When Doctor Who returns to television later this month, it will have a new face in more ways than one. The incoming Twelfth Doctor, played by Peter Capaldi, will get a revamped opening-title sequence that was originally designed by a fan of the show for his own amusement.
Billy Hanshaw is a freelance motion-graphics designer in the northern English city of Leeds who, up to now, has mainly worked on commercials and corporate presentations. After Capaldi’s casting as the new Doctor Who star was announced in 2013, Hanshaw was inspired to spend a month putting together a mockup of a new title sequence “to challenge myself,” he said on his website. After he posted it to YouTube, it quickly went viral, garnering more than 700,000 hits and writeups from Radio Times, Huffington Post, and other media sites. It eventually attracted the notice of showrunner Steven Moffat, who liked it well enough to ask the BBC’s graphics department to make an official version based on Hanshaw’s work. Speaking at a press conference to promote the upcoming season, Moffat said, “It was the only new title idea I’d seen since 1963. We got in touch with him, and said, okay, we’re going to do that one.”