Tonight, in London’s famous Camden Market, David will be taking the Fourteenth Doctor’s first, not-so-tentative steps into the big, wide world – shooting the pre-title sequence for Special 1, The Star Beast. Although, right now he’s sheltering inside Modfather (‘VINTAGE STYLE, MODERN LIFE,’ says a sign in the outfitters’ window), to evade the glare of the cameraphones. In his new Doctor Who costume – plaid brown suit, white shirt and knitted silver tie, with a dark blue Shetland tweed coat – David doesn’t look at all out of place here.
In October 2022, a mere 12 years, 9 months and 22 days after his last regular appearance in Doctor Who – as the Tenth Doctor, in The End of Time – David Tennant returned to the show. We’d never seen a Doctor regenerate into a former body before. For context, classic Who fans: David turning up in the dying moments of The Power of the Doctor is a bit like if Peter Davison had regenerated into Patrick Troughton’s Sixth Doctor at the end of Time-Flight, in 1982. Which he didn’t. Though, while we’re on the subject…
David remembers watching Troughton return in the ’80s, for the odd one-off: “That felt like a man from pre-history turning up, to me in 1983, because I was just – what? – 12 years old,” he says of 20th Anniversary Special The Five Doctors. “But I bet it felt like yesterday for Patrick Troughton.” Forty years on, David can relate: “It’s like when people tell me – in fact, people on this set, working on this show, have come up to me this past week and gone – ‘I loved watching you as a kid.’ I’m like, … you were a kid? What, no! To me, it was a blink of an eye ago. To them… I’m pre-history!”
But now he’s the present, too.
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