It’s the end of an era. On Christmas Day, Peter Capaldi’s Doctor will regenerate into the character’s 13th incarnation, to be played by Jodie Whitaker. But he’s not the only person leaving the show. The story also marks the departure of showrunner Steven Moffat, who’s been in the role since 2009. TV Choice caught up with him to look ahead to the upcoming special, Twice Upon A Time, in which the Twelfth Doctor meets the First, and to look back at his time steering the Tardis…



David Bradley steps into the role of the First Doctor (originally played by William Hartnell) in the Christmas special, and there doesn’t seem to have been any resistance from the fans to that. Has this pleased you?

I don’t know what I expected. I didn’t really think about it. I thought people would just be quite excited. There’s a huge section of the audience – and when I say huge, I mean as close to 100 per cent as makes no practical difference – who will be unaware it wasn’t David Bradley in 1963. He looks sufficiently like him that we actually start with footage from the old show and blend it in with Bradley. It helps massively that he played the part in An Adventure In Space And Time [2013's drama about the creation of Doctor Who]. I think that sort of sanctifies him in a strange way. I don’t know why that should be the case, but it’s true, you feel, ‘Yes, he’s allowed to be the First Doctor’. Also, he pays tremendous respect to William Hartnell. He’s not impersonating him, but like Chris Pine does with William Shatner in the Star Trek films, he’s riffing on it. He’s respecting it.

Did the fact that the Star Trek films had already done something similar help?

I’m actually vaguely obsessed with this. Why does it sometimes work, and why does it not? One of the most fascinatingly effective recasts was when they replaced Dr Watson in the Granada series of Sherlock Holmes – David Burke into Edward Hardwicke. They’re manifestly different people, but when Hardwicke came along, he recreated enough of David Burke that I accepted it was the same person almost instantly. And I don’t normally. I’m quite twitchy about recasts. In fact, I’m not a fan of them. I always think, ‘Well, why doesn’t everybody notice this person has changed?’ I was very resistant to the idea of a new crew of the Enterprise, I have to say. But throughout that film – throughout all those films, in fact – they so cleverly riff on the original performances you somehow go with it as the same people. And they get away with showing you photographs of the other cast within the film! So, they’re obviously doing it well.

Would you stop short at recasting other former Doctors? Do you think it only works with the first?

I don’t think there’s anything special about the First Doctor in that sense. Except maybe the wig helps. It was more of a calculated look, in a curious way. It’s one of the most distinctive looks the Doctor’s ever had. If you had somebody who could do a brilliant Patrick Troughton [the Second Doctor], who was really spot on and captured the essence of that performance, I think, yes, you would accept it in the same sort of way. It’s tough – it really has to be spot on. But I bet it happens someday.



There’s a school of thought that this story has been conceived as a particular treat for the hard core fans because, from next year, the show will be trying appeal to a broader audience. Is this a last hurrah for a certain style of Doctor Who?

Not really. Because we shed everything for series 10 [the most recent] as well. We just started again there [with no ongoing storylines, and a new companion]. But Doctor Who is allowed to be self-referential. Where you have to walk carefully is, you have to use Doctor Who as the generally accepted mythology that everyone in Britain has imbibed since they were born, rather than the meticulous detail that we fans live in. What I mean by that is, it’s okay for Daniel Craig to mysteriously have Sean Connery’s old car in the Bond movies, for reasons that cannot withstand any analysis at all, because we all know about that car. It’s the same with Doctor Who. I mean, ‘real’ human beings don’t know all the actors who played the Doctor, and can’t rank them in order, or anything like. But they absolutely know – they absolutely know – that Jodie [Whittaker] is the 13th. So, it’s fine to bring an old Doctor on. Of course, you have to clarify who it is you’re meeting, and I spent a lot of time trying to make that clear in The Doctor Falls [the final episode of last series]. If you look at it from the point of view of a kid who doesn’t really know the old show, they will still think, ‘Oh my goodness, this is incredibly exciting – that’s the very first Doctor Who! The very first one came back!’ That kid already knows that Peter’s the 12th, that Jodie’s the 13th, so he knows there’s a number one. Works perfectly for a brand-new viewer.

Are Doctor Who fans conservative about the show being reinvented?

I don’t know how conservative Doctor Who fans think. I honestly don’t. Why did you choose this show? Why did you choose the show that depends, thrives and exults in change? Why this one? It’s just bonkers. I think they’re the bonkers, loud people on the internet. Most people go, ‘Wow!’ when you do something radical. When you say, ‘Ah ha! John Hurt was the Doctor as well!’ [as revealed in 2013] Folk bloody loved that. That’s what I think the audience wants Doctor Who to do from time to time. It’s just to say, ‘Do you know what? We’re doing this now. To hell with it.’

But once these changes move into the past tense, most seem to accept them, don’t they?

Yes. I don’t think the majority of Doctor Who fans are like that, but for some the past is all right. The past can’t frighten you. It’s already there! It’s categorised! It’s canonised! It’s the future that worries them. ‘Oh no! What’s going to happen now?’ However, the towering majority of fandom just wants something unexpected. Like, Jodie Whittaker becomes the Doctor. That’s exciting. I haven’t met anyone who isn’t excited about that, and I meet lots of Doctor Who fans who come up to me in the street – sometimes they’ll have a go at something they don’t like, but they’re all thrilled at the idea of Jodie being the Doctor. That’s as radical as it gets, frankly. Ha ha ha!

You came off Twitter, but now you’ve left Doctor Who, is it something you’d return to?

The irremovable story is that I came off because I was getting offensive messages. But the truth is, during the early days of Twitter, people used it instead of emails or texts. And so folk would be on there, organising to go to the pub. God, you wouldn’t do that now. I had all this stuff coming in, and I didn’t know how to organise it, so I kept missing seeing my friends! Then I thought, ‘Oh sod it, what am I doing anyway? I spend all of my day at this computer. I’ll just delete it and then I won’t have to read it.’ I thought no one would notice. Ha ha! Oh Jesus! From what I understand, it has since got a great deal nastier, but the truth is – and this could be easily established by an internet historian – most stuff that got sent to me was really lovely. There wasn’t a problem at all.

It’s exciting that you’re going to be novelising your 2013 anniversary story, The Day Of The Doctor. How did that come about?

I heard Russell T Davies was doing Rose [the show’s comeback episode from 2005], and they wanted me, actually, to do Twice Upon A Time, and I said, ‘No, if I’m doing one, I’m doing The Day of the Doctor.’

Why?

Because I had an idea of how to do it. Also, I had such a hell of a time working on it – such a savage, miserable workload – I’m damned if anyone’s doing the final lap, except me! But there are some storytelling challenges in that which are still fascinating to me, because, what order does that story take place in? I know that sounds like a boring question – but contemplate it for a moment. What order does The Day of the Doctor happen? From the Doctor’s point of view, it happens all over the place! So where do you start it? People think of that story – quite rightly – as Doctor Who at its most summer blockbuster simple. In fact, it is by far and away – by far and away – the most complicated, timey-wimey story, ever done in Doctor Who.

People are immediately going to turn to the bit in the book where Tom Baker makes a cameo as a mysterious curator, in the hope you’re going to provide more detail about him. But, presumably, you won’t… will you?

Well, no, I think it was clear enough! Or as clear as it should be, which is, there’s enough there to tell you if you choose to believe that’s the future incarnation of the Doctor, who’s reverted to look like Tom Baker. But maybe he’s lying and he’s not. However, there’s another perfectly adequate answer as to who the curator is. You could say it’s the Moment [a sentient Time Lord weapon that can take different physical forms], because it originally was. Originally, I’d written the script with Billie Piper [who played the Moment] coming back, because she sort of disappears in the story. But when we thought we could get Tom Baker, I put him in. So that could be the Moment, just deciding to talk to the Doctor through this appearance.

What’s your preferred explanation?

I do think of it as, in the distant, distant future, long after Jodie and long after we’re all dead, the Doctor settles down and chooses a different incarnation per day to revisit. I like that idea.

BBC1, Christmas Day

Graham Kibble-White