Doctor Who Live: The Next Doctor

repetitive flashing images. After 50 years and 798 episodes,

Doctor Who is the longest-running science fiction series in the world.

Born on the planet Galifray... old are you then, 45? 903 years old.

The Doctor travels in time and space in his tardis. The man with the

sonic screwdriver and two hearts has been assisted by over 40 companions.

And in his fight for good over evil, he saved the universe from deadly

enemies, none more so than... Dalek. You will be punished.

Exterminate. Destroy them. Exterminate. Regeneration is the

secret of his eternal youth. Since 1963, there have been 11 Doctors.

Call me the Doctor. Doctor. Doctor. Doctor. And tonight, we reveal the

Apology for the loss of subtitles for 47 seconds

Citizens of the universe, please APPLAUSE

Woo-what! Good evening and welcome to a very, very special show.

Tonight, live, the BBC around the world, we are going to exclusively

reveal the identity of the brand-new Doctor. To share the excitement,

I'll be joined by a host of celebrity fans, plus some familiar

faces from the TV series. Now, Doctor Who has the best fans in the

galaxy, I think you will agree, yes. CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

We have plenty of them in the audience. Feast your eyes on these,

ladies and gentlemen! They'll feel at home surrounded by

the space time vortex here and the It's huge.

And since we are live, you can send us your thoughts throughout the show

on Facebook, Twitter and join the conversation on the BBC Doctor Who

website. So, it was Saturday 1st June that the dramatic news first

broke. Now, the actor, Matt Smith, is to

leave Doctor Who after four years in the role. The 11th Doctor will bow

out at this year's Christmas special. The story made the news

head Lymes and speculation has been rife about the identity of his

successor. We'll have an exclusive interview with Matt later on. So,

who is the next Doctor? Well, not long until we find out who has

bagged the little blue box. The tension is unbelievable. Right now,

we have three people who're well acquainted with the Searle series.

Welcome Liza Tarbuck, Daniel Roche and the fifth Doctor himself, Peter

Davison. Hello, chaps. Hello.This is all very, very exciting, isn't

it? Extraordinary.Can I just ask you this first question, at this

moment in time, none of you know who the next Doctor is? Absolutely not.

Peter? Honestly.Peter, you played the fifth incarnation of the Doctor

in a programme that's become a worldwide phenomenon. People say

it's the best job in television. Is that true? In a way it's the longest

job in television because you could say it's wonderful because it's a

whirlwind time while you are doing it but continues. I'm still here

today, the fifth Doctor. It's fantastic. There's quite a few

people dressed up like you, have you noticed? There are a lot of people

dressed as all sorts of people! Very worrying. There's a Dalek. She needs

help later on. Another lovely connection with you and Doctor Who,

isn't there? A family one? Yes, I'm the patriarch of a dynasty. I've

started a dynasty as my daughter's married to David Tennant. She played

his daughter then married him? I was giving the father of the bride

speech it became very confusing! Brilliant. Liza, you are a huge fan.

Why do you think it's so successful? I think it's a sort of marker for

television generally. I think it allowed us to sit and watch

television with our family or in fact sneak a look at it when you

weren't meant to and consequently scare the living daylights out of

yourselves. I'm still scared of the yeti. There was something for

everyone. Everyone's got a window to a particular Doctor that does a

particular thing for you. It was great telly. Yes.It's good to be

scared as well. Daniel, very excited about you being on the show tonight.

Hello! When did you first start watching? What is your first memory

of Doctor Who? Well, the classics were recommended to me by my mum

because she watched them with her brother when she was younger. I

tuned into the first episode on a Saturday night not knowing what it

was and I loved it so much. It was just so different to everything

else. I just started watching it from then on and I've watched every

episode since. Who was that Doctor? Christopher Eccleston. Do you ever

fancy yourself as a companion? they ever decide to bring a child

in, yes. Call Steven Moffat immediately! Who is your Doctor and

who is your favourite, if it's possible to choose a favourite? Your

favourite, Liza, and why? John Pertwee. With deference to the fifth

one. Absolutely right.But I'd have to have a hefty side order of Chris

Ecc because without somebody that good to reproduce Russell's work

then, we can't have what we have got now. Russell TV Davies, genius?Yes.

Daniel, your favourite Doctor and why? David Tennant, he was the one

lasting - because I've only been around not that long since the start

of it so - yes, he's been around during the majority of the time I've

been watching it so he's the one I have the most memories of. Plus, he

had this unique thing to him. Some are dark and cookie and he had this

fantastic mix of the two which I loved. Perfect. Peter? Your

favourite? I suppose that would have to be Patrick Trouton. He had the

most difficult job. He was the first regeneration and nobody had any idea

about another actor playing the Doctor at that time. I watched the

first episode with apprehension and I was won over. In a a way, he was

my favourite. I have to say, you are my favourite, but I say that to all

the Time Lords! Big round of applause to our guests!

APPLAUSE Now, earlier on this week, we caught

up with the current Doctor, Matt Smith, as he talked about his time

in the tardis. By the look of it, his time in the barbers too. I've

loved it. I really have. I'll miss it. But when you got that go, you

gotta go. There was a backlash when I was

cast. I was 26 and I was unknown and people went, that is not Doctor Who.

Blimey. I'm a gull. I always knew I wanted it to be quite physical and I

wanted the comedy to be quite physical and I knew I wanted him to

feel very clever, but at the same time to not understand the human

race. Has anyone told you you are a bit weird? They never a really stop.

In the first edition I wore a tweed blazer and put a bow tie on and the

cast went "oh, no... " and then they were like "maybe". Bow ties are

cool. It dawns on you that you are actually going to have to do it

slowly. I loved it at first. I loved it. I wore a fez. I wear a fez now.

Fezzes are cool. I miss playing a character that can bounce from A-Z

like that and that is the clever nest the room. Stoatsons are cool.

Just being the Doctor, thieves Doctor, you know -- Stetson. What a

character. There's always a part of you that goes, I never want to go.

There are no parts like this. I think it's a good time for me to

move on and we've got the 50th anniversary. It's the biggest year

in the show's history and I'm playing the part and I pass it on

with a smile to the next guy and I say good luck, buddy. You are going

to have to work hard. I know who they are. If I had to pick someone,

I'd pick him cos I think he's great. Weirdly enough, after the 11th hour,

he came up to me in the street and said, mate, well done, I watched

your episode last night, it was brill yap, I think you are really

good. And I really needed that boost. I never forgot it.

Who the man? I'm excited because I know what's coming and he's going to

Coming out of the regeneration, you networks it wasn't massively

painful, just very exciting and that whammo, going into it probably is a

bit more painful, yeah. It's time.

Goodbye, Doctor. Legs, yes. Bow tie, Doctor's dance, but I would quite

like to get it in the Christmas Special. One last hurrah of the

drunk giraffe. It's been great, man, you know, it's a really cool job. It

'ed be hard to top. APPLAUSE

Yes, he has a hair cut now. Matt Smith there revealing a real mixture

of sadness and being emotional. He's in LA at the moment. I'm sure we all

agree he's brilliant and will be very much missed.

Now, did my massive ears deceive me or did I hear Matt using the word

"he" and him. Could be awkward if the next Doctor turns out to be a

woman. It might happen one day, you never know. Could be. All will be

revealed very, very soon, as the next Doctor has entered the

building, ladies and gentlemen. The next Doctor is in this building!

I'm so scared I'm going to say the wrong thing. We are live and it

seems the whole world is watching. Thank you for the messages, the

Internet is melting at the moment. It's fair to say Doctor Who's come

up with ingenius ideas over the years but nothing beats the fact

that the leading man can change his appearance. It's a process, if you

didn't know, called regeneration, which means when the Doctor dies,

his body rejuvenates and he comes back to life with a new look and

different personality. Brilliant. From William Hartnell to Matt Smith,

the Doctor has been played by lots of different Doctors and the 12th

Doctor has some big shoes to fill. The Doctor is an eccentric Lee row,

a time-travelling meddler who says he never meddles. He's handled

everything at once. He's old, young, could be your grandfather, brother.

I would describe him as the lone Ranger. A force for good, a force

for fairness and generally has a psychic. Susan and I are cut off

from our own planets. Hearts knell was the wise old gent. He was a

soldier and he was a Doctor. Nice to see you so well again. Told

everybody with what was what and how to do it. Regeneration is such a

clever idea. It's a part that 12 different actors will and have

played. This has never been done before and we had no idea if it was

ever going to be accepted. Patrick Truouton did our job. We all loved

him. He was like the teenager really in an older body. He was a bit

eccentric playing his little flute. My Doctor, Peter Davison, was more

man of action. Run.Ath Had previously been the case. Bit glam

actually. Bit handsome. Big scarf. Crazy. Jiem going to whisper this,

but I think Tom Baker will always be THE Doctor. You may be A Doctor, but

I'm THE Doctor. If you say Doctor Who, in a free association game,

it's Tom Baker, everybody has their first Doctor. There is a quirkiness

which I find unsettling. John's Doctor was flamboyant. He was dandy.

A maverick. Stern. The weapons are nasty, enough as it is. Give the

cloak a flourish, darling. Colin had his flock coat with clown-like

colours. You are not serious. always am. I described what

Christopher Eccleston got. When Christopher walked out of the

tardis, I went yes. He was so good, dark and modern. Why don't you just

die... You would make a good Dalek. I've

always had a soft spot for Sylvester McCoy. I thought of him a bill like

Peter Colombo. Scatter brained but working it all out underneath.

the most beautiful of all the Doctors. Drop dead gorgeous. He was

a kind of a loss of a Doctor. going to betray Patrick because

David Tennant was my favourite. very on top of things is David.

very good at opening doors. He's very in command. There's something

about Matt Smith. He had the charm of an hyperactive puppy.

physicality was so extraordinary. He's so e lastic. Amazing. Pf

I've got to be in the show when we are celebrating its 50th year and

it's wonderful to be part of something that so many people are

talking about and love on the so history. What does the future hold?

We are soon to find out. Here to share their love of the show, I'm

delighted to welcome Bernard Nice T-shirt!

It does seem fitting, Bernard, that you are here, because your

character, Wilf, Donna's grandad, caused the regeneration of the last

regeneration of the Doctors. If you are going to be rude, I'm going to

leave. Do you feel guilty about that? No, because my character was

being kind to someone else trapped, so he went in and therefore he was

trap and David made the supreme sacrifice and released me and he

then got clobbered. Bernard came to my dressing room earlier to say

hello and knocked three times on the door and I thought I was going to

die! Isn't it four? It was four, yes. Oh, no! Four, four... I got it

wrong again! Bernard, would you ever fancy playing the Doctor? I had an

interview when John Pertwee was leaving and I saw the producer, he

said hello and I said hello and he said what can you do and I said I'm

a good swummer, fine, yes, I said I was a paratrooper and I could fight

and he said a Doctor never fights, anyway I never saw the job and first

thing I saw Tom Baker do was clobber somebody. Typical. Rufus, you are a

hard core fan. After saying knock three times though, I want to shoot

myself in the head. When did you start watching the show? Ie jiem of

the generation -- I'm of the generation that was old enough to

start watching it early on but only started watching it with David

Eccleston... Christopher Equitable tonne! He's just excited. As we all

are. Honestly, I promise you I've been sitting in the cargoing, don't

get the facts wrong. I'm absolutely dying inside. . What makes Doctor

Who so special Rufus, redeem yourself? Sci-fi allows you to look

at really human problems but with a degree of distance from it. The

Doctor is automobile to talk to us about life, death, meaning, what it

is to be a child, what it is to grow old and be different. We are

automobile to understand the stories in a way that seems fantastic but is

able to define those things that are true of the human experience.

was beautiful. And I think that that's the power of the show. What's

more powerful about Doctor Who than any other sci-fi show is that it's

British. Yes.So we have this... CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Brilliant, brilliant. We have this uniqueness there. The voice of the

Wombles, the adverts and the Railway Children, this year, Bernard

Cribbins celebrates 70 years in showbiz.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE Give it up for Bernard Cribbins and

Rufus Hound. We are now getting closer to the

moment of truth. Here is one man who knows who's who, not least because

he made the decision. It's the executive producer, head writer and

guardian angel, see even Moffat. Every day in the day Matt will do

something so bold and clever that I went see it coming and I'll miss

that brilliance and that invention. I'm a mad man with a box. The Doctor

is an icon. People are hugely invested in who the new Doctor is.

Everybody is speculating. It's fun. It's like electing the next Prime

Minister. It could be a disaster. Harry Sty level s. Oddly enough,

most occasions on Doctor Who, it hasn't happened that way -- Harry

Styles. We all had the same idea and it was a quite different idea so we

got our notional number 12 round to my house and made a home video of

that person being the Doctor and showed it around, showed the people

who need to be in on that decision because it's like appointing the

President or something. Everyone just said well yes, that's the

Doctor. It would be interesting to see an established actor. Someone

with gravitas. The Doctor has to be British. James Bond or Sherlock

Holmes. There comes a right time for the right person to play it. Oddly

enough, this person briefly flicked through my mind last time and I

didn't think they were right and this time, just wow, that moment has

arrived. I would love some sort of twist that we are not expecting.

would be amazing if the next Doctor was a woman with a male assistant.

Time Lords can change gender so it's completely not against the rules as

to whether or not that's what we are dog. That's what you are watching

the show for. I like that Helen Mirren has been saying we should

have a female Doctor. I would like to go on record, I think it's time

that the Queen was played by a man. Young male. Older again. Someone

who's dark and frightening. I would like if the new Doctor was funny.

would like the Doctor to be best friends with Clara. Three words to

describe the new Doctor. Different from Matt.

Well, he is the main man and he's giving nothing away, is he, so if

Steven won't spill the beans, I guess it's down to me. Ladies and

gentlemen, it's the end, but the moment has been prepared for. I know

you are beside yourselves with excitement, the tension is

unbearable and the wait has been excruciating.

Some of the audience are biting into their Sonic Screwdrivers. It's time

to put a new face to the old name. He may be 1,000 years old but he's

about to get a whole new lease of life. Here we go, the big reveal,

the drunk. Moment we've all been waiting for. Joining us now live in

the studio exclusion you havely on the BBC, please welcome the 12th

Doctor, a hero for a whole new generation, it's...

Congratulations. Join us, join us. I think it's safe to say they like ya!

Peter, congratulations. Thank you very much. Your first official

appearance as the 12th Doctor. How rerelieved are you? Social services

so wonderful not to keep the secret any longer but it's been fan it is a

tuck in its own way -- it's so wonderful not to keep this a secret.

For a while, I couldn't tell my daughter who'd be looking on the

Internet sand saying so-and-so should be the Doctor and she was

get. Ing upset that they never mentioned me. I said rise above it,

darling. Fantastic. How did you prepare for the audition? It was

quite hard because even though I'm a life long Doctor Who fan, I haven't

played it since I was nine in a play so, as an adult actor, I've never

worked on it. I downloaded some old scripts from the Internet and

practised those in front of the mirror. Fantastic.But some scenes

had already been written that referred to a Doctor of my ilk.

exciting. I've got clammy palms. Over the last couple of days, fans

in their droves will be sending in questions for you. Kelly from Dundee

said, what were you dog the moment you found out you were going to be

the next Doctor? I was filming in Prague doing the BBC's adaptation of

the Three News we tiers over there and I was -- the Three Muscateers

and I had a missed call from my dear agent when my phone was on silent.

She answered the phone by saying "hello Doctor" and I just laughed.

Nicola from Stevenage wants to know, have you been practising in front of

a Murs report saying, "hello, I'm the Doctor" because you played

Malcolm Tucker, a different Doctor to this one you are going to be

playing? Yes, Malcolm's been banished from the mirror by the new

Doctor Who wouldn't put up with any of Malcolm's language or attitudes

to the word. I don't say I'm the Doctor, I'm surprised to see Doctor

Who looking back now. That's what's really strange. You look in the

mirror and suddenly strangely he's looking back and he's not me yet.

But he's reaching out and hopefully we'll get it together. It's still

early days. You have been in Doctor Who already. You said yourself you

have been a fan for a long, long time, so much so that you actually

wrote to the Radio Times years ago. Have a look at this letter that

Peter wrote, a young Peter wrote to Maybe that got you the job? I've

hidden that from bhief for about 25 years and it's the full anorak and

geek. You are never going to get a girlfriend with a letter luke that!

It seems here in the 50th year of the show, here you are sitting on

the hot seat. Do you have a message for all the fans? I think it's an

extraordinary show and the thing that strike mess about it is that

it's still here after all this time. The reason is I think because of all

the work of the writers and directors and producers, the work of

all the actors. I don't just mean the fabulous actors who've played

the Doctor, but those who've sweted inside rubber monster costumes --

who've sweated. The big reason that Doctor Who is still with us is

because of every single view viewer, whoever turned on to watch this

show, at any age, at any time in its history and their history and who

took it into hair heart, because Doctor Who belongs to all of us,

everyone made Doctor Who. Beautiful! That's a very special message. We do

have Matt Smith who has a special message for you. I just want to wish

my successor all the best and just say good luck. Good on you for

getting it because I know he's both a huge fan of the show and a really

nice guy. I think the casting of it made me really excited genuinely

and, as a fan, I think it's a really canny choice. I think he'll be a

hit. Good luck, man, it's going to be a thrill. Beautiful.

So that is it, Peter. A huge thank you to all our guests and to Matt

Smith. You can catch him on the Doctor Who Prom on 26th August, Bank

Holiday Monday. Let's hear it for the newest incarnation of the

galaxy's number one hero, the 12th Doctor and the whole of time and