The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot

The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot (2013)

No Classics? No 50th!

With the 50th anniversary of Doctor Who about to film, the "classic" Doctors Peter Davison, Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy are keen to be involved. But do they manage it?

Date of release
2013-11-23
TMDB
7.8 / 10 (63)
Runtime
31m
Genres
Comedy, TV Movie
Director
Peter Davison

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Based on: Doctor Who

The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot is a 2013 comedy short film released on the BBC Red Button service after the broadcast of "The Day of the Doctor", the 50th anniversary special of the science fiction series Doctor Who. Writer and director Peter Davison stars alongside Sylvester McCoy, Colin Baker and Paul McGann, all of them former lead actors of the series.

Production

The long-running British science fiction series Doctor Who has traditionally celebrated its past anniversaries with special "multi-Doctor" stories, where actors who played past incarnations of the lead character the Doctor reprise their roles. This was the case in The Three Doctors (1972–1973), "The Five Doctors" (1983) and Dimensions in Time (1993).

Peter Davison, who played the Fifth Doctor from 1981 to 1984, decided to produce his own "fan video" as a substitute for not being invited to appear in the special: "The whole thing started off almost by accident. I was asked a question at a convention – 'Will you be in the 50th?' – and I said if I wasn't, I would damn well make my own!" He had previously produced skit videos in 2010 and 2011 for the convention Gallifrey One—the 2011 video humoro…

McCoy, Colin Baker and Paul McGann came on board to play fictionalised versions of themselves. Davison enjoyed playing his "grumpy" alter ego. Of all the Doctor Who cast and crew members asked, only one individual turned down an offer to appear in the film.

On the production's hectic nature, Davison admitted "I've never worked so hard in my life as in that year – because I was writing the thing at night and we'd film something the next day". McCoy's real-life commitments to filming The Hobbit trilogy (2012–2014) inspired Davison to write a scene featuring director Peter Jackson, a massive Doctor Who fan, which was recorded on The Hobbit's New Zealand set.

The Doctor Who production office were worried that the film's numerous references and in-jokes would alienate viewers, and proposed a shorter ten-minute-long edit which would be more accessible to new viewers. Davison rejected the suggestion and threatened to "tell the fans". He believed that the film was aimed more at fans of the classic series rather than the 2005 series. Per a compromise, about six minutes' worth of scenes were cut.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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