Doctor Who fans in Australia now have twice as many reasons to rejoice as 2020 dawns – a new season with Jodie Whittaker’s Thirteenth Doctor launches on New Year’s Day, followed soon after on the 9th of January by an all new season of fan show Whovians! Host Rove McManus shared the news with a new video, promising more fun to keep the Doctor Who love rolling for as long as possible.
Since its launch in 2017 Whovians has seen the arrival of Bill Potts, the departure of Peter Capaldi and the advent of the first female Doctor, all with commentary landing firmly on the side of fun and laughter as Rove McManus and his team of “super fans” find new ways to look at a show that truly is bigger on the inside. The show’s head researcher, actor and comedian Patrick Magee, reflected on the show’s humble beginnings, recalling: “We had our first rehearsal, we watched Hell Bent, and we realised that everyone in it was really on board, everyone had a different role to play. So you had Bajo, who was just very strangely excited by weird things; Tegan was really good at getting jokes that would appeal to non-Doctor Who fans, which was really important; Adam was great with his theories and stuff; and Rove was great at keeping them all together. So originally I liked the idea – I thought it would be a fantastic thing for me to do, and I was really excited to be part of it – but I wasn’t sure how well it would go. And then the first episode went out, and it just went gangbusters. We were trending on Twitter, it was great.”
Actor, comedian and panellist Adam Richard shared the joys and horrors of getting to see the latest episodes before anyone else, recalling: “We would get a copy of the episode usually about a week, a week and a half before. That became less and less as we went on. Like, the copy of the final Season 10 episode that we saw had no effects in it. There were just very disgruntled-looking stagehands holding green screens, while Bill the Cyberman is crying over the Doctor’s body and a car goes by in the background. That makes it very hard to get emotionally involved. Also, the music wasn’t finished yet, so they just had music from The Dark Knight. And the final scene, which obviously was from the Christmas special, had only been delivered the day before. So there was a person standing next to a snow machine in the shot.”
The real joy of Whovians though comes from watching a group of friends nerding out over a shared love. As Adam Richard himself remembered of past seasons: “We’d always kind of geeked out. Back then, Rove was way into wrestling. We’d go out to lunch, and we’d be in a food court somewhere, and he would just rip open these wrestling toy packets and start making them fight. He’s always been deeply, deeply nerdy. He doesn’t care about the sanctity of the packaging – he likes to play with the toys, rather than keep them in there. And before this even came up, he’d started listening to the Big Finish audios, which I’m obsessed with. So we’ve always had fairly nerdy conversations about all sorts of stuff.”
Here’s to more geeking out and irreverent commentary on all things Whoniverse related when Whovians returns in 2020!
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