As I mentioned a few days ago Doctor Who<\/i> star Christopher Eccleston will be leaving the program at the end of this season, the new series’ first. Eccleston is under contract for a second season. He’s said he just won’t do it. The BBC could<\/i> force Eccleston to fulfill the terms of his contract, but why have a leading man who doesn’t want to be there? Two or three seasons under his belt I could understand wanted to move on. But one? Sodding bloody wanker.<\/p>\n
The way I see it, Eccleston will have 11 stories, if one includes the yet-to-be-written Christmas special, in slightly more than one season, which works out to the same number of stories Colin Baker had. Of course, Colin’s stories were multi-episode affairs, while Christopher Eccleston’s are single-episode affairs, save for the three two-parters.<\/p>\n
It’s unfortunate. I can’t help but wonder if this is some sort of publicity stunt, much like John Nathan-Turner used to do. The fact that the BBC is already saying that David Tennant is the leading candidate for the tenth Doctor makes me suspicious.<\/p>\n
Yet, the speculation has no doubt begun. Who will be the next Doctor? I’ve addressed the question before<\/a>, but that was nearly three years ago. Where are we today?<\/p>\n My friend Terri<\/a> suggests Babylon 5<\/i>‘s Jason Carter. He wouldn’t be a bad choice.<\/p>\n Among my top picks:<\/p>\n Sean Bean If we have to go with a veteran of genre televison, Siddig is the one I’d pick. My natural inclination, though, is toward Havers, just because I think he’s the actor in the list with the most range. Fry would be right, if he could drop a couple stone–he’s become quite heavy of late. And I’d like to see Richard E. Grant have a proper outing as the Doctor. “Curse of the Fatal Death” and “Scream of the Shalka” are nice, but really now. As for Sean Bean, Americans may be used to seeing him in the villain roles in films, but he has a body of work that works against that perception. Certainly his long association with the Richard Sharpe role, based on the Bernard Cornwall novels.<\/p>\n There’s another implication to Eccleston’s departure to consider. If Eccleston is afraid of being typecast I wonder if he would be open to a multi-Doc story somewhere down the road. I’m thinking we can probably rule out Big Finish<\/a> audios.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" As I mentioned a few days ago Doctor Who star Christopher Eccleston will be leaving the program at the end of this season, the new series’ first. Eccleston is under contract for a second season. He’s said he just won’t do it. The BBC could force Eccleston to fulfill the terms of his contract, butContinue reading “On the next Doctor”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[4082,281],"class_list":["post-374","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-doctor-who","tag-doctor-who","tag-tenth-doctor","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/374","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=374"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/374\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=374"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=374"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=374"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nAlan Cumming
\nAlan Davies
\nStephen Fry
\nRichard E. Grant
\nIoan Gruffudd
\nNigel Havers
\nAnthony Stewart Head
\nMalcolm McDowell
\nAlexander Siddig<\/p>\n