Peter Capaldi on being an "older" Doctor, the Time Lord's favourite newspaper and why not-cool is suddenly cool
The Twelfth Doctor also reveals why the inter-galactic character is just like Santa...
Apart from its global appeal, the other unusual thing about Doctor Who, the telly Holy Grail, is how long it has lasted. Obviously, the regeneration helps – “Any show would be thrilled with the opportunity to get rid of the leading man or woman and replace them with someone else.” The creative vision regenerates, too – Steven Moffat will have left by 2018, to be replaced by Chris Chibnall, creator of Broadchurch.
Within that, there’s something special about the Doctor. “If you’d said to anyone 12 years ago, ‘Doctor Who is going to come back, and it’s going to be this international smash,’ you’d have said, ‘You’re kidding. How can the world embrace this thing we’ve already given up on? With cardboard sets and rubbery models and overacting?’”
Capaldi sees the love for Doctor Who as a proxy affection for Britishness, because he’s such a British hero – he has no superpowers, no incredible strength. He isn’t square-jawed or sixpacked. All he has is a screwdriver, like Super-DIY-Dad.
He seems to spend a lot of time thinking, which is the opposite of what heroism is supposed to be about. “I’m sure he gets the Guardian,” Capaldi says. “That’s how he seems to me. He’s always been someone who gets the Guardian. There are some parts of the universe where it’s harder to get hold of.”
Capaldi has a metaphysical, also psychological explanation of the Doctor’s appeal: “It’s one of the nice things about the show, it’s not encouraged in the publicity, but it is quite… sad. This death motif… A lot of the young people I meet who love it, they tend to feel slightly outside, not part of the gang. In a way, it’s a show for not-cool people, which now has suddenly become for cool people as well. People’s relationship with the show is very personal.”
Then he drops this bombshell. “He’s really not human at all. That’s what I believe. Who you see is what he has chosen to present, because that’s the only way that humans can understand him and what he is.”
But… but how can he understand the human condition, if he has no human traits? I protest, my faith momentarily shattered.
“The truth is,” says Peter Capaldi, “he comprehends it too much. His problem is that he sort of knows everything. That makes life quite hard.”
The Doctor Who Christmas special is on BBC1 on Christmas Day
