Turns out that DOCTOR WHO executive producer Steven Moffat had something quite specific in mind when he cast Peter Capaldi as the next Doctor — a Time Lord who is definitely not a playful and dashing young man like predecessors Matt Smith and David Tennant, but one who is more “mad,” like Tom Baker!
Moffat told the latest issue of Doctor Who Magazine:
“There would be little point in making as radical a change as we’ve made unless you’re going to go quite different with the Doctor. The last two Doctors have been brilliant, and have been your ‘good boyfriend’ Doctors. But the Doctor isn’t always like that. There is the sort of Tom Baker, Christopher Eccleston end of the spectrum, where he is mad and dangerous and difficult.”
“If we’d cast Ben Whishaw, you’d know what we were doing. You’d think, ‘Well, that’s another quirky young man with entertaining hair!’ And he’d be a brilliant Doctor, but Clara would just think, ‘Okay, you’ve rearranged yourself a bit.'”
And the new “dangerous” sensibility will extend to the entire program, according to the Grand Moff:
“I think it was time for the show to flip around a bit. The new version of the show is quite old now. It’s very old… We need the kick-up-the-arse Doctor, in a way, to frighten you and make you think, ‘Oh, it’s a different show again.’”
The wait until series eight premieres — likely in September, but possibly as early as August — is going to be torture!
Read at Joe's 