As Christmas and The Fall Of The Eleventh draw closer, the attention on Doctor Who begins to shift to Series 8 and Peter Capaldi's full introduction as the Doctor. Shooting is scheduled to commence in January 2014, meaning that, currently, the focus is on pre-production as the new series' writers and scripts start to come together. Neil Cross (writer of Series 7's The Rings Of Akhaten and Hide) has confirmed that he will be returning to script an episode of Series 8, commenting on Peter Capaldi that "There's something about his physicality, his image, his wit, that evokes the Doctor" and "There's something about him that evokes classic Doctor Who." How many episodes Cross will be writing and the outline of that episode(s) remains to be seen. Elsewhere, fantasy author Neil Gaiman has confirmed that he will write a third episode of Doctor Who at some point, but the large number of projects he is currently involved with is likely push this back to Series 9, telling Doctor Who Online that "They would like to have me, I would like to do more. The only problem I'm having right now is the time that I probably would have spent writing a Doctor Who script this year suddenly was eaten by going on tour." News has also surfaced of a new writer joining the ranks for Series 8. According to his
online CV, prolific TV writer Jack Lothian (whose credits include Ashes To Ashes, Shameless, and Doc Martin) will be making his Doctor Who debut in Series 8 with one 45 minute episode. It was previously thought that Lothian would be writing an episode of Series 7 but it's likely that this episode was pushed back by a year, given that his CV currently lists his episode of Doctor Who as part of Series 8 but also lists Matt Smith as its star and dates it as 2013. Assuming that Steven Moffat will write five episodes of Series 8 as has been the convention for the programme's head writer since 2006 and that Cross and Lothian will each write one episode, there are six episodes currently without writers. Going by the structure of previous series, these six episodes are likely to include two two-part stories (assuming that one of Moffat's episodes will be a two-parter), meaning that there are four more writers still to sign on. Of course, this is just conjecture as there is no confirmation that Series 8 will follow this structure. A possibility for one of the writers of these remaining episodes is Broadchurch creator and frequent Doctor Who contributor Chris Chibnall, who revealed in an
interview with Den Of Geek that Steven Moffat has asked him to be involved with Series 8 but whether or not he will is dependant on the scheduling of both Doctor Who and the second series of Broadchurch.
Who do you think is likely to fill the remaining slots? Who do you want to fill them? Leave a comment...