DAVID TENNANT
DAVID TENNANT IS BACK AS THE DOCTOR. WE STILL CAN’T BELIEVE IT, EVEN THOUGH WE SPOKE TO HIM OURSELVES
WHEN SFX catches up with David Tennant at Bad Wolf Studios in Cardiff, it’s the day after his birthday, and he’s still a young fanboy at heart(s). “I’m going around taking pictures of everything I can,” he laughs. “I’ll probably have my phone confiscated as I leave…”
A little bird tells us that he grabbed a few selfies with the Wrarth Warriors on the set of “The Star Beast”, the first of three anniversary specials being released this month. “Oh, always!” he says, scoffing jovially. “Oh, of course. That’s day one…”
But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. This is April 2023. It’s before episode title reveals, before trailers and Toymakers, and we’re still in the time (Lord)-honoured tradition of everything being a secret. What we do know is that Tennant is indeed back, back, back! But he’s not the Tenth Doctor. No, he’s not even the Meta-Crisis Doctor. He’s the Fourteenth Doctor – officially.
But did he ever think he’d ever be playing any Doctor again?
“I think it would be disingenuous to pretend I wasn’t entertaining that as a possibility, because there’s precedent for it,” he admits. “I’ve done it for the 50th anniversary of Doctor Who. I suppose I might have been called back for a subsequent anniversary if I was still able to get in the suit and run around.
“What I didn’t imagine is that I would be back as the Doctor for any length of time. I suppose I imagined I might drop in on somebody else’s Doctor, as I had with Matt [Smith] on the 50th, to be part of a celebratory guest cast.
“So no, I don’t think I ever really imagined I’d be back in the way that Catherine [Tate] and I got to enjoy for these three episodes.”
WHO AM I?
Three special episodes, and a brand new Doctor – but probably not the one you were expecting – with an old enemy, some familiar faces and an opening story that long-term Who fans will probably recognise.
“I couldn’t believe, when I saw the first script, what it was adapted from,” Tennant says of “The Star Beast”. “Because, of course, I recognised that immediately as a child of the ’70s and the ’80s. I knew exactly where the source material lived and it was a deep joy.”
He’s talking, of course, about the 1980 Marvel Doctor Who comic strip of the same name from Doctor Who Weekly.
“It sort of makes perfect sense – Russell as a long-term fan, and also that particular story, the way that it captures that particular world of Doctor Who is sort of the world of Doctor Who that Russell is known for, I think,” he considers.
“The way the Doctor interacts with a family in modern-day Britain and the make-up of that family, and how the extr
