What We Learned About Peter Capaldi This Weekend!

Jonathan Appleton is a writer at Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews - All the latest Doctor Who news and reviews with our weekly podKast, features and interviews, and a long-running forum.

Peter Capaldi has offered several intriguing insights into his hopes for future series of Doctor Who, as well as reflections on his recently transmitted debut season. Why does he fancy a change of décor? Who should the Doctor meet in the next celebrity historical? Which elements of the scripts did he want to cut?

All of this and more was discussed at the weekend’s hot ticket event, An Afternoon with Mark Gatiss and Friends, held at the Criterion Theatre in the West End in aid of the London Lesbian and Gay Switchboard. The Doctor Who and Sherlock writer and performer gathered a bunch of his pals together including Andrew Scott, Amanda Abbington, Derren Brown and Miranda Richardson for an entertaining sounding session of chat. But enough of who else was there – what did the Doctor have to say?

A New Look for the TARDIS?

It’s fair to say that if Peter were to open up a present on Christmas morning and find it contained a brand new TARDIS console room (okay, it would have to be a very large parcel) he’d be a happy man:

“Roundels. I like the old Sixties roundels. That was the coolest look and I think it’s also appropriate for the way this Doctor dresses. It’s got a sort of Edwardian look about it  – not the actual console – it’s the bits and pieces lying around. Cricket bats, maps and odds and ends and things. There’s a Jules Verne quality to it – I would like to make it more Bauhaus.”

Peter is realistic enough to know he may not get his wish (“they feel if they’ve spent a certain amount of money on a certain amount of props, then they won’t get rid of those props until they’ve been used. This applies equally to the TARDIS. It’s essentially Matt’s.”) but this former art school student has clearly given this some thought…

The Doctor Has A Dream

Capaldi has his own ideas on who he would like to see his Doctor meet in future episodes:

“Martin Luther King… I don’t see why the Doctor shouldn’t be involved in the civil rights struggle. Those Ku Klux Klan guys – what’s going on there?”

Responding to the suggestion of an encounter with that giant of the civil rights movement, Gatiss gave it a qualified welcome:

“I think it would be really interesting but it would be a big challenge because you’d have to work out exactly the tone of the adventure.”

If it’s not to be MLK, Capaldi fancies meeting blues great Robert Johnson “who legend had it sold his soul to the devil on the crossroads at Mississippi at midnight.”

Sounds like the basis of a great Doctor Who story right there…

It’s time to say goodbye to Amy and Rory in The Angels Take Manhattan

Cut the Soppy Stuff

Capaldi was unequivocal in his view that he didn’t want his Doctor to be an appealing figure and offered an interesting snippet into how far he was able to go in influencing the Twelfth Doctor’s characterisation:

“Because Matt was so beloved and so open, I felt I had to be a bit more closed. I think Steven and myself had a hand in how far we could go with that.”

“I would certainly sometimes find some material that I found a little weepy, and seeking the audience’s affection – and I would try and remove them. I don’t want them to like me!”

On Being a Heartthrob… and Not Going Anywhere Soon

Peter pronounced himself baffled at the suggestion that he’s considered “gorgeous, hot and sexy” by a sizeable chunk of Doctor Who’s globe-spanning fandom and, not for the first time, displayed a healthy ability to remain grounded whilst at the centre of an unimaginable level of public attention:

“I genuinely can’t believe it… The only person that I want to love me is my wife. If people enjoy my profile from the privacy of their own home, that’s entirely up to you.”

Although he pointed to the energy-sapping schedule involved in being the Doctor (“At the end of the day, the job is all-consuming, it’s a factory – a Doctor Who factory!… But it is every day for eight months and you can get tired…”), fans impressed with Peter’s performance so far will surely be thrilled to learn he has just the one item on his bucket list:

“If I did have an ambition it would be not to regenerate for a while.”

So should it be back to the roundels for the TARDIS? Civil rights struggles for the Doctor? More grumpiness in Series 9? There’s plenty here to give your views on – let us know what you think!

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