Peter Capaldi is the Twelfth Doctor

"Commander Maxil, you say?"

It's official: Peter Capaldi, the wonderful actor famous for his role in the glorious BBC satire 'The Thick Of It', is the new Doctor! When Matt Smith does the bright light fandango at the end of the year, it will be Peter's sardonic face that emerges from the regeno-morph visuals.

When the rumours first started to circulate, I took them with an entire cellar of salt. It just seemed too good to be true. Whenever a new Doctor is due to be announced, the same questions begin to circle like a flock of winged monkeys: "Will it be Bill Nighy?" "Alan Rickman would make an excellent Doctor!" "How about Richard E. Grant... but officially, this time?" Then, when it becomes clear that NuWho has eyes only for young'uns, the list of possibles become increasingly more bizarre. This time around, I heard the names Rupert Grint (aka Ron Weasley) and Russell Tovey (jug-eared baby-face from the History Boys) being speculated. Given the show's predilection for casting heart-throbs (Tennant, Smith, Hartnell) I considered the idea of Peter Capaldi just too good to be true. With the greatest respect to Mr. Capaldi, he wasn't going to have the nation's teenage hearts aflutter.

Just... no.

But then the bookmakers began suspending bets on him, and as the 'Doctor Who Live' show rolled into view and a nervous, clean-shaven Rufus Hound accidentally blurted out 'Peter Ecclestone', I started to wonder if it could all be true after all. So much so that when the man himself walked into the confetti-strewn studio, I felt as if it could only ever have been him. And what a choice!

Cue endless sweary Doctor jokes on Twitter. Because Capaldi has for some time been synonymous with his most famous character on screen: Malcolm Tucker, the Machiavellian spin doctor of 'The Thick Of It', whose weapons-grade swearing is the stuff of legend. By all accounts, Capaldi himself is a very mild-mannered, gentle soul; which highlights the true strength of his acting ability in the form of Tucker. I can't, at this stage, imagine exactly how he'll interpret the Doctor. Will the Twelfth Doctor return to the original, slightly cantankerous and irascible figure that William Hartnell gave us back in 1963? At 55, Capaldi is the same age as Hartnell was when he took up the TARDIS reins. Will he have shades of Colin Baker's unhinged Sixth Doctor, or the darker tones of Final Season McCoy? Perhaps he'll surprise us all with a light-hearted, valiant hero as the Doctor has been for his previous two incarnations; although Steven Moffat did seem to suggest this would not be the case, as he characterised the new Doctor as "not like Matt" when asked to sum him up in three words.

Maybe not that dark...

There are many reasons to celebrate Capaldi beyond his ability to act. There is his age, something which (in my opinion) marks a return to a more asexual Doctor who is very unlikely to be seen snogging his way across the universe. His maturity also means that we may see less of the flippant sexual innuendo that has, at times, slightly spoilt otherwise poignant moments in NuWho. Plus, Capaldi is a hard and fast, dyed-in-the-wool fan. He was writing letters to the Radio Times at age 15 to commend them on their Doctor Who Special, and he's even penned an article or two for Doctor Who fanzines in the past. Having a fan in the role really makes a difference, and should help to secure Capaldi in the role for more than one season (cough, Ecclestone, cough). Not to mention the fact that having a Scot in the TARDIS can only ever be a good thing.

Best Doctor

Some may dislike the choice: those who've grown up with only NuWho may feel that he is too old to be the Doctor. But then, maybe it's time for the new fans to experience the older fans' misgivings about the Doctor being too young for so long. The fact is, he's over 900 years old and it doesn't hurt to give him a fizzog that fits. The fact that he's been in the show before as a different character has no relevance, as the show has plenty of prior examples: Colin Baker (Commander Maxil, later the Sixth Doctor), Lalla Ward (Princess Astra, later Romana) and Freema Agyeman (Adeola Oshodi, later Martha Jones) to name a few.

So, raise a glass to the new Doctor, Mr. Peter Capaldi. He is the new Doctor and, as the Ninth might have said, he's going to be fantastic!


UPDATE: Rufus Hound has blogged about his appearance on Doctor Who Live, stating categorically that he didn't know it was Peter Capaldi until it was announced. You can read more about it here: http://rufushound.wordpress.com/2013/08/05/i-want-to-shoot-myself-in-the-head/