As rumours continue to circulate about how Peter Capaldi will leave Doctor Who this Christmas, series boss Steven Moffat has stoked the flames a little further.


Asked by Samira Ahmed at a special Hay Festival edition of BBC Radio 4’s Front Row for “clues” about the upcoming festive special (which will also be Moffat’s last as Head Writer before handing over to Broadchurch’s Chris Chibnall), Moffat hinted that Capaldi’s regeneration into a new incarnation of the Time Lord (played by an as-yet-unknown actor) would be “different” to anything we’d seen before.

“You haven’t got to the end of this series yet, which ends on – I hope – quite an unexpected note,” Moffat told Ahmed at the Welsh book festival. “You all know that the mighty Peter Capaldi will be bowing out. But we’re going to do it slightly differently this time.

“And I’ve been working with Chris [Chibnall] about how we do the changeover in a new way. So I’m not going to tell you what that is – I’m excited by it, I think it’s going to work well – but it’s not… well every regeneration is different, but we are playing it slightly differently this time.

“I think we’ve got a good idea – but I’m not telling you what it is,” he concluded.

Whether this means we could see a regeneration halfway through the Christmas Special, the new Doctor interact with his predecessor throughout the story or just that the VFX team are making the golden glow effect a bit different, one thing’s for sure – Steven Moffat and Peter Capaldi will not be going quietly.


Doctor Who continues on BBC1 on Saturday 10th June at 7.15pm