Doctor Who Series 11 - New Writers and Directors announced

Directors have been put in the air over time but it only now that they have been officially confirmed.

The directors had been announced slowly as Jamie Childs, the 'lead director' according to Chibnall. Whether this was a quib given that he had directed the most or a new official position like a lead writer I don't know. Jamie directed the minisode introducing Jodie and is also the director of Episodes 1,7, 9 and 10. Mark Tondarai is the director of episodes 2 and 3, Sallie Apraminhian in the episode of 4 and 6, Jennifer Perrott is the director for episodes 5 and 8 and Wayne Yip the Christmas Special. Yip is the only one of the 5 directors to have directed for Doctor Who before. Yip directed The Lie of the Land and Empress of Mars of Series 10 and two episodes of Class as well. Yip is the only one of the 8 directors (the total number of directors has been cut to 5) to carry on from series 10 but Talaly was offered to continue. It is unknown about the other 6 on whether they were let go or chose to leave.

The writers have been a mystery to us with the exception of Chris Chibnall, the showrunner himself. Malorie Blackman, Ed Hime, Peter McTighe, Vinay Patel and Joy Wilkinson have been announced as the other writers. This means the entire writing team is different from the previous series, something which has never happened before in modern who and only rarely in classic. Of the previous team, Steven Moffat, Jamie Mathieson, Mark Gatiss and Toby Whithouse had announced their departure already so we knew they weren't going to write for the show. Steven had been asked all the same to write for the show but he said no, just like Russel had done for every series to Steven. Rona Munro, Sarah Dollard, Frank Controll Boyce, Peter Harness and Mike Barlett were the other writers who had not been rehired by Chris. The writing team has also been reduced from 9 to 6. Majorie Blackman is a novel writer and former children laurette so a big name in the literature world but void in the television world. Her novels have dealt with racisim so the rumoured second episode about Rosa Parks is likely to be written by her. Peter McTighe is the only other one of the writers to have a wikipedia page and he hasn't been to busy, Nowhere boys being the only thing is written of note, a show that was broadcast in the UK on CBBC. It's interesting that Chibnall hasn't brought a single writer back from Steven's era. We do not know who will be writing what he though. We know the episodes are all single parters so no one is writing a two part story. If all the five guest writers write one episode, that makes Chibnall write 5, which is half  of the episodes, and no doubt he is writing the Christmas episode as that has always been written by the showrunner. Chibnall will be writing Episode 1 that I have very little doubt. I believe Chibnall is probably writing 4 episodes and one of our guest writers will be contributing two scripts. Of course it is possible that all writers are writing for every episode in the new writer's room style. That hasn't been confirmed yet but the writers still haven't been officially signed an episode to the public.

Doctor Who is set to return next month!