Peter Davison interview

Courtesy of CJ Allan
Yesterday, Blogtor got the chance to sit down with his favourite Doctor Who, Peter Davison, at the Official Doctor Who Celebration at the ExCel in London and chatted to him about his recent special, The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot. Check out what he had to say below.

"It's been in my head and going around every moment of my time for the past year and a bit, ever since I foolishly answered this question by saying I'd make my own 50th Anniversary Special. [Laughs] Because now at conventions everybody records everything, so then I discovered people saying, 'He's gonna make his own if he's not in it!' So here it is! [Laughs]"

How do you feel with the finished product?
"I was very happy with it. We had, which is apparently perfectly normal, huge editing battles with the powers that be who wanted to cut bits I didn't want to cut. I tried to make the point that people, unlike a normal TV audience, who wanted to see this would go looking for it. So they're not going to be sitting there going 'Oh I don't want to see that, it's a bit boring. Let's switch off!'

Of course, it turned out we came to a compromise so I think it's pretty good. We didn't actually cut anything, we shaved bits off here and there, a couple of bits. I said I wouldn't mind doing a Director's Cut [Laughs]. But I said Director's Cut should not be the best thing, the best thing should be the first thing you put out, the Director's Cut should really be a whole lot of other bits put back in that maybe you think you rather like."

So was there much cut?
"I suppose there was a bit but there was nothing dramatic. In the end we didn't cut anything dramatic. I think it started out around 38 [minutes] and we got it down to around 32."

Did you actually contact Tom Baker regarding a part in it?
"I wrote to him three times, I sent him each script by every means but he didn't answer. Basically he didn't let us down in terms of letting us down [laughs]."

I think you got a better gag out of it.
"[Laughs] When we thought of that gag, there's this guy Rhys Thomas, who was helping me, and he said, 'I think that's a better gag than having him in it!'

I wasn't particularly upset. It would have been nice. I'd just written a little scene, in a way a similar scene, where he says, [adopts Tom Baker impression] 'Ahhh, I can't really be arsed.' [Laughs] But he wouldn't even give us time to do that. It's fine, that's up to him.

And we got Jon Culshaw [British comedic impressionist] in to do him [Tom]. Of course, Jon - a big fan. Everyone, literally, we asked came along and did it for nothing. I'll never ever get the chance to do that again - people coming along saying, 'Yeah, I'll do it for no money!' [Laughs]

My kids, who are in it, are quite dismissive. I keep asking, 'Have you sat down and watched it yet?'  And they go [cue teenage grumbling] 'Uhh, I wanna watch another Matt Smith episode!' [Laughs]"

But David Tennant's in it, surely they want to watch David? [Laughs]
"[Laughs] Of course, well I've got one child who's a big Matt Smith fan and one who's a David Tennant fan. They're into the dramatic things, they're not into whimsy and parody [Laughs]. They loved doing it and, of course, they want to be actors. Which is a complete disaster as far as my old age is concerned because there won't be anyone with a penny to look after me. [Laughs]

Future Doctors in the making?
"Maybe so, yeah! I look on it as a North Korean dynasty, where I hand it on. [Laughs]

Peter was asked, by a fellow journalist, what Steven Moffat had to say about the project.
"First of all I asked him if he would be prepared to take part in this video. At that time I was going to do it on my own video camera (I've done a couple of other short videos I filmed myself) and he said, 'Yeah, that's absolutely fine, I'd love to.' And then, when I actually sent him the actual script, that's when the BBC said, 'We'd like to give you a small camera crew.'

There was a point when we were filming the end scene where he's editing and he cuts the Dalek scene and he suddenly stopped and went, 'Hang on! I'm the evil one in this thing! [Laughs] And I asked, 'Have you only just realised that???  [Laughs]"

The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot is available to watch on the BBC iPlayer HERE

Thanks to BBC Worldwide and Peter "The Guv'nor" Davison

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