Peter Capaldi has portrayed a lot of great characters prior to his time on Doctor Who. Recently, he channeled one of his most notorious characters, Malcolm Tucker, for a Letters Live event.
There have to be times when Peter Capaldi wonders what would happen if he channels his former The Thick of It character Malcolm Tucker on Doctor Who. It would be a perfect meeting for the more sarcastic and cutting Doctor, giving his insults a more profane edge. Considering this, the memes attributing Tucker quotes to the Doctor are quite appropriate. Alas, Doctor Who is a family show, making the merging of these characters impossible in that sense.
Fortunately, we have those reruns of The Thick of It (and its spin-off movie In the Loop) to watch when we want to see Capaldi truly in his element. We also have moments like the one that happened this past March, when Capaldi brought Tucker back for a reading at a Letters Live event, facing off against Matt Berry of The IT Crowd and The Mighty Boosh.
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In this reading, Capaldi and Berry read the letters between the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire and his nemesis, the Zaporozhian Cossacks. It was an exchange filled with the insults and threats of the day, a time and place in which Tucker would have excelled. In fact, when watching Capaldi read those letters with a Tucker-esque attitude, one had to wonder whether or not the character wrote several of those missives.
Peter Capaldi on Letters Live March 2016 (credit: Letters Live)
These readings would likely have been just as amusing had Capaldi read them as the Doctor. Something about the Doctor reciting insults and threats written centuries ago is fitting, especially if Capaldi had come out on stage after emerging from a TARDIS. It is a missed opportunity.
One question, though: Why hasn’t Berry appeared on Doctor Who, yet?
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