Karen Gillan is interviewed inside the new issue of Radio Times about all things Series 6!

The actress discusses the “epic feel” the opening two-parter has as a result of filming in Utah and also touches on the fact that Amy’s “getting a little bit more tomboyish”.

You can read the full interview inside the new Radio Times, which is on sale today. An extract from it has been posted on the magazine’s website…

“I spent a lot of time in Utah running around the desert,” says Karen Gillan. “It simply wouldn’t have looked the same if we’d filmed it in Cardiff against a green screen. The desert backdrop really gives the opening two episodes an epic feel.”

You’d think filming in the desert would be hot work but, at night, temperatures fell below freezing: “We were all ‘thermalled’ up and I had on two pairs of trousers and four tops! Then the sun would come up, making it blistering hot and we’d all peel off the layers,” laughs Gillan.

Trousers? Yup, for some fans of Amy Pond that’s the bad news. In the opening episodes of the new series, Amy will forsake her traditional micro-mini in favour of sensible trews and her high heels for trainers.

“It’s true!” giggles Gillan. “I quite like the idea that she’s getting a little bit more tomboyish as she becomes more of an action girl.”

The new series marks a new start for the character Gillan simply calls “Pond”. “As the Doctor rebooted the universe at the end of the last series, Pond’s been given the life that she should have had,” she reasons. “The life where she wasn’t sat down by psychiatrists telling her she’s crazy. She was obviously a broken person. She’s generally a bit more settled now.”

Pond may be more settled, but Karen Gillan can still be thrown by the twists and turns of the story: “Everything’s so important and precise in Steven Moffat’s scripts. There are a couple of throwaway lines in the opening two-parter, which I thought were just a couple of funny gags but turn out to be one of the most important things that Amy’s ever said. And I didn’t know that at the time!”

But where else would she get the chance to swash her buckle playing an intergalactic pirate as she does in “a full-on fight with no stunt double” in episode three of this series?

“I’m wearing a miniskirt in that one,” she re-assures, “with some ridiculous pink tights, so I’m like a pink-tighted pirate! I love that so much.”

Break your silence in our ongoing Series 6 discussion, Silences, Rivers and Songs…

The Impossible Astronaut airs on Saturday 23rd April at 6pm on BBC One/BBC One HD.