After reports last year indicated that Russell T. Davies’ plan to pretty much what he did the first time on Doctor Who but, well, again, would include another returning favorite in a behind-the-scenes companion series, the BBC has confirmed that when Doctor Who returns in November, it won’t be alone.
The corporation has now officially unveiled Doctor Who Unleashed, a 30-minute support series for the franchise that will air online through the BBC’s streaming platform, iPlayer, as well as digital channel BBC Three in the UK. The series will go behind-the-scenes on the making of the series with host Steffan Powell, starting with a special look at the making of the trio of special episodes to celebrate Who’s 60th anniversary.
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“Over the years, I meet so many people who were inspired to find careers in TV, because of the behind-the-scenes material the BBC would show,” Davies said in a statement released to press. “And now it’s back, in the grand old tradition of Doctor Who Confidential, but in a brand new form, Unleashed! So a whole new generation–and faithful fans of old–can see what the stars and the crew get up to behind the cameras.”
Doctor Who Confidential ran from 2005 through to 2011 as a weekly show taking audiences behind the scenes of the episode that they’d just watched, interviewing cast and crew and highlighting multiple aspects of the production process, from practical and virtual effects, to stunt work, to set, costume, or prop design. Although the spirit of such behind-the-scenes access still lingers in efforts like Disney’s Gallery series, or in short-form online content, such levels of access and insight are largely harder to come by in this day and age, a dwindling era of behind-the-scenes featurettes compared to even this time a decade ago. For Doctor Who fans, Confidential represented an unprecedented level of access to insight on making the show audiences were watching on an immediate, weekly basis—an inspirationally technical examination of how the adventures fans had just watched were really brought to life.
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Doctor Who Unleashed will begin in November, before returning to accompany Ncuti Gatwa’s debut season as the Doctor in 2024.
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