Matt Smith between takes during recording of The Impossible Astronaut in November 2010.
It was certainly in at the deep end,” says Marcus Wilson about his first episode as producer of Doctor Who. This was The Impossible Astronaut, which opened the 2011 series.
“When I came on board, the brief was simply that we wanted an American location and an American character in the show. The previous series had done very well for BBC America and we wanted to build on that popularity in the US. So we started looking at locations that Steven Moffat [the head writer and executive producer] might find interesting to write for. We were in Cardiff thinking, ‘What are the quintessential American locations?’ We thought of places like Cape Kennedy for the Apollo programme, and Monument Valley which we all knew from westerns. There were some interesting locations that we mulled over but didn’t use – swamp lands, and the aircraft graveyards in Arizona.” What makes a good location?