Doctor Who Live: The Next Doctor

So the new Doctor has been revealed in a thirty-five minute show broadcast on BBC1 and around the world to much anticipation and expectation. I was hoping for Eddie Marsan or Robert Carlyle to take on the iconic part of the Timelord but it was not meant to be. Not yet anyway. There’s still time for them to take it on when he regenerates into number thirteen and fourteen.

Presented strangely by Zoe Ball with the fifth Doctor Peter Davison (1982-1984); who I loved as the eccentric Timelord, this show gave us a taste of the past, the present and the future with Matt Smith saying a sad goodbye to us all. He was my favourite besides Tom Baker of course who was my Doctor. Smith was young but somehow seemed old in the part as well as alien and that’s the trick to playing him. He nailed it.

The 12th incarnation of the Timelord is 55 year old Scottish BAFTA award winning actor Peter Dougan Capaldi who is a fantastic actor and known for the Thick of It here in the UK. He looks like an older version of David Tennant and is a perfect choice. He was also a fan as well as a kid and looked excited as he sat on the chair saying he had missed the call from the producers about getting the part. I don’t think he’s come down to earth yet. I wonder if he’ll keep his Glaswegian accent or will he take on an English accent like they all have? I suspect the latter but it would be a nice change if he kept his own accent.

His life will change overnight now and even though he’s probably prepared for it, he will still be taken aback by what the part brings to him. He is a veteran actor of over 40 films and TV shows including Local Hero, Dangerous Liaisons, and more recently World War Z. He has been in Doctor Who before as Caecilius Iucundus in the Fires of Pompeii and also in Torchwood: Children of Earth as the evil John Frobisher.

I think they have made a good choice with him and I hope he stays with it a little longer than 3-4 years but I somehow doubt it. I think he was chosen because he is well known in America and America is the world it seems in the choice of the Doctor and how the show runs.

They wanted someone who was British and crossed on both sides of the pond; I suspect for financial reasons as it’s been rumoured that there is not enough money in the BBC coffers to make the show that the producers want which is ridiculous considering how much we pay for a TV license and also that it is the BBC’s biggest shows and one of the worlds biggest too. They really need to throw some money into it and make more episodes than the usual thirteen.

I’m curious like many to know how Capaldi will bring his own slant to the part and what will be different from the other incarnations. Hopefully he’ll go all Gothic and eccentric professor. Whatever he does I know he’ll step up the gears a bit and make his Doctor different from all the others and one to remember.

I wish him all the luck in the world and hope one day soon to be writing a story for him as the Timelord… He had a dream and so do I.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Capaldi