Neil Gaiman on re-writing Doctor Who: Clara was originally going to stay as a Victorian governess. Radio Times

“The original companion was going to be very much the Victorian governess we saw at Christmas,” Doctor Who writer Neil Gaiman told Radio Times, while discussing the genesis of his most recent story, Cybermen vehicle Nightmare in Silver.

“Doctor Who has its own peculiar way of being written, so I started writing it about 14 months ago. I wrote about the first ten pages and then they said they’d changed the companion from what I was expecting to something else.

“We decided they can do more weird stuff if it’s now the contemporary third incarnation so I had to reshape it so it wasn’t the governess.”

Read the rest at Radio Times.

Two 'Doctor Who' themed classes at the National Institute of Dramatic Arts in Australia

via the Doctor Who Facebook Page:

Fancy having a go at writing an episode of Doctor Who or learning more about acting on screen? Check out the National Institute of Dramatic Art’s Doctor Who themed courses in January (there’s also a $50 discount if you book before the end of today):

Screen Acting - http://bit.ly/VkahBC
Write a Doctor Who episode - http://bit.ly/YAfdKa

‘Doctor Who’ Fan Steven Spielberg Handpicked Steven Moffat for ‘Tintin’

“Steven wrote one of my favourite TV shows, which is Doctor Who.

“Peter and I felt whoever did Doctor Who would have a good sensibility for Tintin. And it so happens Steven had read Tintin since he was eight.

“Even when he had to leave the Tintin project to get on with making Dr Who, I got two other Brits — Shaun of the Dead’s Edgar Wright and Attack The Block’s Joe Cornish — to finish the job.

“They’re two great British writers.”

via Anglophenia

"The Girl Who Waited" writer Tom MacRae on working with Russell T Davies and Steven Moffat

• Digital Spy:
  Are there any big differences between working under Russell T Davies and Steven Moffat?
• MacRae:
  I think the main difference between them is, Russell is very much about big, bombastic brush-strokes. It's a real thrill going through one of his stories and very emotionally elating. With Steven, those clockwork robots of his represent his brain, really. He's very much about the individual pieces clicking together. But that said, there's a huge crossover between the two, because 'Midnight' was very much a Moffat-y sort of script, and something like 'The Beast Below' was very much like a Russell script. So there's a big, shared common ground between them, and they're both fantastic. They have a slightly different approach, but both love the show and they're brilliant to work with. In that respect, it's not really very different at all.

'Doctor Who' writer Tom MacRae interview: 'The Girl Who Waited is special for Amy'

There’s been some debate about emotion and romance in Doctor Who and how much is too much - what are your thoughts?

“I think if it came to a point where the story of the week was that the Doctor turns up, falls in love and gets married, then yes, Doctor Who has gone too far into that territory. But at the moment, he turns up and there’s monsters, chaos and scares - that’s always there. If there’s a bit of human emotion along the way, of which love is the most powerful, then I don’t think anyone who’s got any sort of grasp on how television works can complain that human stories have got human characters in them.”