Transcribed by Felicia Grady
Chris Chibnall: Okay. Tell us who you are and where you're from when you ask and then we'll answer anything. We'll tell you the whole story of the whole series. Yeah, no. But go. Fire away. Do you want to go around? Is that the best thing? Okay, cool. Nice T-shirt. How are you?
Aurelia Lieb: I'm Aurelia. I'm from MuggleNet, a Harry Potter fansite.
Chris: Oh, amazing! I'm a massive Harry Potter fan. And my kids. Oh my God. Can't begin to tell you.
Aurelia: So my question is actually... J.K. Rowling was supposed to do work with Russell T. Davies and David Tennant. Would you like to do something with her?
Chris: If J.K. Rowling wants to have anything to do with Doctor Who, please give her my phone number straight away. I think she is one of our greatest living writers. I think Harry Potter is an absolute transcendent piece of work, and continues to be with the theater play and with Fantastic Beasts. J.K. Rowling is a genius. If she ever even just wants to come and see what we do on Doctor Who, you tell her from me, the doors are open. Did you expect that answer? Yeah, there you go.
Press: I'm Sharareh Drury. I'm from Culturess. I'm based in Chicago. So my question for you is, the Doctor has had a habit of swinging between cycles of pacifism, I guess, and epic violence in the shows. Where do you feel that this Doctor's philosophy falls on that spectrum?
Chris: Pacifism. Very, very important to us, I think, and for the Thirteenth Doctor. Pacifism is a really important part of Doctor Who. The stories are solved not through throwing punches, not through fights. They're solved through thought and wit and intelligence and teamwork, and those values are really, really important to us in this version of the show. So Jodie's Doctor is an absolute resolute no guns pacifist, yeah.
Press: I'm Maya. I'm from Black Nerd Problems and Vulture. So it seems like there are a lot of companions this season, and typically there's only one, maybe two companions. How does that change the dynamic?
Matt Strevens: Well, funnily enough, it sort of goes right back to the original series in 1963. There were three companions - two teachers and a school girl. And so they were very real and relatable characters. And so what we've done is, our characters are very real-world characters. It was really important to us that they felt like the audience watching [and] that you could relate to them and that they're the reality, and the magical element is the Doctor. This magical alien comes in and teaches them and shows them that they have wonderful gifts and wonderful innate... They can make a difference and the Doctor relies on them. She doesn't just play them lip service and get them to validate her view. She often uses them in our version of the show to help her out with problems. And I think that is what's great about it. It's Doctor Who, actually, [and] although the Doctor is the eponymous character, it's actually about the companions and it's about them viewing... We are the companions; we watch through them looking at this magical character of the Doctor. So with Chris's brilliant creation of Yas, Ryan and Graham, we get three wonderful very different perspectives and very different people going on a different journey and needing different things from their journey with the Doctor. So I think it's allowed a lot of emotional exploration going to show. Don't you think, Chris?
Chris: I think so, yeah, because it's funny. It's like sometimes when you get asked these questions... First and foremost Doctor Who is a drama, and a drama about people. And what it gives you is hopefully everybody... What we want to do is be making a version of Doctor Who that is accessible to everyone, is inclusive, that everybody feels like they've got a character that feels like them that they can relate to or that they can connect with. And then the relationships that grow between those people who don't necessarily all know each other at the start - you'll see later today - that those relationships grow and change and shift, and the relationships with the Doctor change and then you've got different iterations of who's going off there, and who's going off there, and how are they pairing up, or individuals? So it gives you more choices and more surprises and more fun over those ten episodes. So it's really just going, "Well, what would you do in any drama nowadays?" I think it's always much less "What has Doctor Who done before?" because anybody who has made it before us is making the show for the time they were in. We're making it for the time we're in That's why pacifist Doctors are important and that's why I think of teamwork and a gang and this Doctor leading from the front a group of people. That feels really important and central to our version of the show, if that makes sense. Good. Phew!
Press: How exciting is this for you, making the first female Doctor?
Chris: You know, it's really, really exciting and it's a very emotional day. It's a very moving day for all of us. I've been watching Doctor Who since I was three and to be here in New York and to be showing it in front of 5,000 close friends later on... I didn't expect to be doing this. But Jodie talks about this really well when she says it's great that it's a moment, it'll be great when it's not a moment, and [it] will be great when it's just ordinary. So it feels a privilege. It feels very humbling. And I hope you'll see it when you when you see the episode: She's just the Doctor. And that's the most exciting thing for us, in that we've known for a year. Then we saw her do it. And that's really the most exciting part of today is, I hope, all the audiences will feel what we feel, which is that. Even that discussion or that debate becomes just irrelevant. It's just a brilliant performer playing the Doctor. You feel safe the minute she appears. She's the Doctor. There's no adjustment needed. And often when an iconic character changes, whether it's a new James Bond or another new Doctor or a new person playing Spider-Man or Wonder Woman, you always have to go, "Oh, okay. All right. Oh, gosh." With Jodie, it's... And we knew how brilliant she was. But even for us, you never know until you see her on camera on the set doing it, and there was this sort of this... It was it was almost a religious experience. "Oh my God. She's the Doctor." And that's it. Bang. And then it happened with the crew.
Matt: On the first take... They were all these Welsh blokes who are rigging everything, and they've been on it since Russell brought it back in 2005. And as soon as Jodie did her first take, they all went, "Oh, she's the Doctor. Okay."
Press: Hi, I'm Amanda from Bleeding Cool. Why did you choose to do all stand-alone episodes for the first?
Chris: It felt very important to me that... Like always, with a new Doctor, you've got that opportunity for people to come on board. So what we wanted to do was a series of stand-alone episodes that if you come in at Episode 1, you don't need any prior knowledge. If you come in at Episode 9, you don't need any prior knowledge. If you've got prior knowledge, it's going to be more rewarding. But what I think is exciting is any new Doctor's first series [is] hopefully one long recruiting video for the series. We think it's the best idea television ever had, and so what you want to do is express that. You want to communicate that passion and love to new viewers and go, "Come in this year, and guess what? There [are] 55 years of back catalog that you can then... Which is totally awesome [and] totally varied that you can you can then investigate. And also, because there [are] kids who will have been four or five when Peter came in, who are now just hitting the age of maybe eight or nine when it's probably about the right age to join the show [and] have your Doctor. The thought for us... One of the big moving things, I think, is the thought today of all the kids across the world who are going to have Jodie as their first Doctor. That gets us all quite emotional. So really just to make sure that everybody could access it because we love it so much.
Press: Justin from Flickering Myth. I was wondering what was some of the advice you got from previous Doctors and showrunners about tackling the show? And then also, stepping in to do the first lines of dialogue with Jodie. What was that like as well?
Chris: So the advice from... I didn't get much. The stuff they told me was quite logistical, like be careful where you live. So there's a lot of that. But one of the notes was from Steven [Moffat]: "Make sure they keep feeding you during a long day of meetings." It was stuff like that. Stephen, also, I think had a great phrase when you're when you're writing on the show. He said, "It's not a piece of fragile china. You're not carrying a piece of fragile china across a room. Everybody will tell you that you are, but you're not. You've got to make it your own." And he said that to all the writers. And obviously, I wrote it all down. And that's what we've kept saying, is that the show demands that you make it your own. And for some people, that's scary. And as the Doctor says later on today, "You can be scared. But that's okay." And then the first day on the regeneration... Well, you can't really believe it, to be honest. It's just sitting there going, "Jodie is there in Peter's costume. We're at the monitors. We haven't made the rest of the episode. You come in for like 90 seconds. And by the way, then you blow the TARDIS up." So you're like, "Okay, it looks like we're in charge now. I guess we just do this." It was amazing.
Press: I'm Karen Butler with United Press. Was the reaction to Jodie's casting what you expected, and how do you deal with all that expectation from fans?
Chris: You know what, you just have to make the show so you block that out. The reaction to Jodie's casting was way better than we expected. We thought it would be a massive 80/20 against, and it was 80/20 in favor, I think, really.
Press: Why did you think that? Just because it broke tradition?
Chris: Yeah, because people don't like change. And actually, it turns out people actually do like change, which is interesting. I think expectation is a different thing because you really just are making a television program, and that you've just got to focus on making a television show. We got to make a really good television show, and what we benefit from, and I feel very privileged about, is we are standing on the shoulders of all the people who've made Doctor Who before. We're standing on the shoulders of Verity Lambert and Waris Hussein and Robert Holmes and Russell and Steven and Andrew Cartmel and Ben Aaronovitch... All those amazing people. They've done the work that allows us to come in and take this, and so the expectation is more personal. You go, "I want people to feel about Doctor Who how I always felt about it when a new series started." That's what's driven us and everybody on the show. And actually, the expectation as well is from the production team. They're the best production team in the world. They're amazing. They achieve miracles on lower budgets than other shows have, and we never want to let them down so we. So we don't want to et them down, we don't want to let ourselves down, and we don't want to let the audience down.
Matt: Yeah, they're our first audience and if they're loving it, then we think, "Oh, we might be doing something right." Definitely. Thank you!
Chris: Thanks, guys. Thank you so much. Lovely questions.
