Popular actor and longtime fan to reverse trend of younger Doctors.
After much anticipation and rampant fan speculation, veteran actor Peter Capaldi has been announced as the new Doctor in the BBC’s long-running and beloved series Doctor Who. While many fans were hoping for a new Doctor who wasn’t a white male, there was never any indication from the BBC or showrunner Stephen Moffat that that was a realistic possibility.
Capaldi, a fan of the show for at least 40 years, has a long history of BBC appearances, and brings a return to the middle-aged, crazy-uncle Doctors of the 20th century. Some younger fans have already decried this change as an interruption in their eye candy, but history indicates that new Doctors are always considered the worst thing to ever happen to the show, and they only rarely are.
More regular BBC viewers are having some fun attempting to reconcile the Doctor’s kid-friendly persona with Capaldi’s most prominent recent role as the phenomenally foul-mouthed Malcom Tucker on In The Thick Of It. Others, predictably, are just having some fun with the contrast.
Photo—AP/Dominic Lipinski