"It's back." "I can't quite believe it's actually back." "I think he's an alien from another world." "Ready for this'?" "Here we go." "History." "I came back to the BBC as Head of Drama BBC Wales." "It was my first meeting with Jane, the drama commissioner, and she just came out with it and said," ""How would you feel about bringing back Doctor Who?"" "I read in the newspaper that Russell was going to write Doctor Who and it was really intriguing to me." "We did have loads of people that we were thinking about, but Chris was always in our heads." "I would never approach Chris Eccleston in a million years." "I wouldn't have thought he would have been interested." "I liked the idea of a writer as intelligent and rigorous as Russell writing for children." "Because, I think, you know, if you can get them young with good stuff, as they grow older, they're going to demand good stuff of the television." "We just wanted someone who would be a brilliant actor and would surprise the audience, and not be a predictable choice." "And then I got an email from him." "He'd been out for a jog and he said, "I've been thinking about Doctor Who" ""and, if you don't mind, can I put myself on the list?"" "I'm the Doctor, by the way." "What's your name'?" "Rose." " Nice to meet you, Rose." "Run for your life." "The Doctor is a legend woven throughout history." "When disaster comes, he's there." "Fantastic." "You tell me, where do you want to go'?" "Backwards or forwards in time'?" "Filming for the new series began in July 2004." "And Doctor Who Confidential was there from the start." "The new series, really, we want it to be everything the old series was with a great big wodge of 2005 shoved into this it as well 'cause I genuinely love the old series." "Tonight is our first proper night-shoot in London." "And it's very early on in the run, we 're only five days in." "We've done five days in Cardiff, now we're in London, and we're doing the big London stuff, which includes the London Eye." "Whenever we come here we want to maximize it, so you get all the big locations, all the big touristy-type settings in the background." "It's got a sense of humor like it always had." "Hopefully it's less studio-bound." "I think that'll be the greatest visible change in it." "Is that it was terribly, terribly confined in, sort of, three-walled sets." "We're doing a lot of it on location." "At least, so far, I think about 70% of it is on location." "So, that makes the whole picture look bigger, more ambitious, more epic and more modern, frankly." "As night falls over London, the day has only just begun for Chris and Billie." "Tonight is also our first big Chris-and-Billie scene, with the Doctor and Rose together, and that's exciting." "They've done lots of scenes so far running about fighting monsters and things, but tonight is the heart of it, really, which is the two of them doing dialogue." "The scene at the Embankment is one of the scenes where I think the Doctor starts to realize that Rose is no mere ordinary mortal, you know." "He's very much familiar with, kind of, ape-like humans that fundamentally just scream and panic and don't understand and have no ability to, sort of, just take on board the fact that he's an alien," "that this is a spaceship, that it's bigger on the inside than the outside." "If you are an alien, how come you sound like you're from the North'?" "Lots of planets have a North." "What's a police public call box'?" "It's a telephone box from the 1950s." "It's a disguise." "It's pride, but I think he knows it's a bad disguise." "Exactly, that's why it's kind of like..." " it's a disguise, yeah." "That's what we're saying, I'm trying to justify it." "Yeah." "So, if you can, like, wind me up about it, I'll fight my corner." "What's a police public call box'?" "It's a telephone box from the..." " it's a disguise." " Okay." "What he finds, I think, with Rose is that one, she's interested." "Two, she's kind of bright, she's sparky, she's not fazed by what's being thrown at her, and she's had a lot thrown at her by now." "And, kind of, in that situation where he himself is so snowballed with the fact that he's lost the signal and he's trying to search for something and it's all going terribly wrong and she tunes in to what it is he's looking for and focuses and finds something for him." "A huge metal circular structure." "Like a dish, like a wheel, radial." "Close to where we're standing." "Must be completely invisible." "What'?" "What is it'?" "What'?" "Oh!" "Fantastic." "Russell said, "I'd really like them" ""to hold hands on the bridge and grab each other. "" "And at that moment, there is a kind of bonding." "They're in it together." "He's not said to her, Come with me, or he's not trying to look after her or anything." "She's just part of the team." "It kind of happens in that one moment." "Be ready with the camera." "You could time the action so a couple of buses went past." " There's not a bus in sight." "Look." " Yes." "We wanted the Millennium Wheel, the Houses of Parliament, we wanted the bridge, we wanted the river and we wanted London buses as well but, for some reason, we didn't have a bus." "It became one of those nightmarish scenarios of trying to film something and being dependent on a bus coming and then trying to time the run of the actors and cue them to run at exactly the right time so that the buses came alongside them" "just at the critical moment." "Which I'd like to be able to say happened very quickly but, of course, it didn't." "How's that'?" "Got it." "Good, yeah." " It's all right." " Well done." "I'm sick of red London buses getting in the back of my shot." "The thing is, with someone like Chris as an actor, playing the Doctor, he's such a fine actor, he's gonna bring completely new qualities to him." "A new alienness, a new energy, the way he walks, the way he dresses, everything." "There's a brand-new Chris Eccleston Doctor and there's a whole generation of kids for whom that's gonna be their definitive Doctor." "He's got the grinning madness of Tom." "But he's got the sort of vulnerability of Peter Davison." "It's like when you're a kid." "The first time they tell you that the world's turning and you just can't quite believe it 'cause everything looks like it's standing still." "I can feel it." "And a little bit of that excitedness that Paul McGann brought to it." "The turn of the Earth." "The ground beneath our feet is spinning at 1,000 miles an hour." "And the entire planet is hurtling around the sun at 67,000 miles an hour." "And I can feel it." "We're falling through space, you and me." "Clinging to the skin of this tiny little world and if we let go..." "That's who I am." "My hope is that the eight-year-olds that watch it, I'll be their first Doctor." "I hope they haven't seen any DVDs of anybody." " Hiya." " Hi." " Good to meet you." " I'm Jordan." " You're the Doctor." " Yeah, I am." "For today, I am." "Now officially the ninth Doctor," "Chris continues the long tradition of Doctor Who' which continued to thrive even when the series went off air." "One of my favorite things about the Doctor Who world is that when it went off air, the thousands of Doctor Who fans didn't let it die there." "The Doctor Who industry, I guess you could call it, has just been going on and on and from strength to strength ever since." "In about 1991, a new range of books was started." "The magazine's been mooing now for 25 years." "There's always a comic strip in there." "The Doctor Who audio adventure started in 1999." " Off you go." " "Peri, what's happening'?" "Where's Erimen?"" "She was just in there, but she disappeared in front of my eyes." "She just melted away." "We had been doing other sci-fi audio stuff, CD dramas and then out of the blue, we got asked to go in for a meeting and they said, "Hey, guys, we've heard what you do." "We quite like it." ""How would you like to have the license to perhaps do Doctor Who on CD?"" "And so our first one came out in '99 and we've been bashing away at it ever since." "There's a budget of millions, an award-winning cast and crew, some of the UK's best scriptwriters, 13 episodes to make, five directors to shoot them and only 10 months to film." "And action." "But at the end of the day, it all comes down to one Doctor and a battered leather jacket." "Russell had scripted a leather jacket." "Really battered, so..." "Battered leather jacket, so you get the traveler thing." "I didn't want the costume to ever become an object where you used to think, "What's he wearing today?"" "It had to be a silhouette that you were very used to and when he's against all the other aliens from the back or from the side, you always know it's him." "His clothes shouldn't really dominate his role, they should help." "Chris' costume is very stripped down, which very much suits his Doctor." "He wants the acting to come forward and be at the center of it." "And, actually, if you look back that's sort of quite a 2005 attribute." "Something very minimalist about that." "And with a new Doctor, comes a new companion." "You got me." "Very funny." "Right, I've got the joke." "Run!" "With a lot of the things he does, he's kind of got eyes in the back of his head and he's weighing her up right from the start, really." "He's 900 years old, she's 19, yet they think alike." "She's so astute and so, kind of, inquisitive that she spots things." "Action." " You ripped his arm off." " Yup." "Plastic." " Very clever, nice trick." " Who are they then, students?" " Why would they be students?" "'Cause to get that many people dressed up and being silly, they got to be students." " That makes sense." "Well done." " Thanks." "And that's what he loves about her and that's what she loves about him." "They are just partners in crime, through and through." "But she's not scared to challenge him equally, you know." "And I think that's something that he finds quite brilliant about her." "They want to overthrow the human race and destroy you." " Do you believe me'?" " No." "But you're still listening." "So the Doctor's back, with a new assistant, a universe full of foes and a '50s police box to take him there." "Get ready for the new series of Doctor Who."