefully, it will have more money spent on it than they spent on ours. I remember it as a lot of running up and down corridors. And a lot of acting with people who weren't there because of blue screen. I was saving the world though. But it's certainly got very good writers now. A lot of the writers, like A League Of Gentlemen"s Mark Gatiss, are Doctor Who fans and have been for many, many years. So it should be good."

Interested in which story producer Russell T Davies really enjoys? From an article in January 1's The Guardian about Davies' favorite TV programs: "Doctor Who: The Ark In Space. Nothing creates terror and claustrophobia like the good old-fashioned walls of a BBC studio. You can almost hear the cameras hum. The regular cast make bubble-wrap truly terrifying, but in the unfamous, unsung guest cast, there are heroes. An actor called Wendy Williams creates a character who is frigid, humourless, ruthless, and eventually, through contact with the Doctor, completely human. I must have watched this a hundred times. It's not enough."

(Thanks to Paul Engelberg, Peter Weaver, Mark Askren, Mike Maddox, "Odoru Tardis" and others for these reports)