Who News: Matt Smith On 50th And The Future

The Doctor returns in two weeks- and the man playing him has a few hints on the future...

With the buildup of the new anniversary season of Doctor Who mounting to full scale at just two weeks to go until The Bells Of Saint John, Matt Smith has started doing the promotional rounds of what we can expect. Below, you'll see his responses to a number of questions posed on an Apple Store event, Chris Evans' Radio 2 show and The Jonathan Ross Show this week. Here's our full guide to the words of the Eleventh Doctor himself...

• ON JENNA-LOUISE COLEMAN'S CHARACTER: "Clara has reignited the Doctor's curiosity about the universe!"
• ON THE ANNIVERSARY SEASON: "We start with a monster called the Spoonheads. Imagine if aliens got in your Wi-Fi, there's sort of people with Spoonheads, literally. We've got an episode on a submarine and Liam Cunningham. We've got Diana Rigg playing a witchy old woman in an episode by Mark Gatiss called The Crimson Horror. We've got the Cybermen back and monsters old and new. It's classic old Who, really!"
• ON THE 50TH ANNIVERSARY SPECIAL: "This new season's finale leads into the one-off Special, a special that has...other elements to it. You'll laugh more than you'll cry. I have read the script and Steven is on fine form. It won't disappoint. It will be undoubtedly the biggest and the best episode yet! You might see London. The thing is with Who, you'll understand it more when you have seen it, but 'paintings'- that is all I'm saying. Steven is gonna whup me tomorrow."
• ON THE POSSIBILITY OF PAST DOCTORS: "If I told you that, I'd have to kill you..."
• ON THE WHOLE 50TH ANNIVERSARY: "It will be the most exciting year for the show. It's gonna be an absolute extravaganza of a year for Who. A bit like Bond and Coronation Street when they had their big 50th celebrations, it's gonna be a whopper!"
• ON THE FUTURE: "I go and I do the anniversary special, then I go away for a bit to film How To Catch A Monster and then I come back and do the Christmas Special. It's one of those jobs that you have to take year by year, it's ten months a year, it's all-consuming. So I don't think you can plan five or six years ahead, or even two years ahead. It's a year by year thing and at the moment it's 2013 and we'll see what 2014 holds."

It's very reassuring to hear that Matt will definitely have a role to play in Doctor Who in 2014, as that will mark his fifth full year as the Eleventh Doctor and thus bring him slowly but surely ahead of David Tennant's overall episode count of 47 full adventures! Here's the updated episode guide as it stands with two new episode titles, the remainder of which are likely to be filled out by the Radio Times' anniversary season guide next week:

EPISODE 1- THE BELLS OF SAINT JOHN By Steven Moffat

EPISODE 2- TBC By Neil Cross

EPISODE 3- TBC By Mark Gatiss

EPISODE 4- THE HIDER IN THE HOUSE By Neil Cross

EPISODE 5- JOURNEY TO THE CENTRE OF THE TARDIS By Stephen Thompson

EPISODE 6- THE CRIMSON HORROR By Mark Gatiss

EPISODE 7- THE LAST CYBERMAN By Neil Gaiman

EPISODE 8- TBC By Steven Moffat

A brand new trailer for this season of blockbuster adventures will hit our screens tonight! Doctor Who returns to BBC1 on Easter Saturday, March 30th.