Peter Capaldi just got cast as the new star of Doctor Who, and described it as a lifelong dream — but you may not have realized quite how much Capaldi dreamed about Doctor Who when he was younger. Here's some fan art of Tom Baker in the TARDIS, created by a teenage Capaldi. Update: The art is way more recent.


The Tom Baker art comes via the Scottish Daily Record. (Note: According to the person who posted this sketch online in the first place, Colin with VworpVworp, this sketch wasn't actually the work of the teenage Capaldi after all — but rather, some artwork he created for National Doodle Day, a charity event, in 2010. Sorry about the mixup, but everything else in this article appears to be authentically from Capaldi's youth.) Check out the whole thing below:


And here is a page from a mimeographed fanzine from around the same time, containing Capaldi's breathless essay about the show's opening titles, along with a drawing of Jon Pertwee that may or may not also be Capaldi's handiwork. This comes via Doctor Who News:

Back in 2008, Capaldi revealed in an interview with SFX that Doctor Who made him want to work in television, and that he received set designs and actual episode scripts from the production office after he wrote to them in 1972:

When I was a kid, being a huge Dr Who fan, I wrote numerous letters to the Doctor Who office largely inquiring about how the show was made. I was thrilled to have delivered to me a large package from the BBC containing two full studio scripts for the Jon Pertwee serial ‘The Mutants’, which they were making at the time. The package also contained set designs and studio floor plans for these episodes and a delightful letter from Barry Letts giving me an idea what all this stuff was. It was a fantastic exciting insight into both Doctor Who and television production generally. I had never seen a script in any form whatsoever before then and was immediately fascinated by the documents. And of course Barry’s kindness was a trigger to my ambition to work somehow (I didn’t know how) in TV. The scripts are still sitting on my bookshelf downstairs.


And meanwhile, the Radio Times, Britain's official television guide for decades, has dug up a letter that 15-year-old Capaldi wrote congratulating the show on its tenth anniversary in 1973:


In fact, Capaldi loved Doctor Who so much, he wanted to run the show's official fan club, which was already being run (in cooperation with the BBC) by another teenager named Keith Miller.

In his book about the early days of the Doctor Who fan club, Miller describes Capaldi thusly: "dear old Peter Capaldi, star of The Thick of It, Local Hero, Torchwood and, of course, Doctor Who – and all-time pain in the butt. He haunted my time running the fan club. He was quite indignant he wasn’t considered for the post and [Bary Letts' secretary] Sarah [Newman] couldn’t stand him."


Even though the fan club already had Miller running it — and the production office hoped that Miller would run interference between the pushy fans and the production team — Capaldi kept pushing to be allowed to take over from Miller. Here's a letter Newman wrote to Capaldi, telling him the club already had an official leader (via SFX):


But Capaldi wouldn't give up his ambition of running the Doctor Who club, and in a later letter, Newman tells Miller that she wishes the Daleks would exterminate Capaldi:


I think we can all safely say that Peter Capaldi ended up with a better prize than just running the Doctor Who fan club, however.