Eccleston Now Regrets Leaving ‘Doctor Who’ After Just One Series

The erstwhile Ninth Doctor, Christopher Eccleston, has told an Australian radio station that he wishes he had stuck with DOCTOR WHO longer than just one series.

Eccleston said to Melbourne, Australia’s 774 ABC: “It was kind of tragic for me, that I didn’t play him for longer. He’s a beautiful character, and I have a great deal of professional pride and had I done a second season, there would have been a marked improvement in my performance. I was learning new skills, in terms of playing light comedy. I was not known for light comedy and, again, production did not allow for that.”

The Ninth Doctor gave way to the 10th (David Tennant) after just 13 episodes in the 2005 revival. The parting of the ways was attributed to “creative differences,” and in the years since, both Eccleston and his executive producer, Russell T Davies, had declined to elaborate — until last year, when the actor began dropping cryptic little comments that, when assembled, gave some insight into the reasoning that led to his early departure.

Fun Variant Covers for ‘Doctor Who’ Comic Books

10th Doctor

11th Doctor

12th Doctor

Titan Comics will be releasing some oddball (in a good way) variant covers for its various officially licensed Doctor Who comics shipping in January and February, drawn by an artist who goes by the name Question No. 6.

The titles are:

DOCTOR WHO: TENTH DOCTOR #2.6
In stores Jan. 13
Cover C by Question No. 6

DOCTOR WHO: ELEVENTH DOCTOR #2.6
In stores Feb. 3
Cover C by Question No. 6

DOCTOR WHO: TWELFTH DOCTOR #2.2
In stores Jan. 13
Cover D by Question No. 6

DOCTOR WHO: Make Your Own Sunday!

BBC America, the U.S. home of DOCTOR WHO, wants to know which episodes we fans think portray the Doctor in the most heroic light, so the network is inviting viewers to vote for the episodes to be included in an all-day marathon on Sept. 20 — the day after the premiere of series six.

Fans will get to choose from every story involving the latest incarnations of the Doctor: David Tennant‘s 10th Doctor, Matt Smith‘s 11th Doctor and Peter Capaldi‘s 12th.

According BBC America, here’s what to do:

1. Select a single episode from each poll on this page (one per Doctor) and cast your votes. The poll will stay open through Sept. 11 at noon EST.

2. Tune in to the DOCTOR WHO marathon all day Sunday to see which episodes made the cut.

DOCTOR WHO returns Sept. 19 at 9 p.m. on BBC America.

12th Doctor Comic Book Debuts at NYCC!

Titan Comics is debuting its latest title, Doctor Who: The Twelfth Doctor, at this weekend’s New York Comic Con, but the rest of the world will have to take the slow path and wait for the Oct. 15 release date.

As a tease, Titan released a two-page preview of the comic:

The art looks pretty good to me. It’s so difficult to capture likenesses from so many different angles.

But… Where Can I Look, Doctor?

So, my fellow DOCTOR WHO fans and I now have a big problem: Where are we allowed to look?

Ever since the Tenth Doctor (David Tennant) warned us not to blink lest we be set upon by Weeping Angels, we have been keeping our eye wide open. But now the 12th Doctor (Peter Capaldi) is telling us, “Don’t. Look. ’round.” What terror awaits those who risk it…?

So I ask: precisely where are we to focus our optical receivers — straight ahead and nowhere else?

The next episode of DOCTOR WHO series 8, “Listen,” airs this Saturday at 9 o’clock on BBC America.

Moffat’s Discarded 10th Doctor Arc

Just a few short hours away from the season eight premiere of DOCTOR WHO and executive producer Steven Moffat‘s introduction of Peter Capaldi as the 12th Doctor, I thought it might be fun to look back the abandoned plan Moffat had for series five if David Tennant had decided to stay on for another year.

David Tennant: Doctor or President?

Sunday mornings here in America are known for serious-minded political talk shows about Important Issues, so here’s a clip featuring David Tennant, the former star of DOCTOR WHO, on Canada’s Space Channel show INNERSPACE comparing playing the Doctor to being the president of the United States.

 

Is It Time for the Clockwork Droids to Return?

If I had to pick the most unlikely monsters from rebooted DOCTOR WHO to make a return appearance, the Clockwork Droids would be very, very high on that list. After all, those robots existed only to service their ship, the SS Madame de Pompadour.

Nevertheless, there has been a pretty persistent rumor that the Clockwork Droids will appear in the 12^th Doctor’s (Peter Capaldi) debut story of series eight, which is set in Victorian times. The latest tenuous bit of  “evidence” to support the rumor is the resume of an actor that describes him as playing a “Restaurant Droid.” Of course that could be any sort of droid, couldn’t it?

In “The Girl in the Fireplace,” the 10^th Doctor (David Tennant) defeated the time-travelling robots by cutting them off from their starship in the future, and, with no purpose anymore, they all shut down and were left stranded in 18^th century France.

Although I would enjoy seeing the creepy-looking ‘bots one more time, it seems highly unlikely the same particular group of robots would reappear; perhaps the droids would be from a similar ship to the Pompadour.

Matt Smith IS… the 13th Doctor???

Despite what he’s said in the very recent past, DOCTOR WHO show-runner Steven Moffat now insists that Matt Smith is not the 11^th Doctor, but rather the 13^th and final incarnation of the Time Lord.

Moffat told the Radio Times:

“We’ll find out that Matt Smith is actually the 13th Doctor. Although everyone knows that the Doctor can only regenerate 12 times. The 12-regenerations limit is a central part of Doctor Who mythology – science fiction is all about rules, you can’t just casually break them. So if the Doctor can never change again, what’s Peter Capaldi doing in the Christmas Special?”

Huh?

David Tennant Introduces ‘Day of the Doctor’ — Sort of…

It would appear that the BBC does have something of a sense of humor after all, releasing this parody video starring the 10th Doctor, David Tennant, just days before the DOCTOR WHO 50^th anniversary story, “The Day of the Doctor.”

David poking fun at the “cheap” production values of the anniversary story is, of course, perfectly appropriate when viewed in the context of the show’s long-running (and richly deserved) reputation for wobbly sets and cut-rate visual effects because it’s a wink and nod to longtime fans who weathered the primitive years to get to the state-of-the-art version of the series we see now.

However, as far as the cheapness of the production goes, one thing was always perfectly clear: Whether the producers had $1 or $10 to make a show in any given week, DOCTOR WHO was put together with more love than almost any other show on TV. That love infuses every frame of the series, from the opening image of “An Unearthly Child” to the stuffed giant rat of “The Talons of Weng-Chiang” to the assembly of monsters in “The Pandorica Opens.” DOCTOR WHO has always been made with as much love as can be packed into the small screen. Luckily, our televisions are bigger on the inside, too.