4. Bringing All The Doctors Together In Audio, But Without The Original Actors
Though Peter Davisons fantastic The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot poked fun at their supposed desperation to appear in the anniversary special, I doubt any of the latter three Classic Doctors would have turned down the chance to make a contribution. Once again, I appreciate how difficult it would be for any writer to compose a scene with that many characters involved. Whats more, their significantly advanced age would be an elephant in the room not easily banished, so having them all heavily involved in the action would have been practically impossible. But when all the Doctors come together at the end, why did the audio clips - strategically chosen to (vaguely) depict all the Doctors working towards rescuing Gallifrey - need to come from the archive? Davison, Colin Baker, Sylvester McCoy and Paul McGann spend a good chunk of their working lives these days playing the character in a recording booth for Big Finish. Theyre in a suspiciously ideal position to create some original audio dialogue to splice into the scene! It would have only needed a ten-minute call to Big Finish, a little co-ordination to get the actors in for a quick recording session each and thus all living Doctor actors (bar Eccleston) would have made an appearance in the special! This would have allowed for more specific dialogue, avoided the need to explain the older actors and changed absolutely nothing about the story. All thirteen, indeed?