Peter Capaldi is the new Doctor on “Doctor Who,” and that sounds just marvelous.
After going with an unknown in Matt Smith – not to mention the youngest Doctor ever – for the Eleventh Doctor, Steven Moffat went with a familiar – and older – quantity in Capaldi, the 55-year-old Scottish character actor best known on both sides of the pond as ruthless, foul-mouthed political fixer Malcolm Tucker from “The Thick of It,” and its spin-off movie “In the Loop.”
Capaldi has a connection to the franchise, as he played one of the bureaucratic villains of the “Torchwood: Children of Earth” miniseries. (UPDATE: As a commenter reminded me, he also guest-starred in the Tenth Doctor adventure “The Fires of Pompeii.”) He’s a great actor, and a funny one, and given Moffat’s love of their shared native land, he might even get to use his own accent. (As the Tenth Doctor, David Tennant played English.)
As always, it would be nice to ponder a radically different casting approach, whether a female Doctor, or a minority one, but Capaldi’s credentials for the gig are impeccable. And in going with an actor significantly older than any of the other modern Doctors, Moffat is also sending a message that the character hasn’t just turned into a hunky action hero.
Very much looking forward to this. Also imagining that if Moffat had told Capaldi he didn’t get the gig, the phone call might have gone like this: