Doctor Who’s Peter Capaldi wouldn’t join a multi-Doctor special
By Dan Selcke
The other week, we learned that lead actor Jodie Whittaker and showrunner Chris Chibnall were both leaving Doctor Who after three seasons piloting the TARDIS — one of those seasons is still to come, as are a bunch of specials.
This was big news, but not exactly surprising, since the actors behind the Doctor usually retire after three seasons or so. We don’t know who is going to replace Whittaker as the sci-fi icon, but prominent people from the show’s past have been wishing her well, including former showrunner Steven Moffat:
"Ahh, it breaks my heart when a Doctor Who resigns. It feels like there’s a vacancy in the universe. Who will keep the lights on for the children? Who will fight the monsters in our dreams? But it’s too soon to be sad – there’s going to be a whole new season of Jodie’s charming, fast, brilliant, silly Doctor! Jodie. I was going to say thank you for keeping the TARDIS safe – but no! Thank you for keeping it dangerous!"
It’s great to get a vote of confidence from one of the big creative forces behind the show’s revival in 2005. Moffat was a writer on Doctor Who from the very beginning, and graduated to showrunner during the eras of the Eleventh and Twelfth Doctors, played by Matt Smith and Peter Capaldi respectively.
Doctor Who star Peter Capaldi has confidence in Jodie Whittaker
Speaking of, Capaldi weighed in on what it will be like for Whittaker to step down from such an iconic role. “Well, Jodie’s lovely and amazing,” he told Radio Times. I’m sure she can handle all of that without any advice from me. She’s brilliant.”
Still, it helps to have people in your corner, especially those who have been through the same experience. “I always remember when I took over from Matt. It was only when I left that I realized how gracious Matt had been to me because I realized he was leaving. It was while he was leaving, he was being so kind to me. He was going through the emotional turmoil of leaving and took the time to be gracious to me. It’s like, the whole Doctor Who experience, it’s not over until it’s over, you know? You don’t really see it clearly until you’ve been through it.”
"Doctor Who is kind of a thing where you have a responsibility to it, and to the people who work on it, and to the people who love it, that is quite a heavy responsibility. So to have that lifted means that you can relax a bit, and do things that are more esoteric and stranger and darker.And certainly, I think post-Doctor Who I’m more like the way I was pre-Doctor Who. The whole Doctor Who thing, you have to sort of become a different person, really, to do that. So it’s a relief to return to who I was before."
It does indeed sound like a big responsibility. Perhaps the enormity of it is why Capaldi doesn’t see himself returning for one of those multi-Doctor specials the show sometimes does. “I wouldn’t really fancy that,” he said on the BBC’s Sunday with Steven Rainey. “There are so many Doctors now. I’m quite happy with what I did, you know. I loved my time on Doctor Who, but I think the more of the multi-Doctor stories you have the less effective they are, really.”
The thirteenth season of Doctor Who, Whittaker’s last, will premiere sometime this year…although we’ll be getting specials that go well into 2022, so she’ll be around for a while yet.
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