Three days to go! It has been eight agonising months since Matt Smith dropped his bow tie to the floor and, ushering in a new era of Doctor Who, turned into a mad-eyed Peter Capaldi, who barked at Jenna Coleman’s Clara: “Do you happen to know how to fly this thing?!”



This weekend sees the start of Doctor Who’s 34th series (or eighth in the new money) with the feature-length Deep Breath – a rollicking adventure through Victorian London that reunites us with old friends Madame Vastra, her wife Jenny and Strax the Sontaran butler. We can’t tell you anything else of course (and if you really wanted to ruin it for yourself, you’ve probably already read the leaked scripts). So how about getting to know our new Time Lord a bit better?

1. He may or may not be the actual 12th Doctor

We Doctor Who fans do love a numbering crisis, and as Steven Moffat has said repeatedly in interviews, the Doctor has never assigned himself a number. He probably can’t even remember. This is the 12th Doctor that has appeared as the regular lead character in the TV series Doctor Who. John Hurt’s “War Doctor” never considered himself worthy of the name, and the regeneration energy used by that missing hand used up another regeneration. So with the Time Lords having granted him a new regeneration cycle at Christmas – perhaps we’re looking at … Doctor 1A?

2. He’s not as nasty as you might be expecting

I’ve said this before, but I was never buying this idea of a supposedly dark Doctor. Because the character remains the same character; a wonderful man who goes round saving the universe. That’s not to say they don’t play to Capaldi’s strengths, and he’s certainly not as delightful and charming as Matt Smith was when he crashed into Amelia Pond’s back garden, but this is certainly no Doctor Tucker either. He’s just a bit more brusque, too distracted to be worrying about manners. That said – there are certain flashes that live up to those eyebrows.

3. But he’s no fluffy bunny rabbit either

“Planet of the pudding brains,” he snarls at one point.

4. And it looks as if there will be trouble ahead

Previewing forthcoming episode Kill The Moon in this week’s Radio Times, Moffat writes: “When Clara turns to the Doctor for help, she gets the shock of her life. Is the man she has trusted so long really a hero after all? Is he even her friend?”

5. He’s definitely Scottish

Moffat and Capaldi have a certain amount of fun with the fact that he is playing the Doctor with his own accent. “I’m Scottish! I can complain about things!” he says at one point. Scottish is a state of mind anyway, right? But as Capaldi explained of the decision at the BFI screening and Q&A: “He’s had an English accent for years, so the idea that he doesn’t have an accent is ridiculous. I just thought it was important to bring the Doctor to me – a lot of actors whom I enjoy, they don’t become the part, the part becomes them, so you pull it more closely to yourself. And in a way, I think the Doctor is closer to me than for example Malcolm Tucker was – that was a bigger leap.”

“Who frowned me this face?” Peter Capaldi as the Doctor. Photograph: Ray Burmiston/BBC Photograph: Ray Burmiston/BBC/Ray Burmiston

6. And he is aware of his eyebrows.

“Who frowned me this face?”

7. There are hints at a link with Capaldi’s previous appearances in the Whoniverse

The actor played both Caecilius in The Fires Of Pompeii and Mr Frobisher in Torchwood: Children Of Earth. It would be giving too much away to say any more, but the possibility of a link is definitely acknowledged.

8. He makes Clara so, so, so much better

Jenna Coleman’s character may be being slightly retconned as a control freak this year, but the arc they look like following with her gives her plenty to do, and in Deep Breath, Coleman shines.



As Moffat explained at the BFI: “The thing about Clara with the 11th Doctor is she’s quite comfortably in control, she really had him quite tamed and he was all ‘she’s really great and she hangs out with me, I’m so cool!’ And so from the moment Peter’s Doctor turns up she realises she’s in terrible trouble, he’s just rude to her and whatever he might secretly feel he’s just being awful, so seeing Clara on the back foot, particularly in this episode, makes her very funny, I think. We had the perfect girl and we absolutely messed her head.”

Indeed, Clara spends a lot of the episode really quite angry. “It’s thrown everything off-kilter and turned it on its head,” said Coleman. “Especially for Clara, because suddenly she’s faced with this man that she can’t figure out and she can’t control and he doesn’t respond in the same way that she’s used to, so that is really kind of frustrating and confusing for her.”

Clara in control (Jenna Coleman). Photograph: Ray Burmiston/BBC Photograph: Ray Burmiston/BBC/Ray Burmiston

9. That line about there being no flirting is not strictly true

There is one sequence in particular that is really rather fruity. But it isn’t with whom you might expect … but on the matter of flirtgate, Capaldi said: “I think that was inflated in the [Sunday Times] article into something bigger than it was because I don’t remember having this conversation with Steven or anyone. But I can remember in my own head that thinking Papa Nicole would be a dangerous route to take!”

10. He has no time for dangling plot threads

One thing happened last year that was left hanging and never picked up. It doesn’t get answered here, but it does get addressed, almost as if the whole thing is leading somewhere …

11. He is a wise and mysterious old soul, and this is deliberate too

The story goes that nobody else was auditioned for the part this time round, and Capaldi gave an audition at Moffat’s kitchen table. As the showrunner explained: “Given that this has worked out incredibly well, the decision was made at phenomenal speed. I sort of realised we couldn’t just got for another Matt Smith type, we couldn’t just go for another quirky young man with interesting hair, people would start to notice that that’s what we were doing. People would start styling their hair in improbable ways in the hope of getting cast.”

Executive producer and writer Steven Moffat, Jenna Coleman and Peter Capaldi. Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP Photograph: Evan Agostini/Evan Agostini/Invision/AP

12. And you will be seeing more of him than ever before

More good news for Doctor Who fans: after the controversial axing of behind-the-scenes show Doctor Who Confidential two years ago, the show is back, sort of. Coming to iPlayer and the red button is Doctor Who Extra, which promises to be “much more than a ‘making of’ show, as we follow Peter Capaldi every step of the way throughout the creation of his first season as the Doctor”.