Doctor Who mini-episode goes live

The BBC recently sponsored a writing contest for school children in the UK called ‘Doctor Who: Script to Screen.’

Children from around the country submitted original scripts for a 3-minute episode of Doctor Who with a London Olympics theme. The winning script was filmed on set with the current stars of the show, Matt Smith and Karen Gillan. The winning writers got to be on set during the filming, and meet with the actors.

The winning script was chosen by Doctor Who showrunner Steven Moffatt and exec producer Carol Skinner with the help of the exec producer of BBC Learning, Katy Jones.

“We loved reading all of the scripts from schools across the UK and the standard of entries was truly outstanding,” said Jones. “It was a difficult, but a tremendously fun task to choose a winner and it was just brilliant to see so many children being creative in developing an adventure for the Doctor. We hope all fans enjoy this special one-off mini episode!”

The mini-episode only aired in the UK on the CBBC, and there are no plans to bring the mini-episode to BBC America, but thankfully, Doctor Who TV has the video to share with us. 

The episode, of course, is non-canon.

There was also an equally short behind-the-scenes video, if you like that sort of thing:

The winning writers are not named (likely for privacy reasons) but we do have this cute photo of the winners with Smith and Gillan:

Doctor Who returns to television regularly, for the seventh season of its new run, this fall.