If you’re the sort of person who prefers to be surprised, do not click on this thread!
I, for one, could not be more thrilled.
I expect to see a blizzard of entertaining mash-up macros over the next few days.
Categories: arts & entertainment, fun & hobbies
Otterday! And Open Thread 
100 books by women in 2016 
Today was a singing day 
Hoyden About Town 
I first decided I would watch anything Capaldi ever appeared in following his electrifying performance in Prime Suspect 3, where he played a drag artiste named Vera Reynolds. That was back in 1993.
I haven’t seen much that he’s been in, but I was interested to wake up this morning and hear this on the ABC radio news as one of the main headlines 🙂
I just discovered that Capaldi and Craig Ferguson were in a punk rock band together when they were students in Glasgow. I do hope there’s some video footage somewhere – such angry pretty young men they must have been.
I’m also so glad that they’ve cast a 50+ Doctor again, as is Den of Geek.
thnk ths s wsm nws. Cpld wll brng sm grvts nd dpth t th chrctr rthr thn th flmbync f Tnnnt nd Smth. jst hp tht th scrpts wll ql th ctr nd nt b lt f spd wrttn nnsns. t wll b RLLY ntrstng t s th dynmc btwn hm nd Clr s wll. Sh cld b hs dghtr fr cryng t ld!
It was very nice of the Mof to arrange that birthday present for me 🙂
Capaldi has amazing range. He will be a great Doctor if the writers are up to the challenge!
Luke, I have absolutely no doubt that Capaldi’s Doctor will have flamboyance as well as gravitas and depth (and Tennant and Smith also do gravitas and depth, btw, IMO) – there may be some adjustment of proportions, that’s all. As Mick said, he has amazing range. He also looks damn fit, so I’m sure there will still be plenty of running.
Mick – happy birthday!
Tumblr to the rescue – photo of Capaldi and Fergusion playing with Dreamboys (Ferguson is the drummer).
This pic of him in The Ladykillers! How Whovian is that scarf?
That’s brilliant! For one, Capaldi was brilliant in Torchwood: Children of Earth as John Frobisher (which is the only thing I have seen him in). His performance was truly chilling. And I’m in full agreement with Luke above – the dynamic between Clara and the Doctor will be VERY interesting to see. Hopefully we’ll get a bit of a break from the ‘everyone falls in love with the Doctor because he’s young and hot’ thing! I suspect Clara’s in for a bit of a shock though, on his regeneration. 😀
I was delighted too! Age + great actor = win.
Apparently he was in The Fires of Pompeii, though I don’t really remember that episode. I’ve seen him in two things I remember well. First was The History of Tom Jones, where he played Lord Fellamar – a sleazoid from head to toe, great role – and the other was an episode of Foyle’s War. (Totally recommend Tom Jones to anyone who hasn’t seen it: Brian Blessed literally chewing the scenery is Not To Be Missed.)
Capaldi and Blessed:
https://www.youtube.com/embed/lXyCbbulHPA?version=3&rel=1&fs=1&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&wmode=transparent
Does Clara remember all the regenerations, now? She might be a bit unshockable at this point.
Thanks tigtog!
Lovely little bit of serendipity: one of the characters in Tom Jones was played by Sylvester McCoy.
Hw ftn ds smbdy 55+ gt cst s ldng rl nlss t’s tm fr nw Mss Mrpl? t’s shm t dsn’t hppn mr ftn.
Old men? Plenty. Bruce Willis (58), John Travolta (59), Harrison Ford (71) are still working. I was about to add George Clooney, but he’s only 52 – but still considered a “heartthrob”. How many postmenopausal women are panted over? Heck, Sean Connery (82) was still considered a movie heartthrob until relatively recently. Mel Gibson is 57 and a disgusting human being, and he’s working. Richard Gere is 63 and his last big leading role was only 2 years ago. Hell, Johnny Depp is already 50! I don’t see him going away any time soon – Pirates of the Caribbean 5 (hundred) is already in pre-production. Anthony Hopkins is 75, Christopher Walken is 70, Alan Rickman is 67, Hugh Laurie is 54 (almost scrapes in), Anthony Head is 59…
Comment #18 and no one’s mentioned Local Hero yet? I can’t be the only person with a memory that long.
Mille remerciements for the band pic!
Oh, I remembered. When I saw him in Prime Suspect 3 I realised that he was the guy from Local Hero, I just hadn’t kept up with what he’d been doing in between.
BTW, there is a tumblr devoted to Peter Capaldi’s hair.
I like Peter Capaldi as an actor and I’m sure he’ll do a good job, but I thought this was unimaginative casting. Physically as a tall, white, slender man, he is a very similar look to the last two doctors, and he has the same quirky, fun style as them. Where is our female doctor? Our black or Asian doctor? Or even a short, fat doctor? It’s like the casting people have a particular image in their mind and don’t want to move too far from it.
I’m a mix of squee/swoon because it’s Peter Capaldi; eye roll/sigh at all the interwebs comments about how this is a good thing because people will stop falling in love with the doctor (see above re: squee/swoon) and really hacked off about Steven Moffat’s comments in the announcement show about ‘Helen Mirren says there should be a woman doctor, I say that the queen of England should be played by a man’. Maybe it was meant as light hearted comment on HM’s huge award success in roles as Elizabeth’s 1&2 but it came of as nasty and implying the idea of a female doctor was utterly ridiculous and took the shine off an otherwise good choice.
Alan Rickman’s 67?
::faints::
Meh, can’t summon up much enthusiasm for this – not because Peter Capaldi’s a poor actor, he’s not. He was absolutely brilliant in Children of Earth and The Thick of It and so many things. But it’s just more of the same – a thin straight white man, who’s a fanboy. Reinforcing the idea that that’s who the real fans are and always have been – white boys playing Doctor and Dalek on the playground turn into the actors and the showrunners and the writers. Nor do I see Capaldi staying in the role very long, unless they really cut back on the number of episodes.
I quite like this take on the whole thing actually. Timey Wimey Sausage Festy
Not to say that Peter Capaldi won’t do a great job, I think he will but yeah, they could have pushed the boat, or Tardis, out a little.
I’m not fussed one way or another about the Doctor being a woman or man. It would have been really interesting to see, especially given the bloody marvellous acting talent available in the UK (as Ang Lee asked at S&S auditions, “Can everyone in England act?”). But, fiction or no, fantasy or no, alien or no, the Doctor is a male character and I’m just as happy to see him stay that way as I would be if they’d made the change.
I’d like to see Stephen Moffatt disappear from the series, though.
“The Doctor is a male character”? Or… not. It’s established in canon that Time Lords change gender – they’re not either “male” or “female” (or whatever the Gallifreyan equivalent is) once and forever.
Utterly underwhelmed, really.
I had a friend who made what I thought was rather a good point about the male/female Doctor thing, namely that he is one of the few non-violent male role models on TV and for that reason she would prefer him to stay male.
I had a little chuckle looking at his IMDB Filmography and seeing his role in World War Z as “WHO Doctor”.
My son’s library borrowed Doctor Who trivia book says that not only has the Doctor met a Time Lady in a previous episode, it also claims he has a daughter.
Arcadia, there’s definitely both male and female Gallifreyans, although I’m not sure every Gallifreyan is a Time Lord, and we have seen female Time Lords in the canon. Until Lauredhel’s comment I was unaware of any canonical gender switches resulting from a regeneration though, a datum which makes Moff’s intransigence on this even more annoying.
If I were a fanfic writer, I’d now be writing a story about how one particular time lord, by attaching himself too closely to one time and place, also became stuck in a narrow range of possible regenerations. Time and space and sex and race intersectionality is messy.
I think this Doctor clock shows how increasingly same-y the Doctors have become, over the full arc of the show.
Lauredhel – is that a new-series thing in the canon? I haven’t watched many of them, and pretty much bowed out when Matt Smith came along.
I suspect half the problem would be dealt with if they’d write Better Damn Companions. It can be done, it has been done (think Liz Shaw or Donna Noble, in very different ways). Just getting rid of the whole unresolved sexual tension theme would be a start. Last time that was interesting was when Sarah Jane let rip at the tenth Doctor.
There’s been a few canon statements about gender and regeneration. From the Tardis wiki:
Neil Gaiman wrote the script for The Doctor’s Wife, and definitely intended the reading that the Doctor hirself can change gender:
Thanks, Mary!
I don’t recall much about The Doctor’s Wife except for how horrible it was – what was done to the woman the TARDIS inhabited (if that’s the word).
What Mary said. Gaiman not only intended the gender-change-is-canon aspect, he reveled in it, according to one interview I’ve heard with him.
One of the first things Matt Smith said as the Doctor was “I’m a girl!” while feeling his newly regenerated hair.
I don’t think it is the apt word at all, Kitteh. The TARDIS never took over the body of any living woman – the antagonists in that episode forced the TARDIS to inhabit a (manufactured) fleshly avatar is more like it.
Actually, I’m totally wrong about that, aren’t I? I guess it was so horrible that I constructed an alternate reality.
Maybe I missed something, because I got the impression that Idris was a proper person, who was driven mad by having previous TARDISes transplanted into her head before.
Oops, should have hit f5…
Actually, I’m totally wrong about that, aren’t I? I guess it was so horrible that I constructed an alternate reality.
You’re not totally wrong. Idris was a person beforehand, but the TARDIS was forced into her body. So horrible, but it’s not the TARDIS who did it to her.
Lauredhel – is that a new-series thing in the canon? I haven’t watched many of them, and pretty much bowed out when Matt Smith came along.
While that’s been answered, it reminds me another difference between the new and old series, which is that the old series was pretty clear on the twelve regenerations limit (although not nearly as clear on whether that meant twelve lives or regenerating twelve times to make thirteen lives). But the former would mean that Peter Capaldi is the last Doctor.
The new series hasn’t mentioned this limit, and has even included dialogue suggesting there isn’t one (a possible change made in the Time War).
But if there is a limit, and it’s twelve rather than thirteen, then breaking it would be an logical component of the Twelfth’s story. And finally getting round to including a nonwhitemale Doctor would be an interesting symbol of that. (Here’s hoping that’s something like what Neil Gaiman meant when he said that he’d rather see a female Dctor succeed what the Twelfth ends up being rather than what the Eleventh was).
Just getting rid of the whole unresolved sexual tension theme would be a start.
With you there. Though for most of Amy’s run, any UST between her and the Doctor existed pretty much only in Rory’s head.
I’ve heard various speculations on the number of regenerations thing, including that since all the other Time Lords are dead the limit is gone (this does not make sense to me) and that the Doctor now has all the regenerations that River Song gave him (although from memory she’d already used two or three of them by stage).
I thought I read somewhere about one of the writers referring to this Dr as the last one. But I could have imagined that too.
My wording was unclear – I didn’t mean the TARDIS inhabited her in the sense of it being responsible for what happened.
There has been mention of the twelve regenerations thing with the Capaldi announcement. I didn’t notice who it was – Moffatt, maybe? – but it was of the “We’ll be dealing with that” variety.