With Doctor Who filming in Utah next week, Doctor Who star Matt Smith will be appearing on The Craig Ferguson Show.
Ferguson, of course, is a known Doctor Who fan, as this monologue from his show back in June testifies…
At the time of that episode, with Doctor Who heading breakneck towards The Big Bang, I hoped that Ferguson could get someone from the show to appear; I thought Alex Kingston would have been a great choice since she lives in Los Angeles.
But Matt Smith! Who’d have thought that Craig Ferguson would score the Doctor for his show! Does this make Matt Smith the first Doctor to appear on a late-night American talk show? I suspect that it does.
He going to have a Dalek, too! And I’m willing to bet that this will be Craig Ferguson’s highest-rated show ever. Okay, okay, at the very least in the top ten…
Naturally, I shall be staying up well past my bedtime next week to watch. Listening to the audiobook of The Runaway Train a few weeks ago, I realized that I’m going through Matt Smith withdrawal. Really, he is the ultimate Doctor, isn’t he?
You know what this feels like, having the current Doctor appear on an American talk show? It feels like Doctor Who has arrived. It’s always been niche, and maybe it always will be niche, at least on this side of the Pond, but, for one fifteen minute segment, Doctor Who will feel like it’s as significant, as important, as relevant as anything else in the American entertainment landscape.
EDIT: More on Matt Smith’s appearance on The Late Late Show here, especially on the importance of this moment to Doctor Who‘s mainstreaming in America, along with embedded videos of the entire program. But not the as-yet-unleaked banned dance opening, alas.