Matt Smith quits Doctor Who

The Christmas special will be his last episode.

Just heard this. Damn. I was hoping for at least anoher year! But, I guess three seasons over four years is about the average.

Oh well. No more annoying rubbery face. Who's next?

Another poor lamb to the slaughter. Another promising actor who wants to make the role his own, only to find himself spewing inanities, reverting to the Tennant-lite characterisation that now appears to be the default, and running around in scripts so dumb that even five year olds are insulted...

I don't think I ever noticed Smith doing any of that. Or any dumb scripts, either. But I guess I should have anticipated how this thread would go, really. Online Doctor Who fandom is a depressing place to be,sometimes.

Trye dat, true dat.

I shall really miss Matt. Easily the best of the NuWho's for me, and in my top three all time. He's right to go now though, I think. TB's final years are a dreadful warning to those who stay to long.

So Who's next? I was watching The Suspicions of Mr Whicher last night and found myself thinking that Paddy Considine would make a good Doctor. That is, if they still persist in NOT casting Patterson Joseph.

I hope they go for a slightly older actor next, but I doubt it'll be anyone over 40. There seems to be a belief nowadays that a leading man in this kind of show has to be able to attract the girlies.

Really? Moffatt has come under very heavy fire for saying the only way the show works for him is older male doctor and younger female companion.

Add to that the fact they've always said they were looking for someone older but felt Matt Smith was simply too good to pass over (they were right) and it seems to me were are quite likely to get an 'older' doctor next time up.

If Moffat is allowed to choose, perhaps. But I'm still not convinced Smith's casting was wholly his decision. Contrary to what they stated at the time, it's pretty much an open secret that he wasn't first choice.

I'd like Patterson Joseph or Jason Isaacs.

Well, it's rumoured they wanted Patterson Joseph last time...

Did he turn them down or something?

Lucy McGough wrote:Did he turn them down or something?

No, I think the BBC high-ups wanted a younger Doctor.

At least, I hope that was the reason...

Lucky they didn't have that attitude in 1963, or the show would never have got started!

Lucy McGough wrote:Lucky they didn't have that attitude in 1963, or the show would never have got started!

Ah, 1963. A different world. And probably a better one in many ways.

Perhaps...

Curious that Smith seemed to be indicating awhile back that he would be in series eight. I wonder if this is a recent decision on his part?

Perhaps he said he'd be in series 8 as misdirection, so we wouldn't know too early about the regeneration.

It's possible. But then, why announce it now?

Oh, I don't know. Maybe Matt Smith changed his mind because he was offered an exciting new project in 2014, or maybe Patterson Joseph suddenly announced that he was available after all so the producers dropped him

We shall probably never know the truth. We're still speculating about Eccleston, after all.

That's 'cos he's a gloomy, secretive Northerner who will take his secrets to the grave. But Matt Smith looks like the sort who'd spill all if you bought him an alcopop.

Lucy-I hereby charge you to go and seduce Matt Smith with a case of Aftershocks. We need details. I could probably run to some sherbert lemons if you really need them.

While we're waiting for Lucy to go do that, I'll just say that this news has hit my household pretty hard, and the only thing that will make me feel better is a cranky old guy taking the part.

Sam_Vimes wrote:the only thing that will make me feel better is a cranky old guy taking the part.

Well...obviously I'd be delighted to, but do you think the BBC would have me?

According to the Graun this morning, feeling in the industry is that it will

1) be someone closer to Smith's age than Hartnell's.
2) not be female
3) may well be black or Asian.

All this is hedged by a lot of 'of course it's who, anything might happen'.

I wonder, in passing, if Smith is jumping or has been pushed. It was fairly widely reported a few weeks ago that the BBC Top Brass were getting very nervous about dropping viewing figures and had demanded 'substantial character changes'. This was after Moff and smith had stated they were good for another year.

So if your a real pessimist it's stunt casting ahoy and cancellation within two years.

I don't think that's likely to be the case, to be honest. The papers have predictably been full of scare stories about falling viewing figures but in fact, while the overnights have fallen off quite considerably, that's true of most TV that isn't based around live events, thanks to the rise of catch-up services: it's the consolidated final figures, not the overnights, that the BBC will care about, and while Doctor Who of late has frequently topped out at around the six or seven million mark rather than the more desirable eight or nine, anything over five million is still regarded as pretty healthy for a drama these days. Doctor Who is also performing better in the foreign markets now than it has ever been, it's routinely the most requested show on iplayer and the AI is still regularly in the 80s, which is classified as 'excellent'. Doctor Who is still always in the top ten most watched programmes on the night, and more usually in the top five. It rarely drops out of the top twenty for the week. It's still in pretty good shape.

I agree, but the Gruan tends to be very Who friendly (the media luvvies paper of choice and all that).
I also think whilst it's easy for us to say a drop of 25% in overnights isn't serious the BBC is under enormous pressure at te moment - some deserved, some not - and fingers may well be twitchy.

I do think that most if not all broadcasters are still getting used to new ways of calculating audiences as well.

A valid point, but I still think that at this stage, it's far too early to even speculate about the show being in any real danger of cancellation. I tend to react strongly to that idea out of pure frustration, as I've always been quite involved with Who fandom and there are some elements of it (mostly people who were around for the 1985 cancellation crisis and have never gotten over it) who've basically been predicting impending cancellation for one reason or another ever since the show returned; some forums seem full of longtime fans who spend so much time convincing themselves that the show is constantly in danger of being taken off that they basically have no time or inclination to enjoy it when it's on!

Doesn't the BBC understand that not all shows can be the top show? Why cancel something just because it isn't perfect?

I think the BBC does know that. It's just fandom that doesn't.

It's not 1985 that haunts me, but the BBC's recent record with genre drama - Being Human cancelled for no particular reason, The Fades not re-commisioned on a seeming whim and In the Flesh strangled at birth. Add to that the inexplicable decision to make not one but two series of the abyssmal Survivors re-make and I find it better to to expect the worst as the good news is then a happy suprise.

For example - they didn't make more then one series of Bonekickers.

I'm still waiing for series three of The Tripods...

Not such a fan of that one myself BUT I do wish someone would out The Changes back in print, both as books and dvds.

BluesShark wrote:Not such a fan of that one myself BUT I do wish someone would out The Changes back in print, both as books and dvds.

Now that is a series I haven't even thought about in years! It was a great series, though. The seventies were a fantastic decade for TV sci-fi in Britain, with the childrens programming back then often far outstripping in in terms of quality half of the supposedly adult genre drama we've had in the last decade or so.

Tony, I think all we 're doing here is showing our ages.

BluesShark wrote:Tony, I think all we 're doing here is showing our ages.

Unfortunately, that's prbably true...

(but things really were better in my day)

This is your day.

My day isn't till next year.

Sunday Telegraph's gossip column says it'll be Rory Kinnear.

A friend of Rory Kinnear says it is definitely not Rory Kinnear and Rory Kinnear is in fact getting a bit pissed off with the rumours.

My mistake

A friend who has just finished a degree and thus has far too much time on his hands says the name that keeps on cropping up is Chiwetel Ejiofor, who starred in The Shadow Line with Ecclescake back in 2009.

His name kept cropping up when Tennant left too, but I think it was just internet speculation.

I wasn't aware of that - don't know if Ed was.

I have to say my wife tells me there's been some fairly extreme reactions to the idea of black doctor, and I can't really see any reason for that save the obvious one.  For that reason alone I hope we do now get a black or Asian actor cast in the role.

Either that or Paddy Considine, anyway.

Of course, the wife pointed out in the pub last night that Richard Madden is at a bit of a loose end now and has that right mixture of 'slightly known face' and young.  No problem with on screen chemistry with JLC either...

I really don't want another young Doctor. I think the next one should be at least 40.

What we want and what we get are two totally different things though, Tony.

I don't particularly want a young Doctor but I suspect the BBC do.

But it's ridiculous! Why, after several Doctors of a certain age, should we now  only have young ones who can play the romantic lead, a part the Doctor was never designed for?

You know that, I know that, Moffat knows that.  To a certain extent you can blame RTD who introduced large chunks of melodrama into the show and as is traditional for large organizations the BBC is still thinking that if only they could get back to that they could put the ratings back to where they were. I'll lay odds we'll see more of the kids and their father in the next series, for example.

BBC committees very rarely understand their own programmes - see my earlier examples of Being Human, The Fades and In the Flesh.  Remember when Grade though Space Cops was a 'proper' TV show and Who wasn't?

I may be pessimistic, but I really do believe that the BBC will find a way to kill Who.  Not through malice this time, but through ignorance.