After months of speculation, this weekend saw the unexpected announcement that Matt Smith is to take over from the David (back injury) Tennant* as the new Doctor Who.
Andrew (who famously doesn’t do telly) cares about such matters. But, despite being sure that Mr Smith will no doubt prove an excellent choice, the Whingers’ own casting department had been barking up all the wrong trees.
The Whingers had been bandying about their own personal choices for months and were excited that this could be the first female incumbent of the Tardis. Fenella Fielding, Margaret Tyzack, Nichola McAuliffe and Una Stubbs were all choices who would have excited the Whingers and perhaps brought a new gravitas to the role. And what about Rory Kinnear or Jasper Britton?
But it was not to be, and as Andrew put on his smuggest of faces (usually kept in the kitchen drawer beneath the melon baller) and said to Phil “Oh don’t you know who the new Doctor Who is?” he revealed the name of the new Doctor.
Now it may have been the effect of alcohol that neither Whinger had any idea who Matt Smith was. Something tinkled vaguely in the back of Phil’s pickled brain but it was a thought he was at that point unable to develop.
It turned out that Matt Smith had already impressed the Whingers, not once, but twice, by being the only really decent thing in Polly Stenham‘s dreadfully overrated That Face and stealing Swimming With Sharks from under Christian Slater‘s elegant proboscis.
So as speculation mounts about the choice of wardrobe for the new Doctor, the Whingers can suggest the nightdress, earrings and pearls he sported so fetchingly in That Face (see below -that’s him on the left, it’s Lindsay Duncan in red) may be a direction enabling him to stamp his own character on the role and appease the Whingers for not being a Tyzack, McAuliffe, Stubbs or a Fielding.
Footnote
* Andrew had tickets to see Hamlet on Friday. David Tennant’s back got better on Saturday.
** Andrew’s now terribly excited about a Doctor Who Package in Cardiff complete with “Free remote control Dalek in the room on arrival” Yet another trip where Andrew will have to travel solo.
Monday 5 January 2009 at 7:22 pm
Didn’t you like him in The History Boys?
Monday 5 January 2009 at 10:47 pm
I’m guessing WEW saw the A cast 😀
Tuesday 6 January 2009 at 10:03 am
I think he looks like Frankenstein’s monster. All thats missing is the bolts either side of the neck.