Billie Piper’s final (ish) Doctor Who exit in 2008 was pretty emotional, with her former companion Rose Tyler electing to leave her Doctor (David Tennant) right after their long-awaited reunion to stay with his surprise half-human clone in a parallel universe instead.


Yes, this show is weird.

For many fans, Rose’s decision to live with the metacrisis Doctor rather than her own was a cruel blow – and now, it’s emerged that Piper herself wasn’t too happy about being left with the ‘Sloppy Seconds’ Doctor, who she thought was a poor replacement for the real thing.

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“I hated that!” Piper told Doctor Who Magazine.

“In the same way that when I watched Beauty and the Beast – the Disney cartoon – I hated it when the Beast turned into the man, I always wanted [the Doctor] to be the beast, and her be in love with the beast.

“I feel like this is the same sort of loss! Like, it’s kind of a good thing, but it’s not the same. He seemed like a lesser version, didn’t he?

“I think it was just his outfit,” she laughed. “He wore a t-shirt instead of a tie and shirt, and so somehow I took him less seriously!”

Today, Piper still dips her toe into the Doctor Who world by starring in Big Finish audio adventures, and one new story (Rose Tyler: The Dimension Cannon, available now) reveals what she was up to before her appearance in the 2008 finale.

But apparently what Piper would really like to do is catch up with Rose and the Metacrisis Doctor in a dark comedy spin-off about their life in the parallel universe.

“I would like to see a one-off dark comedy about Rose and the Doctor in the parallel universe,” she said.

“But instead of it being really sci-fi, it can have an element of sci fi but it’s very much about their romantic relationship and what’s happened to them in the time since we’ve left them. Just them cohabiting; their normal environment.”

We’d definitely like to see that as well – though we can’t help but hope Rose herself has a little more affection for the Doctor clone than Piper does…


Doctor Who returns to BBC1 in early 2020