We were lucky enough to get some quality time with Doctor Who's Karen Gillan at San Diego Comic-Con, and she told us what to expect from her character this fall. How is the Girl Who Waited going to be rewarded for her faith in the Doctor? Not all that well, by the sound of things.
We also got to speak with Being Human creator Toby Whithouse about his next Doctor Who episode.
Minor spoilers ahead...
When we first met Amy, her big issue was whether she could trust the Doctor because he abandoned her when she was a little girl. And now he's told her, "Trust me, I'm going to get your baby back." She needs to trust him more than she ever has.
More than ever, yeah.
Can she trust him? Will she trust him?
I think with Amy, there's always something niggling at the back of her mind. Even though she's been with the Doctor quite some time now, there's always something that stops her fully trusting him. Because of what happened to her as a child — that never quite leaves her, I think. So that's really interesting. But we might see that trust begin to grow, and then something's going to happen to that trust in the next part of the series. Something really major.
Do you think the story of Amy is her learning to trust the Doctor? Or learning to trust herself?
What I love about playing Amy is, I really feel like we're seeing her whole life pattern, and we're seeing a real growth with her. We meet her as a little girl, something really bad happens to her, and then we meet her as a young woman. She runs into the TARDIS, she gets married, and then she has a baby. We're sort of seeing her whole life pan out. And I hope that it goes full circle. I have no idea whether it does or not. But yeah, it's definitely a story of her relationship with the Doctor and how that's evolving. And trust is a huge part of that.
The biggest complaint about Amy, in the last bloc of seven episodes, was that there wasn't enough of Amy taking charge of doing action. Are we going to see more of Action Amy this time around?
Well, I mean, she wants her baby back, that's for sure. And also what is interesting is for me in the last series, I wanted her to be this kind of overgrown child, almost. She's never quite lost her childhood. So there's still that kind of... [makes childish face and noise] about her, I don't know how to describe it. In the second series, the universe was rebooted, so she's far more of a settled person. So that's what's we've seen in the first half of the series. But now something pretty bad's happened to her, so that's going to change things.
So you're kind of the Doctor's mother in law now. Right?
That's a really weird thought and it really disturbs me. [Laughs] It's definitely going to be explored. All of the relationships change in the next half of the series. What's really fun is the relationship between Amy and River. That's really explored.
You're mother and daughter, and she's older than you. That's got to be confusing.
Yeah, absolutely. We get to play around with all the natural instincts that a parent might have towards their child, no matter how old they are.
We were also lucky enough to talk to Toby Whithouse, creator of the original Being Human and writer of a few Who episodes including "School Days." He's the writer of the upcoming episode "The God Complex," in which the Doctor, Amy and Rory get trapped in a 1980s kitsch hotel. Here's what he told us:
I heard you saying your next episode is about a dimension-shifting hotel. And you've got David Walliams playing a cowardly alien. So it's one of the more funny episodes, I'm guessing.
Er, no, actually. It's certainly the darkest episode I've ever written of Doctor Who. And it's positioned quite late in the series. I think traditionally as you move towards the end of each series, the stories tend to get darker. And despite David's performance, it's actually quite a dark. It's essentially like a haunted hotel story. So yes, it's quite a bit dark.
So this one features the Doctor and all the companions? But no River?
No River, no. I think Steven [Moffat] is the only one who's allowed to write River. Which is probably good, because he writes her so fantastically.
So there's been a lot of behind-the-scenes moving and shaking, with producers Piers Wenger and Beth Willis moving on. Has that affected you at all?
No. I mean, I'm very sorry to see them go. I've worked with them many times, and Beth was executive producer on the second series of Being Human, so I'm very sorry to see them go. I don't think there's anything... I think Who fans being Who fans, there's various conspiracy theories, and actually it's quite simply that they feel it's time to move on. But you know, on a personal level, I'm quite sad to see them go because they're wonderful, clever people.
So you think all the hullaballoo in the British press about Doctor Who being in trouble is overblown?
Absolutely, completely. The popularity of Doctor Who hasn't waned an iota. It's still a phenomenally successful show. No, once again, it's the press creating a story out of nothing.
So you had a lot of heavy lifting to do in "Vampires of Venice." It was the first time Rory traveled in the TARDIS. It was his realization of what Amy's been up to. How's it different writing Rory and Amy as a couple, now that they've been traveling for a while?
I think there have been some shifts in terms of their relationship. I think they have become much more settled with each other. And I think that even though it's something Steven plays with throughout the current series, nonetheless I think Rory is feeling less threatened by the Doctor. I think Rory performs a very interesting role in the show. By this point, I think Amy has become utterly immersed in that world. And she, in a way, is kind of the perfect companion for the Doctor, because she will happily run towards danger with him. And the role Rory performs is in a way, the role of the human. Because he's the one saying, "What? Why are we doing this? Why are we running towards the monster? This is just insane." Which I think is quite an important role on the show. And it's something that Arthur does [really well]. I think Arthur is a fantastic actor.
What can we expect from series four of Being Human?
Lots and lots of surprises. Lots of shocks. And hopefully the same standard of storytelling that we've always tried to achieve.
And finally here's a new featurette about the upcoming episodes of Doctor Who, which returns on Saturday at 9 PM: