Doctor Who’s stars and writers discussed their own fandom of the show, dealing with fans and why the show is getting more diverse at a panel during New York Comic-Con on Friday.
Doctor Who’s new companion Pearl Mackie was in attendance, as was showrunner Steven Moffat, and the current Doctor himself, Peter Capaldi.
Mackie said she had no idea she was even auditioning for the role at first. “My agent did an availability check for something called Mean Town, which was an anagram of Woman Ten, and then my agent called and said, ‘Actually that thing we put you up for is to be the companion in Doctor Who.’ And I thought, well, I’m never going to get that, am I?’”
The show itself was a bit strange to her, she told New Yorkers: “I thought, ‘This is the maddest thing that’s ever happened to me, I don’t know what’s supposed to be going on here.’ Luckily, the character’s supposed to be thinking that, too.”
She also praised the series’ inclusiveness: “There’s a lot of strong women of color in the three series we’ve got,” she said.
Moffat said he was proud of the cast’s makeup. “People, especially children, watching television, should see people like them up there,” he added.
Moffat talked about his childhood, when he would dress as a superhero himself. “I made my own costume,” he confessed. “Which all superheroes do, but they cut past that because it doesn’t look so macho. I wandered around Paisley at age six looking for crime.” He grew worried, however, that he might actually find some. “And then I began to think that criminals confronted by me might just think I was a strangely dressed small boy.”
Capaldi said he and Mackie had been approached by fans, notably a young man who became tongue-tied and confused them for their predecessors. “The guy got very nervous, and he went, ‘Matt! Karen!’ and then he realized his mistake and not knowing what else to say, said: ‘Big shoes. Big shoes.’”
Asked who his acting models were, Capaldi confessed himself “a big fan of Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee” in response to an audience question. “I was always taken with their great ability to bring truth and sincerity to material that sometimes wasn’t always the best.”
The opening act was a preview of the network’s adaption of Douglas Adams’s offbeat detective novel, Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency.
“This is the dumbest thing I’ve ever done, and I’ve done a lot of dumb things!” exclaimed BBC America writer-producer Max Landis, as he pulled gently on the leash of a corgi. (The corgis were present to provide a touch of Adamsian whimsy referring back to the episode just screened.)
The conversation ranged across Adams’s body of work and the show’s tone, which Landis said he hopes humanizes the darkness at the core of the late humorist’s writing.
The BBC America showcase also featured Class, a series set in Coal Hill School. The school has appeared several times in Doctor Who over the course of the freewheeling sci-fi show’s 826 episodes; now it gets a full series of its own.
Greg Austin, who plays Charlie on the show, said there was a certain amount of play as well as work on the set, which his colleagues confirmed. “We were big into Pokémon for a while, weren’t we?” he said fondly.
“If by we you mean you,” said co-star Fady Elsayed. “Greg would sneak off during his breaks and play Pokémon,” he told the audience.
During the Q&A, the audience was curious about the nature and number of cameos – but Patrick Ness poured cold water on those expectations. “I think cameo appearances are like penises: if you put it in a scene it’s all anybody’s going to look at,” he said. “I prefer to hide easter eggs in a different way.”
