It appears to be a case of if you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours.

Catherine Tate and David Tennant are both appearing as guest stars – in each other’s Christmas TV shows.

Tate reprises her role as Donna Noble in Doctor Who, joining Tennant as he takes his last turn in the show for a two-part special.

Returning the favour: David Tennant also stars in the Catherine Tate Christmas special this year, starring as Russell Brand in Nan’s Christmas Carol

Tennant has returned the favour and fans can see him play Russell Brand in her Christmas special – Nan’s Christmas Carol – which goes out on Christmas day.

Tate is no stranger to Doctor Who, having appeared in the 2006 Christmas Special and reprising her role as the Doctor’s companion in the fourth series last year.

June Whitfield also guest stars in this year’s festive editions of the programme and plants a cheeky hand on the Doctor’s bottom during one scene.

She plays pensioner Minnie Hooper who takes a particular shine to the Doctor.

The special episodes, which are the last written by Russell T. Davies, also include former characters Noble’s grandfather Wilf Mott, played by Bernard Cribbins.

One will be broadcast on Christmas Day and the second on New Year’s Day.

Actor David Tennant, who has been the wildly successful tenth Doctor, said filming the last episodes was ‘very emotional’ and that there had been ‘crying on and off screen’.

Also making a return will be the craziest ever Doctor Who villain, who returns for a maniacal showdown with his foe. The Master, played by John Simm, was last seen in the Christmas 2006 episode when he was shot by his human wife and refused to regenerate.

With both the Master and the Doctor determined to cheat death, the battle ranges from the wastelands of London to the mysterious Immortality Gate.

Speaking about the Master returning, Tennant said: ‘There’s a bit of hide-and-seek going on between the Doctor and The Master.

‘Unlike the last time you saw the Master when he was the Prime Minister Harold Saxon, he’s in a slightly more feral state this time.’
too.

The special episodes, which are the last written by Russell T. Davies, also include former characters Noble’s grandfather Wilf Mott, played by Bernard Cribbins.

One will be broadcast on Christmas Day and the second on New Year’s Day.

Actor David Tennant, who has been the wildly successful tenth Doctor, said filming the last episodes was ‘very emotional’ and that there had been ‘crying on and off screen’.

The rest of the article contains a lot more pictures, but I didn’t post any for spoilers.

Doctor Who chief writer Russell T Davies has said he is very proud of the final episodes that mark the end of David Tennant’s reign as the Time Lord.

Davies, who masterminded the sci-fi show’s return in 2005, also said he was no longer sad to be leaving as the show’s producer.

“It’s the end for us, but not the end for Doctor Who,” he told the BBC.

He was speaking before a preview screening of episode one of Tennant’s final story, The End of Time.

“All the sad bits I did when I was writing it, so I got that bit out of my system then. So I could then stand back and laugh while everyone else was blubbing their eyes out,” Davies said.

“I’m very proud of these two episodes,” he said. “Now I simply feel happy to be honest, really happy with what we made

“We’ve got one or two surprises in store before the episode on New Year’s Day – and it might not be quite what you expect.”

Tennant is being replaced by actor Matt Smith, who will appear as the 11th Doctor next year.

Davies said he was keeping in touch with Steven Moffat, who has taken over as Doctor Who’s chief show-runner.

“He does find time to e-mail me every so often saying it’s all a nightmare, and he’s never been happier in his life,” Davies said.

“I’ve read some of the scripts – they are beyond brilliant – I can’t tell you what thrills and darkness and comedy you’ve got to come.”

No limit

The Christmas Day story on BBC One features the return of Bernard Cribbins, Catherine Tate and John Simm as The Master, the Doctor’s evil nemesis.

“He’s even more insane than before,” Simm said. “There was no limit in the script to how insane he should be. It was a lot of fun to do.”

He added: “I don’t think it’s that scary – I don’t think we’re allowed to scare children on Christmas Day. But I’m not an eight-year-old kid!”

The Life on Mars star said it had been a “real honour” to be asked to come back for the 10th Doctor’s final story.

His words were echoed by comedienne Catherine Tate, who returns as Donna Noble.

“I feel so delighted that I was even part of a bit of it, let alone to have been a companion and also in David’s last two episodes – that’s a real honour.”

Tate said her lack of Doctor Who expertise had been a balance to Tennant’s encyclopaedic knowledge on set.

“He knows a lot and I know nothing, and we meet in the middle happily,” she said.

“I turn up on the day and say: ‘I don’t actually understand what’s happening in this scene,’ and he’ll go: ‘well, it’s a meta-crisis and there’s been some sort of transformation,’ and it means nothing to me.

“But at least I’ve learnt my lines.”

Tate added that she was keen to attend a Doctor Who convention for the first time.

“I hear they’re very exciting and so I would love to go to one. I guess it’s exciting… and a little bit scary. Let’s face it, I’m going to be the person in the room that knows the least.”

The End of Time: Part 1 is on BBC One at 1800 GMT with Part 2 on New Year’s Day at 1840 GMT.

Source

As the BBC series bids farewell to the 10th doctor, Tennant talks of his NBC pilot ‘Rex Is Not Your Lawyer’ and his delight ‘to be going out with such a bang.’

For another two weeks, David Tennant is still the space-time-traveling Doctor in ” Doctor Who,” the British sci-fi series that airs here on BBC America. After a year in which the show appeared only sporadically, as a series of “specials,” the end of the Tennant tenancy arrives all in a rush: “The Waters of Mars,” his penultimate adventure, premieres tonight, with the two-part finale, “The End of Time,” beginning Dec. 26. By the end of Part 2, which airs Jan. 2 — and this is not a spoiler — he will have died and regenerated into the form of his replacement, Matt Smith.

And yet in some strange quantum mechanical way, he is also already not the Doctor, having filmed his last scenes some months back. And even as he is and is not the Doctor, he is (possibly) becoming someone else, the eponymous star of an NBC pilot called “Rex Is Not Your Lawyer,” in which he plays an attorney who coaches clients to represent themselves after he begins suffering panic attacks.

We spoke by telephone on a recent rainy day in Los Angeles. (“I can understand it’s a novelty here,” he said, “but I watched the news last night and it sounded like the world was coming to an end.”) Of “Rex,” which also features Jane Curtin and Jeffrey Tambor, he would only say, because “I don’t know how much I’m allowed to say,” that “it’s a great part. It’s a very dramatic role, it’s quite funny — you get to do a bit of everything and that always appeals.”

Doing a bit of everything is the very essence of “Doctor Who,” which revolves between comedy, tragedy, horror, suspense, melodrama, farce and satire from episode to episode and even from moment to moment. Tall, thin and energetic, with a face that fits two definitions of foxy, Tennant has played the Doctor as a swashbuckling clown with issues, a man whose response to his survivor’s guilt — he’s not only a Time Lord, but he’s the last — is to randomly roam space and time, running toward life, and away from it. The Doctor contains multitudes, and multitudes have contained him — Tennant is the 10th actor to have played him since the series began in 1963, following Christopher Eccleston (the first to play the character after the show’s 16-year hiatus) into the role at the end of 2005.

He was working with writer Russell T. Davies and executive producer Julie Gardner on the “Casanova” miniseries just as the two were bringing “Doctor Who” back to life. (All three are leaving the show together.)

“I was thrilled that it was back,” he said, “delighted that it was being done with such love and attention and taken so seriously by all involved. But it’s all slightly mixed up in the fact that [before the new series aired] I got shown some episodes by Russell and Julie in what I thought was just a social night, at the end of which they said, ‘And we’re also looking for someone to do it for year two.’ ”

Rather than jump at the offer, he went through “a couple of weeks of indecision. You’re being asked, in a way, to take on the expectations of your 8-year-old self, and that’s quite an undertaking. I was surprised at how difficult I found it to say yes — you had to wonder if this was a clever idea. This kind of drama was not being made in Britain at the time. We hadn’t made a science-fiction drama for I don’t know how many years, or for that kind of family audience. I knew that with Russell at the helm, it was going to be a quality product, but that doesn’t necessarily translate into something that will be taken into the nation’s heart.”

But it was, phenomenally so. “It’s been such a big hit in Britain,” said Tennant, “and every year we did it, it seemed to get bigger. And although it’s wonderful and thrilling to be part of it, you also feel the pressure of not wanting to be there when it . . . turns a corner. It’s the sort of show that takes a lot of energy and a lot of commitment and a lot of inspiration and a lot of . . . attack. You can clearly give it as much as it requires for only so long before you start repeating yourself, and I was keen to make sure we didn’t get to that point.”

When he read Davies’ final scripts, “I was nervous they would somehow disappoint, but of course they didn’t. I read them in my trailer and had a wee cry. They are so beautifully written. I was just delighted to be going out with such a bang.”

Tennant will likely next be seen on American television when “Great Performances” airs the film of his “Hamlet,” which he performed at Stratford in 2008 with the Royal Shakespeare Company. He has performed with the company over the years, including as Romeo in 2000, but this was his first performance after becoming a pop-cultural action figure.

“On the opening night in Stratford, when outside my dressing room window the BBC News 24 truck pulled up, I realized that if I failed at this it was going to be on a fairly international level,” he said. But the Times called his performance “riveting throughout,” and the Guardian praised his Hamlet’s “quicksilver intelligence, mimetic vigor and wild humor” — qualities that describe his Doctor as well.

As to the how it all happened, “I’ve always sort of bumbled, to be honest; I’ve always just gone from one contract to another; I’ve been mostly fortunate that I’ve been able to join them up. And that’s all I ever really hoped for.”

Source

Sci-fi TV’s longest-living hero never really dies – he’s simply regenerating over the holidays

It’s the beginning of the end for Doctor Who.

Which for science-fiction television’s longest-living character (at the time of his debut in 1963, Star Trek was still three years away) always means a new beginning. When The Doctor dies, which he has already done nine times, he simply “regenerates” into a whole new actor.

For 10th Doctor David Tennant, the end is nigh, with Saturday’s TV-movie, The Waters of Mars, airing on Space at 9 p.m., leading up to his double-length swan song, End of Time, which will follow on Jan. 2 at 8.

In between, on New Year’s Day, Space repeats the recent miniseries “finale” of the somewhat grittier Doctor Who spinoff, Torchwood, starting at 5 p.m., which (spoiler alert!) effectively kills off all but the two most vital members of the monster-mashing team. But in the Who-niverse, as we’ve said, death is never the end. The devastating Torchwood finale did such huge numbers in Britain that it actually brought that show (if not its actors) back from the dead, with a full 13-episode new fourth season and an (almost) all-new cast.

When Tennant’s tenure as The Doctor ends, 28-year-old English episodic actor Matt Smith jumps into the role, and on into a new fifth season (of the current run), which will also air on Space, to debut in the spring.

The relative unknown Smith was cast as the character’s 11th incarnation after a long list of more familiar names were considered and courted – Little Britain‘s David Walliams was an early favourite, and Bill Nighy was reportedly very keen, among candidates that were said to include Russell Crowe, Daniel Radcliffe, Robert Carlyle, James Nesbitt, Catherine Zeta-Jones (!?) and Tennant’s Blackpool co-star, David Morrissey, who teased fans with a twisty guest role in the 2008 episode “The Next Doctor” (itself being rebroadcast on Space Jan. 2 at 4 p.m., followed by a repeat of Planet of the Dead, the first of these last few Who TV-movies).

Meanwhile, Tennant has followed in the footsteps of House doctor Hugh Laurie and most of the British cast of Rome (which included tonight’s Who guest star, Lindsay Duncan) with his own American network series, Rex Is Not Your Lawyer, to debut on NBC this fall.

“It’s so many things, actually,” Tennant mused of his Doctor’s impending demise at the TV critics tour last summer. “It’s exciting, but it’s also very sad. It’s thrilling to be handing over the show in such good health. But we’re also … coming to the end of something very special.

“So it’s a whole mixture of emotions and probably, until they actually transmit (air), I won’t quite know how it feels. I don’t think any of us really will because we’re still sort of clinging on in there until the shows go out.”

The “we” here predominantly refers to writer/producer Russell T. Davies (Queer as Folk), who is leaving the series along with Tennant to focus on Torchwood and other non-genre projects. It was Davies who rescued the Doctor franchise from cheesy kiddie-show oblivion by reinventing him as a complex contemporary character, at once gleefully eccentric and tortured and dark.

Particularly now the latter, Tennant confirms. “I think Planet of the Dead … was probably the last hurrah for the 10th Doctor in terms of his last untroubled … I mean, he was (always) in mortal danger, but he was loving it. Really, from The Waters of Mars and heading into that final story, the Sword of Damocles is dangling, I think, and that informs everything that goes on.

“He’s raging against the dying of the light. He knows that the sands of time are running out. He’s been told: the bell is tolling for him and he doesn’t want to go quietly.”

“It’s just a way of reinventing the wheel,” demurs Davies, “with this character who has been around since 1963 and yet, here we are, still managing to find a new aspect of him.

“It’s such an unusual show,” he allows, “because it’s different every week. Literally, it goes to a different place every week, and there’s a different style every week. You know, you can do a comedy episode. You can do a dark, psychological episode. You can have romps. You can have love stories. You can have adventures. Waters of Mars is a very tense, claustrophobic, trapped-in-a-submarine kind of thing. Going into the finale, it becomes a sort of personal epic …

“I always think there’s a very essential `Doctor-ness’ behind whatever he’s saying and doing. And because it’s always changing, you don’t need to worry too much about making a change.

“It’s always changing. And all we can do, really, is just hang on for the ride.”

Source