Friday Morning Press Notes

As expected, a news organization has disproven the Sun's claims that Billie Piper was about to resurrect her singing career. According to the Mirror, Piper "laughed at the suggestion that she'll be releasing any more music. She told 3am this week: 'I don't want to sing again. I'm happy acting - it's something I have always wanted to do. I didn't want to do both, I felt that one would suffer as a result, I'd be trying to do too much.'" The comments were also picked up in the Western Daily Press and other periodicals.

BBC Wales South East has posted photos from both Tuesday's press launch and from yesterday's "Have your photo taken with the TARDIS" event, including shots of producers Russell T Davies and Julie Gardner and members of the audience. Check it out!

The BBC Cult website for BBC Four's eagerly-awaited forthcoming live re-make of "The Quatermass Experiment" says that "Doctor Who" writer (and "League of Gentlemen" writer/star) Mark Gatiss is playing one of the Professor's associates, Paterson.

The just-published March edition of Televisual, 'The business magazine for the broadcast and production industry', has an extensive report on the new series, speaking to several people working on the show. On creating a show for the 21st Century, Steve Moffat says: "I don't think the fact that we're in the post-Star Wars era is an issue, but matching Buffy is. Doctor Who was never a space drama anyway, it was about horror: dark shadows and creepy monsters lurking just around the corner." Admitting his blueprint for the series was Buffy, RTD says: "In the 60s we could watch programmes like Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) because we were happy with the spectacle, but now we're more adult and we expect that emotional content." Davies and Julie Gardner has a 'tone meeting' out of which came the rule that in every episode the Tardis must come back to Earth. Says Davies: "We need to return to Earth to get an emotional focus on what's going on. If we're on Planet Zog and Zog people are being affected by a monster, we couldn't really give a toss. But if there's a human colony on Planet Zog, then that's more interesting." On Christopher Eccleston, Davies says: "He's not like Tom Baker, but what they have in common is that they can go around being as funny and daft and as gormless as they like, but you still take them seriously because they're fundamentally both scary, impressive men." The new Tardis interior (6.5m tall and 20m wide), it says, is raised off the ground to get away from the studio floor feel that's plagued past outings. Designer Edward Thomas: "Russell and I thought the most powerful Tardis was the first one, so we kept this in mind but then went back to nature, basing designs on organic materials, the main structure being coral, with glass walls and lots of wood." Will Cohen of The Mill is quoted saying it's the largest number of effects shots ever for a UK TV drama, and talks briefly about animating the character of Cassandra. On episode two, Cohen says: "We refer to it as the 'space opera' episode because there are two exterior space-station shots, views from outer space, a lot of green-screen set replacements, animated spiders and loads of particle work with suns expanding." For the Slitheen (creatures reported to be in "Aliens of London," Cohen says it's still difficult and time-consuming to create moving characters in human form so, for the close-up shots they used prosthetics specialist Neill Gorton's prosthetics while for the wider shots they used CG. Miniature effects superviser Mike Tucker says The Mill animated a retro-looking UFO smashing into Big Ben based on designs by conept artist Bryan Hitch, but the moment of impact was best achieved using a miniature. "You could sit there and hand-animate every single particle of dust, but sometimes it's easier to create miniatures and then just smash them up," says Tucker. Brand manager Ian Grutchfield on reaching a new generation of children: "The challenge is to get younger children to watch the show. Adults know Doctor Who exists but kids won't have heard of it and they're not traditionally the most prolific consumers of drama."

In a separate news story, the Televisual magazine reports: 'BBC canned HD deal for Doctor Who'. According to the report, the BBC turned down a Sony sponsorship deal to use HDCam kit for its high-profile return of Doctor Who, it has emerged. Instead, the decision was made to shoot the series on DigiBeta. A BBC spokeswoman explains that negotiations had started "too late in the day. We'd gone a long way down the DigiBeta path, although we had talked about HD." It said that "HD advocates fear the decision could hinder long-term international sales. 'It makes sense for such a big-budget production to future-proof the product,' says VMI managing director Barry Bassett."

The Scottish Daily Record has a humorous article about the new Doctor Who aliens today: "If the sneak preview we had yesterday of the Blue Moxx is anything to go by, the villains in the new version of Dr Who look like they're going to be a bit more menacing than the overgrown pepperpots and extras wearing upturned buckets wrapped in tinfoil that the Time Lord used to battle in the Sixties and Seventies. ... Let's just say the following list of forthcoming evil baddies is just informed speculation." It includes such items as the "Teekay Moxx," like the Moxx of Balhoon, only wearing last year's fashions; "The Dohleks," similar to the Daleks, but not as intelligent... they have a fatal weakness for doughnuts and duff beer; the "Cydermen," crazed monsters from the English West Country; and the "Eltonjonians," manic, vertically-challenge beings that regard all authority figures as vile pigs and go around chanting "Exfoliate, exfoliate"!

(Thanks to Joe Cannon, Paul Hayes, David Brunt, Russ Meresman, and as always, Paul Engelberg and Steve Tribe for today's listings)