Peter Capaldi’s Doctor Who: ‘It was the right time to go’
Peter Capaldi may no longer be a Time Lord but he has few regrets.
It was not difficult for Peter Capaldi to end his reign as the renegade time traveller tasked with the epic struggle of saving the universe in the beloved Doctor Who television seriesin last year’s Christmas special. “It was the right time to go,” Capaldi tells Review. “I took it seriously and gave all of myself to the role. To do that for nine months a year is not good on the mind and it can become quite exhausting. But I was sad to say goodbye to my friends who I had worked with for a long time.
“The thing with Doctor Who is that it is a big show. It is a big brand. There are a lot of people who are very concerned about how it rates and so you have to try and understand their concern but at the same time to invest yourself in it.
“You have to make the role your own. I tried to remember that the Doctor is not a human being, he is an alien. He is obsessive. He considers humans capable of great grace and courage but also great stupidity. So he is not reticent about that. He doesn’t need to be loved by them. He doesn’t feel any need whatsoever to be given the thumbs up by the human race.”
In his farewell scene, as his spaceship, the Tardis, hurtles through time and space, the Doctor is ready for his regeneration (a clever device thought up by the BBC to continue the show with each new lead actor). “Never be cruel, never be cowardly,” Capaldi says as the 12th Doctor in his thick Scottish accent, stumbling and gasping. “And never ever eat pears! Remember: hate is always foolish and love is always wise. Always try to be nice. Laugh hard. Run fast. Be kind. Doctor: I let you go.”
It was a poignant finale for this unique manifestation of the rebel Time Lord from the planet Gallifrey. Capaldi’s incarnation of the Doctor was often prickly, volatile and fearless. But he also was shrewd, vulnerable and thoughtful, all of which made for a typically enigmatic personality.
The Doctor, first played by William Hartnell from 1963 to 1966, usually resists regeneration. Each new Doctor habitually laments what they have become when they spot their reflection.
Capaldi’s Doctor was saying farewell to his time in the galaxy while also inaugurating a new era for the show with a female Doctor, portrayed by Jodie Whittaker. In the few glimpses of the new Doctor so far, there are no complaints with the regeneration. “I think it will be wonderful,” Capaldi says of Whittaker. “Everybody goes on about Doctor Who being all about change but it’s not really. It just reconstitutes itself in order to carry on doing the same thing, which is really a weird alien blowing up monsters. As long as that happens, I think Jodie will do it brilliantly.”
Capaldi, who appears at the Supernova Comic Con and Gaming Expo in Melbourne and on the Gold Coast this month, says he modelled his Doctor on a mix of predecessors: the grouchy Hartnell; cosmic hobo Patrick Troughton (1966-69); dashing action-man Jon Pertwee (1970-74) and scarf-wearing bohemian Tom Baker (1974-81).
“I had grown up with the show,” he says. “I’d been influenced without realising it by the first four Doctors, William Hartnell, Patrick Troughton, Jon Pertwee and Tom Baker. That’s basically me growing up right there, with them, for those years. I was a big fan.
“You just end up being yourself, albeit with a heroic side, which isn’t real, and an intellect, which isn’t my intellect. But I think that is largely true of most roles. People often have it the wrong way round. You don’t become the role, the role becomes you.”
Capaldi’s 12th Doctor — or 13th, if you include John Hurt’s “War Doctor” — received mixed reviews from fans of the longest-running science fiction program in TV history. Ratings fell. Yet Capaldi was often compelling as the sharp-suited, time-travelling philosopher, explorer and hero, using his sonic sunglasses, psychic paper and electric guitar to save humanity.
When Capaldi became the Doctor, the show was already fixed in popular culture. It is a coveted role and not one to be taken lightly. After all, using wit and wisdom more than violence to battle Daleks, Cybermen, Zygons and that other apostate Time Lord, the Master, is a serious business.
The remaining rollcall of Doctors is: Peter Davison (1982-84), Colin Baker (1984-86), Sylvester McCoy (1987-89) and, after a hiatus, Paul McGann (1996). The show was rebooted with Christopher Eccleston (2005), David Tennant (2005-10) and Matt Smith (2010-13). Peter Cushing also played the Doctor in two Dalek-themed big-screen movies in the mid-1960s.
Each generation of fans has its favourite, but few can love them all. “There are moments that people are going to be happy with and there are going to be moments that people are going to be unhappy with, but that is part of the day-to-day process of producing a program on this scale,” Capaldi says without any regrets.
Doctor Who was one of the first TV programs to cultivate a network of fans who in the early days established clubs, produced homemade newsletters and enticed actors to appear at conventions, where every facet of the show was discussed and merchandise traded. But social media and online forums now let fans cast judgments in real time, not all of which are entirely fair. “I don’t take any notice of it,” Capaldi says. “Some of the younger actors are quite happy to expose themselves to how they are going down on social media. But I don’t think it is a good thing because it is not necessarily an accurate expression of what people think. It is often just the noisiest people making their useless opinions heard.”
Capaldi has always had a unique rapport with fans. He wrote a handwritten letter to reassure a nine-year-old boy who was upset about his departure from the show. And he sent a video message, as the Doctor, to another young boy grieving his grandmother’s death.
He is looking forward to returning to Australia. “We get invited to a fantastic country and we also get to meet lots of people who loved the work that we’ve done, so what’s not to like?” He will be joined by Doctor Who co-star Pearl Mackie, who played companion Bill Potts.
Capaldi was, perhaps, an unusual choice to play the Doctor, given he was well known as the foul-mouthed Machiavellian political adviser Malcolm Tucker in the superb political comedy The Thick of It (2005-12). “Come the f. k in or f. k the f. k off,” Tucker says in one episode, responding to a knock at the door.
Fans of the Armando Iannucci-directed parody of British politics often would approach Capaldi in the street and ask to be sworn at. He usually responded with “f. k off”. But that ended when Capaldi was cast as the Doctor, in a more family friendly show.
“Malcolm is not really like me at all,” Capaldi says. “Some of my friends say it is really like me. No, all of that vitriol and aggression is not really how I am. The incredible verbal dexterity is also not how I am. There is actually a much greater distance between myself and Malcolm Tucker than there is between myself and the Doctor.”
So what would Tucker make of global politics today? “I think (Malcolm) would be in despair,” Capaldi says. “Because however horrendous one might have thought Malcolm was, I think ultimately he was actually a good guy. He would just think we live in a world of idiots.
“I really don’t know what the answer is. It really upsets me. It seems to be a kind of collective stupidity … I think it is more the Doctor’s area than Malcolm’s.
“But what is refreshing is to see such a world that, given the changes are so extreme, people have finally realised that it is time to respond. You know that time you are always frightened of is coming? Well, it’s sort of here. So you’d better cope with it and try and help change things. Also seeing the young people responding is so lovely and great … it is hard to find much that is amusing in politics at the moment.”
While a return as the Doctor or Malcolm Tucker remains a future possibility, Capaldi’s next project is likely to be acting in a movie directed by Iannucci.
But for now he is enjoying doing more of less, after a hectic schedule playing the Doctor for three seasons from 2014.
Capaldi feels blessed to have had the opportunity to portray two seminal TV characters. He has had other notable roles in The Hour (2012) and The Musketeers (2014-16). He has appeared in movies such as Paddington (2014), Paddington 2 (2017), World War Z (2013) and Dangerous Liaisons (1988). And he won an Oscar and BAFTA for directing the short film Franz Kafka’s It’s A Wonderful Life (1993).
But as an entertainment industry veteran, now aged 60, it has not always been easy. The Glasgow-born, multitalented Capaldi — who has acted, written and directed film and TV — is frank about having to struggle from one job to the next in the 1980s and 90s.
“I’ve had incredible luck and I don’t give up,” he says. “The very tough thing with acting is where they say you mustn’t give up if you don’t have any work. But how do you not give up if there is nothing really to do? You’ve just got to keep trying to be positive.
“At the end of the day, I was in the right place at the right time. The Thick of It completely changed my career. It was something that transformed how people thought of me and led to Doctor Who, on a much larger scale. Those were just incredible pieces of good fortune.”
Peter Capaldi appears at Supanova Comic Con & Gaming in Melbourne on April 21 and 22 and at the Gold Coast on April 28 and 29.