A new Doctor was on the way. He wouldn’t appear on screen for another year – but the actor who would become Doctor Number Eleven was cast just before Christmas 2008, with a special edition of Doctor Who Confidential scheduled for the big reveal on 3 January 2009. Former DWM editor Clayton Hickman had been commissioned to produce the first image of Matt Smith, accompanying the press release announcing his casting.
“That was a crazy thing,” Clay remembers. “They’d done a secret shoot with Matt on a London street, but just weren’t happy with the result. At the eleventh hour [new showrunner] Steven Moffat contacted me and asked if I’d be up for revamping it. At the time I had no idea who the new Doctor was, until [executive producer] Piers Wenger arrived at my flat with reams of images and made me solemnly swear an oath of secrecy. This was on New Year’s Eve, and they needed the new image within a day or so. It was really mad, but very exciting.”