The writer and producer of Doctor Who says the show needed an older Time Lord like Peter Capaldi because they could not go with “another quirky young man with interesting hair”.
Steven Moffat explained the casting of Capaldi, 56, to succeed the younger Matt Smith and David Tennant as the Doctor at a special screening of the first episode of the new series, which will be broadcast on August 23.
“We couldn’t get another quirky young man with interesting hair,” he said. “People would start styling their hair in the hope of being cast.”
Moffat, who also writes and produces Sherlock, added there were no plans to make a Doctor Who film because movie-making was so time-consuming. “We’d have to stop doing the TV series, and just do one film a year,” he said.
Speaking at the BFI Southbank event alongside Moffat and his co-star Jenna Coleman, who plays assistant Clara, Capaldi said he was “delighted” to finally be playing Doctor Who after being a fan of the show since he was a child.
Explaining his Doctor’s black garb, he said he had “always imagined the Doctor in dark colours, but then, I was watching it on a black-and-white telly.”
Capaldi’s debut as the Doctor features clockwork robots and dinosaurs in Victorian London, and familiar characters from recent series.
