The new series of Doctor Who will be split into two for the first time, with its showrunner, Steven Moffat, promising the show’s biggest ever cliffhanger – “an earth-shattering climax”.

Next year’s 13-part series, the sixth since Doctor Who returned in 2005, will run for seven episodes and then return in the autumn for another six.

Moffat said the Easter “mid-season finale” would be a “game-changing cliffhanger”.

He added that next year’s Doctor Who would run as two separate series, allowing him to double the number of “event episodes” in the new run, and meant fans would never be more than a few months away from the next instalment of the hit BBC1 show.

“Looking at the next series I thought what this show needs is a big event in the middle,” Moffat told the Media Guardian Edinburgh International Television Festival.

“I kept referring to a mid-season finale. So we are going to make it two series – seven episodes at Easter building to an earth-shattering climax, a cliffhanger we could never normally do because it would be too long before it came back. An enormous game-changing cliffhanger that will change everything.

“The wrong expression would be to say we are splitting it in two. We are making it two separate series.

“What I love about this idea is that when kids see Doctor Who go off the air, they will be noticeably taller when it comes back. It’s an age for children. With an Easter series, an autumn series and a Christmas special, you are never going to be more than few months from the new series of Doctor Who.

“Tart that I am, we will now have two first nights and two finales, twice as many event episodes as we had before.”

Moffat, who was also responsible for BBC1′s acclaimed updating of Sherlock Holmes, took over stewardship of Doctor Who from Russell T Davies last year. His first series in charge was acclaimed by viewers and critics alike.

Moffat gave festival delegates a first glimpse of this year’s Christmas special, guest-starring Michael Gambon and Katherine Jenkins.

Moffat said he chose Matt Smith as his Doctor on the very first day of casting.

“He has that air about him, he’s like a young man built by old men from memory,” he added.

He first saw Karen Gillan, who plays the doctor’s assistant Amy Pond, on video and was worried that she was “wee and dumpy”. When he met her, he said, he was “expecting a beachball and met this giant flame-haired goddess who is slightly too tall for my comfort. Standing next to her when she has heels on, you feel like the sidecar of a motorbike”.

Moffat dismissed some press criticism, early in this year’s series, that Amy Pond was “too sexy”.

“That’s like being too funny, too nice, too enjoyable,” said Moffat. “I was roaring with laughter at the article in the Daily Mail, which said when did Doctor Who assistants have to be sexy. Since the beginning! There was one in a leather bikini — we’re in the nursery compared to that.”

Moffat said the show’s budget had remained broadly similar despite BBC cuts. But he admitted: “I don’t understand numbers. It’s a decent budget. I beg for money and more rubber green people and eventually they say OK, you can have a third rubber green person.”

He added that he had not considered a female Doctor, which he said would not have been appropriate at this time in the show’s history.

“No we didn’t. I think about it sometimes and maybe it will happen someday. It wouldn’t have been right this time,” he said. “A woman can play the part. You have to remember the single most important thing about regeneration is you must convince the audience and the children that’s it’s not a new man, it’s not a different man, it’s the same one. It’s a bigger ask if you turn him into a woman.”

Discussing his future, Moffat said he would not be leaving the show “for a while yet”.

Gillan, in the same TV festival sessions, said she was committed to the show for the new series.

She added that filming on the show, which lasts 11 days a fortnight for nine months, meant she was unable to work on any other projects. As for her future, she said she was committed to the new series but was taking it one season at a time.

“I have no idea. You just have to take it series by series, you can’t really look beyond that so who knows? I’m having fun right now,” she added.

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Given that the annual “Doctor Who” Christmas special is still several months out, I knew full well that Steven Moffat wouldn’t be willing to offer up much in the way of information about what we could expect to see come December, but since I’d been fortunate enough to sit down with him – along with Mark Gatiss – in connection with their work on “Sherlock” (which comes to PBS in October), I couldn’t very well miss the chance to ask about it, anyway.

I started off with a non-specific question, asking how Michael Gambon had found his way into the “Who”-niverse.

“We sent him a script, asked him to do it, and he said, ‘Yes,’” said Moffat. “Simple as that.”

Had Gambon been a fan of the show?

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “I didn’t get the impression that he was a fan of ‘Doctor Who,’ except insofar as everyone in Britain is at the moment, but it’s really…with these guys, send them a good part and there’s a really stonking chance they’ll do it. I mean, if it’s a good script…and you think it is…they’re being offered prime-time on Christmas day, really, so there’s a real chance you can get anyone for that. But it’s very exciting. He’s brilliant. Of course he’s brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. What a voice.”

The time had come to make the jump and ask something specific, so I wondered aloud if the teaser line at the end of season finale about the Orient Express in space would indeed come to pass come this Christmas.

“Who knows?” replied Moffat, stonefaced.

I told him he was a terrible person…which caused the stone face to break into a laugh.

“You wouldn’t really want to know,” he said. “I can tell. Also, what you have to keep in mind that I genuinely lie. I do. I actively lie to people about what’s going to happen in ‘Doctor Who.’ I’m not officially employed with the BBC. I can say any old thing I like. Even if I told you something, there’s no guarantee that it’s true. Disinformation and the white noise of nonsense is how we get through this!”

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As most of us get ready for the summer holidays, Steven Moffat is coming over all Christmassy. Fresh from a read-through of a Doctor Who festive special, the writer reveals that the Welsh singer Katherine Jenkins is to make her first major acting appearance in it, alongside the theatrical grandee Sir Michael Gambon. It is, says Moffat, “the most Christmassy Christmas special” of the hit science fiction drama series since its return to our screens five years ago.

After his first season as the drama’s showrunner, Moffat will also be hoping that it emulates the success of the 2009 Christmas special, which featured John Simm and Catherine Tate. Episode one of that two-part story had an audience of 10 million, making it the third most popular show of the festive season. In 2007, 12.2 million viewers watched Kylie Minogue guest star as a waitress on the Titanic.

Moffat’s critically acclaimed first run with the new Doctor – played by Matt Smith – attracted 5.1 million viewers for its series finale, down from 9.4 million overnights for the last comparable show in July 2008. This decline has led some to wonder whether the Doctor Who juggernaut is beginning to run out of steam.

Teething troubles

Headlines such as “Sexed-up Doctor no cure for TV ratings as 1.2m desert Timelord” and “New Doctor Matt Smith is turn-off for Tennant fans”, followed reports of unconsolidated figures averaging 6 million viewers for the current series, compared with an average of 7.2 million during the last series in 2008, which starred David Tennant.

Although the sci-fi series is still hugely popular with Whovians, some industry insiders have reported teething troubles for the new team. There are suggestions that the show has suffered from budget cuts – were the Daleks really redesigned for commercial reasons? While some critics have stirred up outrage over what they considered to be scanty outfits worn by the Doctor’s assistant, Amy Pond, others have fretted about the long hours endured by the cast and crew. Call it the typical British disease of knocking down success, but can a show such as this stay at the top of its game for another five years?

Moffat is adamant that it can, adding that his series finale drew 6.7 million viewers and a near 37% audience share when Sky+ and other recordings were factored in. The BBC maintains that the season’s consolidated average was in excess of 7 million. What is more, the latest finale was forced to compete with Wimbledon and the World Cup, making the viewing figures “extraordinary”. “The BBC are massively happy with it,” says Moffat.

However, there has been some public criticism. Terry Pratchett told SFX magazine that he now regards the show as “ludicrous”; and, giving Bafta’s annual television lecture last month, Stephen Fry cited Doctor Who as an example of British TV’s “infantilism”. It was “not for adults”, he said, comparing it to a chicken nugget: “Every now and again we all like it.”

Moffat insists Fry is a huge fan of the show, adding: “The attempt to create an argument between myself and Stephen Fry is laughable.”

When it comes to Pond, played by Karen Gillan, he points out that one report suggested there were only 34 complaints about her first appearance in a stripper outfit. “If people who had never seen Doctor Who read the reports they would have got quite excited, but it’s not an episode you would have taken to a stag party. The assistants have always been quite sexy from the start and Amy just wears what young women nowadays are wearing,” he says.

Following in the footsteps

Moffat admits that he can barely bring himself to think about the “extraordinary” and “vicious” work schedule. He has only had three days off in the past year (and one of those days was Christmas Day).

It was also a hard task, he says, introducing a new Doctor and a companion at the same time, and following in the footsteps of someone “as fantastic as David Tennant”.

The BBC confirms that this series was subject to budgetary restrictions. Yet sources suggest this was in line with an overall 20% funding cut across BBC drama.

“We could do with a budget like Avatar’s for every episode,” says Moffat. But he recognises that the show needs to evolve from the CGI-tastic earlier episodes. Smith’s madcap Doctor in a bow tie is a long way from the leather-jacketed Christopher Eccleston’s Who in 2005.

However, many fans agree that the Doctor has changed for the better. “Christopher looked like a leading man from a gritty BBC drama because that was the context then – his clothes were sensible,” says Moffat.

Nick Griffiths, the author of two books on the series, including the memoir Dalek I Loved You, says he feels that Moffat’s era is “more understated and darker” and lacks the “wow factor” of Russell T Davies’s shows. But he does remain a huge fan.

Adam Macqueen, a Private Eye journalist and a lifelong Whovian, says: “Moffat has been very good at disguising the budget cuts and thinking creatively – it can be a good thing not to be able to use too much CGI, particularly because Davies had got into a bit of a rut of throwing everything at these big, epic, climactic stories that actually felt a bit empty at their heart.” Moffat says Doctor Who is here to stay, comparing the character to homegrown heroes such as Robin Hood, King Arthur and James Bond.

“It may be that it might have to rest one day but I think it will outlive most of the people living in Britain at the moment.”

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The BBC has announced that the first episode of its Doctor Who game has been downloaded over 500,000 times, with the next episode on the way.

Episode one of Doctor Who: The Adventure, which features the voices of Matt Smith and Karen Gillan, has received 524,299 download requests in its first 12 days of availability.

The Doctor Who website hosting the online game has also seen a 67% week-on-week increase in its unique visitor numbers in the UK.

Simon Nelson, head of the BBC’s multiplatform in vision team, said that he is “thrilled” to gain over half a million downloads for the episode in such a short time.

Nelson said that the project has been a “real labor of love” and so he is glad to receive “universal praise” from the Doctor Who fans.

“It’s clear we’ve got people playing these interactive episodes who wouldn’t ordinarily play through a computer game – and the opportunity to actually be the Doctor is hugely appealing,” he said.

“Whilst the 67% increase in UK visitors to the Doctor Who website is a combination of factors – not least the excellent Vincent Van Gogh section which complements episode 10 – the adventure games page was a significant destination.”

On June 22, Doctor Who writer Steven Moffat will unveil the game’s second episode at a BBC Learning evening in Scotland. The new episode will apparently feature “some of the Doctor’s most fearsome enemies”.

Moffat said that the way the game has captured the look and feel of the science fiction television series is “amazing”.

“Matt Smith walks like a drunken giraffe on-screen and also in-game – it’s a virtuoso virtual performance, and one I’m delighted is proving to be so popular. Just worried I won’t get any writing done, what with playing the game all the time,” he said.

“Karen is a staggering companion – literally, have you seen her when the Tardis shakes? – and her personality is perfectly captured in these episodes. There are some genuinely funny lines between the two, so we’ve really brought the TV series into the control of families up and down the country. Half a million download requests in 12 days – amazing.”

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Doctor Who’s latest assistant Karen Gillan has described how she filmed in a pool of vomit and had to pretend to be afraid of tennis balls for the series.

The actress, who plays leggy Amy Pond, spoke of the most unusual demands placed on her during the nine months of filming for the series.

Speaking in Hollywood, the Scottish actress said the strangest moment so far was ”lying in a pool of sick with cabbage in it”.

”That was the most bizarre,” the 22-year-old added.

Another weird demand during filming has been ”acting terrified of tennis balls – I mastered the art”.

Gillan said the balls were on set as they filmed to mark where computer-generated creatures would eventually be seen when the production was finished.

The star was speaking at an invitation-only reception at the Consul General’s official residence, celebrating the influence that Britons have had on the entertainment industries in LA.

Gillan said she had been in the US longer than anticipated because they had been unable to return due to the flight restrictions, but she has been ”making the most of it”.

Working with new Doctor Matt Smith had been a joy because he was so unpredictable as they filmed each scene, she said.

”He’s great to work with, you never know what’s going to happen from one take to the next, so I don’t know what’s coming.”

Show boss Steven Moffatt warned viewers that the series is about to take a dark turn with some of its scariest moments yet.

This weekend’s show has the return of the ”weeping angels”, which had viewers cowering when they last appeared.

”I think its one of the scariest ones we’ve ever done. My little boy says it’s the scariest thing he’s ever seen in Dr Who,” he said at the same Britweek reception.

”The first three have been moderately scary – we’re now going for proper scares in four, five and six actually – so some good spine-chilling stuff on its way.”

And Moffatt, Doctor Who’s executive producer, said it was the frights that many younger viewers loved about the show.

”If you took a vote amongst the playgrounds of Britain, they’d all be saying ‘Make it scary, you’re meant to be behind that sofa!”’

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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.

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New Doctor Matt Smith is simply “the best”, according to Steven Moffat, head writer of the 2010 series of Dr Who.

Smith, who is the 11th actor to play the Time Lord on TV, will take over from David Tennant in the lead role of the long-running show next year.

Dr Who is one of the BBC’s most popular shows and Moffat is under a lot of pressure to continue its success.

“What if I broke Doctor Who? That would be a tragedy,” he said at the 2009 Screenwriters’ Festival in Cheltenham.

“Yes, you do feel [the] pressure,” he added.

Filming began in July on the new series of the time travel saga.

Biggest challenge

Moffat who is writing six of the episodes and overseeing another seven, promised fans “great stories” and said there would “joyous moments” as well as “heartbreak”.

The screenwriter is currently working on the script for the climax to the series for which expectations will be huge.

“[My] biggest challenge right now is the writing of Episode 13,” he confessed.

But he had nothing but praise for Matt Smith – at 27 the youngest actor ever to play the 900-year-old Time Lord.

“He’s all the things you’d expect, including ancient,” he revealed, describing the new Doctor as “someone you can’t take your eyes off”.

It’s not only the Doctor who’ll have regenerated in the new series. The Tardis has also undergone a significant makeover.

“There is a plot reason for it,” Moffat confirmed.

“I always liked the Tardis from the Peter Cushing [Dr Who] movies, and wanted to make it more like that”.

Moffat, whose TV work includes Press Gang and Coupling, has written for Doctor Who since it returned to TV screens four years ago.

He penned the episode Blink, featuring killer stone statues, which fans recently voted the second-best Dr Who episode, in a poll conducted by Dr Who Magazine.

The Waters of Mars, the first of David Tennant’s final three adventures, will be broadcast in November.

His final story, The End of Time, in which he will regenerate into Matt Smith’s Doctor, has yet to be scheduled, but is expected to air at the end of 2009 or very early in 2010.

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Doctor Who fans have been given their first look at the new costume being worn by Matt Smith, the 11th actor to play the role.

The Time Lord’s new look consists of tweed jacket, bow tie, rolled up trousers and black boots.

Filming on the new episodes begins on Monday in Cardiff, with the new series going out in spring 2010.

Smith is taking over from David Tennant, whose last episodes will be shown at the end of the year.

“I feel very privileged and proud to be part of this iconic show,” Smith said after arriving on set for his first day of filming.

‘Come alive’

“The scripts are brilliant – I’m excited about the future and all the brilliant adventures I get to go on as the Doctor.”

The Doctor will also have a new companion – Amy Pond – played by Karen Gillan, who meets the Time Lord in episode one of the new series.

There is also a changed team behind the scenes, led by new lead writer and executive producer Steven Moffat who will be responsible for the overall creative direction of the show, as well as plot and character arcs.

“Matt and Karen are going to be incredible, and Doctor Who is going to come alive on Saturday nights in a whole new way,” Moffat said.

Since its return in 2005, Doctor Who has won a number of accolades, including Baftas and National Television Awards.

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Torchwood’s dramatic Children of Earth miniseries finished last night here in the UK and actor Kai Owen says he is now looking forward to seeing the new Doctor Who in action.

Three more specials remain, with the last one set to show David Tennant’s Time Lord dying and regenerating into 11th Doctor Matt Smith.

So what does Kai think of the next Doctor Matt Smith and new showrunner Steven Moffat? Can the pair match up to Tennant and Davies?

Kai, who plays Rhys Williams in Torchwood, told the Coventry Telegraph: “The BBC will miss Russell T Davies for sure but Doctor Who will still be great with Steven Moffat in charge. Steven is very talented and he has written some great stories for the show before.

“And the new Doctor, Matt Smith, is going to be excellent so there are exciting times ahead.”

He added: “I think anything Russell T Davies does is genius but fans can be assured that Doctor Who has been left in very capable hands.

“As Russell created Torchwood, he will be staying with that, as far as we know.

“Like the fans out there, I cannot wait to see what Steven Moffat and Matt Smith bring to us in the next series of Doctor Who next year.”

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Steven Moffat, Doctor Who‘s new show-runner come 2010, is back again to torment his fellow television sci-fi writers at the 2009 Hugo Awards.

The writer and producer won Hugos for each of the first three seasons that Russell T. Davies’ updated Who ran on BBC1. With the fourth season behind us, Moffat’s been nominated again for Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form, this time for his two-part Who story, “Silence in the Library” and “Forest of the Dead” (episodes that spawned the deadly Vashta Nerada, above).

Moffat is up against Davies in the category — as well as Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof of Lost, Joss and Zack Whedon of Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog and Bradley Thompson and David Weddle of Battlestar Galactica.

The winners will be announced at this August’s Anticipation Convention in Montreal.

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