Fracking? What will they find? Silurians probably (Picture: BBC/Simon Ridgway)

Recent interviews with Doctor Who’s Peter Capaldi and Sherlock’s Mark Gatiss have revealed that the Time Lord may tackle controversial Earthly gas-mining procedures in the future.

Talking to assembled press, Gatiss (whose next episode of Doctor Who airs Nov 14 on BBC One) discussed new ideas for future stories.

Confessing he would like to do a modern issues story to ‘warn about the future’ (much like Doctor Who in the 70s), the writer said:

‘What I’d love to do a story about is fracking.


‘When I first heard about it I thought this seems like an incredibly Doctor Who-y idea. Because it’s obviously a bad idea, no matter what the supposed rewards.’



When presented with the idea, Peter Capaldi lit up, exclaiming: ‘Absolutely! That would be great, I’d love to do a fracking episode.

‘I’d get to use the word “frack” a lot. Frack the frack off, or frack the frack in! Can I say that?’

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‘Fracking, that’s good. I don’t know what we’d find – Silurians of some description I would imagine?’

Mark Gatiss added, ‘To me it’s got that whole Jaws scenario, with lots of people saying, “It’ll be fine.” And actually, as well as shale gas and everything, maybe there’s something else lurking under there.

‘I’d like to do that one, it’s called “Frakk off and Die” [Laughs]’

Doctor Who airs Saturday at 8.15pm on BBC One.

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