Following Private Eye‘s reporting that behind-the-scenes Doctor Who was in “chaos”, Executive Producer Beth Willis has quit the show today (7 July), following her producing partner Piers Wenger. He quit […]
Following Private Eye‘s reporting that behind-the-scenes Doctor Who was in “chaos”, Executive Producer Beth Willis has quit the show today (7 July), following her producing partner Piers Wenger. He quit the show in May, leaving the BBC to take up a post at Channel 4 as senior commissioning executive.
Willis is also leaving the BBC in September (the same month Wenger will leave the BBC) to return to Kudos, producers of LIfe on Mars and Hustle.
“We couldn’t keep her forever,” said Doctor Who showrunner Steven Moffat, “though God knows I tried. She is off to be brave and brilliant in brand new ways, and the sad news for Doctor Who is that it will be somewhere else.”
Broadcast, the TV trade magazine, reports that the BBC hopes to find a direct replacement for Willis before production starts on this year’s Doctor Who Christmas special. The Corporation will then attempt to find another producer, replacing Wenger, to supervise production on Doctor Who‘s seventh series, expected to begin in February 2012.
These high profile departures, plus the recent fuss about the number of Doctor Who episodes to be made or screened in 2012, seem to confirm much of Private Eye‘s claims of a production in “chaos”.
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Chaos? I dunno, journalists always have to write things in the most dramatic thing possible. She has left for other work, simple as. It’s not like the BBC will run out of people wanting to work on Doctor Who anyway…