Over the years Doctor Who has had many high-profile guest stars, some of whom have been musicians (including Katherine Jenkins and Foxes in recent years) – but there’s one music grandee who Peter Capaldi thinks has been missing out.


“I think we should have David Bowie,” the actor told the crowd at a screening for episode one and two of the upcoming series. “I think he would be a very good one.”

OK, it sounds a little crazy – but now we’ve thought about it, it’s almost too perfect. Who better to explore space and time with the Doctor than Ziggy Stardust, the composer of Space Oddity? A man who once released an album that could almost be a Doctor Who episode premise in itself – The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars – and starred as an alien in sci-fi movie classic The Man Who Fell to Earth. If someone’s not already pitching that to Steven Moffat for series ten, we will.

Still, if Bowie did appear on the series he might have a bit of a rivalry on the music front from the Doctor himself. In the series nine trailer the Doc rocks a cool guitar (which former rocker Peter Capaldi plays himself), and the actor spoke of his joy in finally putting his musical talents to use.

“I was really delighted to open the script and find the Doctor playing guitar,” he said. “I think I’d sort of half mentioned it in joking, but I was really delighted that these guys went for it as an idea.”

Capaldi also revealed that – just as when he hand-picked the Twelfth Doctor’s costume – he also had a say in which axe he’d be wielding for series nine. Could this Vine video from June have been part of his research, we wonder…

“We had a great day when I went to pick the Doctor’s guitar,” he reminisced. “We went to Denmark street and went to various vintage guitar shops, looking for Doctor Who’s guitar. And I first I thought it should be like a Stratocaster or a Telecaster, one of those old classic guitars, but they all started to look like I was having a midlife crisis.”

“We ended up with a guitar that looked like a Fender Stratocaster that had been described to someone who had never seen one.”

He added: “That [joke] is hilarious, if you’re into guitars.”

We’re calling it – a Capaldi/Bowie duet is on the cards. Ground control to Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart…

Doctor Who series 9 begins on Saturday 19th September on BBC1 at 7:40pm


Get your tickets to see Peter Capaldi and Steven Moffat LIVE at the Radio Times Festival at Hampton Court in London on Friday 25th September