Exclusive picture of Sylvester McCoy reprising the Seventh Doctor for the cameras...

Here's a bit of fun to warm the hearts of Doctor Who fans. Having read last week's interview with Sylvester McCoy, Rob Ritchie was kind enough to send us this pic of the great man recreating his most famous role (at least until the first Hobbit movie comes out) for a new imagining of the 1995 straight-to-video release Downtime...

Click the picture for full-size image

Original director Christopher Barry could not include The Doctor as a character for the original release due to rights issues, but this seems to be getting remedied now for a revised version of the tale, which featured the late Nicholas Courtney as The Brig, Elisabeth Sladen as Sarah Jane Smith and Deborah Watling as Victoria Waterfield.

We're assured by Sylvester McCoy that the rather scruffy-looking table in the picture will end up CGI'd into the TARDIS centre console, with suitable background dropped into where the green screen currently is.

Chris tells us that the new inclusion of The Doctor in Downtime is accompanied by a new villain called Padmasambavah, played by Steven O'Donnell, who many UK viewers may remember as 'Spudgun' from the Rik Mayall/Adrian Edmonson 1990s comedy Bottom (his sidekick in that show, Christopher Ryan, is an old hand at Doctor Who, having played Lord Kiv in the Colin Baker adventure Mindwarp and also the Sontaran Commander Staal in the David Tennant story The Sontaran Stratagem, and a different Sontaran in the Matt Smith outing The Big Bang).

The re-booted version of Downtime is being handled by producer Ian Levine.

Exclusive Shadowlocked interview with Sylvester McCoy

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