Saturday, 19 March 2011

Sylvester McCoy Returns in Doctor Who ''Downtime'' with CGI Hocus-Pocus

A face only a hobbit would love.
Many of us were sorely confused with something Sylvester McCoy stated in a recent interview with Shadowlocked. Let's look back at that moment. . . . Vworp vworp flashback vworp.
Are you a fan of working with special effects? You're fairly used to it by now, I should imagine.
Yes, I am. Funny enough, I was doing some stuff like that yesterday. Working with a green screen background, I had to recreate the inside of the TARDIS [for a disc release] - and it wasn't there [laughs]. Good fun, and all very silly!
He further discussed playing himself as an animated character, which begs the question: what is Sylvester talking about? Once again, Shadowlocked has all the answers.
In the flesh. Hat too.
Having read last week's interview with Sylvester McCoy, Rob Ritchie was kind enough to send us this pic of the great man recreating his most famous role (at least until the first Hobbit movie comes out) for a new imagining of the 1995 straight-to-video release Downtime...
Original director Christopher Barry could not include The Doctor as a character for the original release due to rights issues, but this seems to be getting remedied now for a revised version of the tale, which featured the late Nicholas Courtney as The Brig, Elisabeth Sladen as Sarah Jane Smith and Deborah Watling as Victoria Waterfield. 
We're assured by Sylvester McCoy that the rather scruffy-looking table in the picture will end up CGI'd into the TARDIS centre console, with suitable background dropped into where the green screen currently is. 
Chris tells us that the new inclusion of The Doctor in Downtime is accompanied by a new villain called Padmasambavah, played by Steven O'Donnell, who many UK viewers may remember as 'Spudgun' from the Rik Mayall/Adrian Edmonson 1990s comedy Bottom.
It's still mildly unclear, however, if this is a retelling of Downtime or simply an insertion of Sylvester McCoy into the plot. Coincidentally, we offered a link to Downtime a little over a year ago. Click here to watch the original drama!

2 Comments:

deadmanstar said...

Sounds interesting. I only recently watched Downtime and enjoyed it quite a bit.

Gavin Bollard said...

Wow, yes it would be interesting since Downtime is still arguably the best of the spinoffs (shakedown is pretty good too).

It would be super-cool if they could bookend the doctor into it so that he meets an older Sarah Jane (in an epilogue or something) after she's already met the eleventh doctor.