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Christopher Eccleston: Why my Doctor had to be northern

“If you’re an alien how comes you sound like you’re from the north?” Billie Piper’s Rose Tyler asked The Doctor ten years ago – now Christopher Eccleston has finally revealed why his Time Lord had a northern accent.

“Lots of planet have a north” the Doctor told Rose way back then, but Eccleston (who returns to our TV screens in ITV’s new thriller Safe House on Monday April 20th at 9pm) gives a rather different answer in this week’s edition of Radio Times.

“I wanted to move him away from the RP (received pronunciation) for the first time because we shouldn’t make a correlation between intellect and accent” he says, “although that still needs addressing”.

The self-described working-class actor also says that cultural inequality is “much more pronounced” in Britain than it used to be, and that it would be difficult for a young actor with his background to succeed in the industry today.

“You can’t blame Eddie Redmayne or Benedict Cumberbatch but inequality will lead to a milky, anodyne culture. To an extent that’s already happened,” he argues.

These sheep? They are actually running away from the car.

The one, major, overwhelming priority of sheep: Stay With The Herd. This is why you get sheepnados: every single sheep is doing his or her devoted best to stay with the herd. So the sheep runs out of the way … .to the rest of the herd. At which point the other sheep follow it and … .you get sheepnado. 

The sheepnado continues in part because there’s nothing to stop it: the car doesn’t actually present a clear and present threat (none of the sheep have been hurt), and there’s no farmer or dog to take that lead position and give them direction. It’s ore or less succeeding at what it needs to, which is that no sheep are being run down by the car, but, THE HERD IS STAYING TOGETHER. 

If you want to see how smart a sheep gets, take it away from the herd. 

(And if you think about this, it makes perfect sense: “stay with the herd” has HUGE SELECTION PRESSURE on it for domestic sheep. Domestic sheep who stray, die without reproducing. Domestic sheep that get stroppy with the farmer or interfere with the leadership of farmer and his dogs … die, usually without reproducing. Domestic sheep that Stay With The Herd? Usually live and reproduce. The herd becomes ALL IMPORTANT. It’s not that they don’t know they’re running in circles, it’s that running in circles achieves The Goal.

It’s not that sheep have no survival instincts: it’s that we as a species have actually redirected their survival instincts in one overwhelming direction, and evolution is a messy kludge.) 

We expend lifetimes of effort and time and energy to risk catastrophic life-and-quality-of-life-threatening injury (concussion, broken neck, broken collar bone, broken face … ), in order to chase a ball around the field. Never mind the sheer level of engineering, money and resources necessary to make a hockey rink. 

And the spectators are even worse. People spend huge amounts of resources going to strange places in order to sit in the stands and watch people do the above. 

I think the mistake everyone is making here is assuming these sheep are scared. Note the guy by the wall. If they were scared of humans or cars that’d be sufficient to not only break the tornado but also have them running for the hills. The problem is basically they are not scared enough.

Let me explain!

So you know your personal space bubble, right? You are likely to feel very threatened when that stranger at the party moves in too close and take a step back to keep him at bay. Also, no one likes sitting right next to someone at a cinema or on the train unless the other seats are taken, right? So sheep have that, but it applies to non-sheep that are pinged as possible predators. Cows have it too. Makes sense, right? Anyone who gets in too close who you don’t know is likely to be a predator, regardless of your species.

This personal space bubble might be, oh, say, ½ a kilometre in size if they live in the middle of the outback with 2000 of their buddies and see a human once a season for medication, but are otherwise left to their own devices. Most of the time though it’s far smaller, and there isn’t really one for members of their flock, although if there’s no threats around they’ll spread out to graze across an entire paddock, staying close to their bffs.

(Tangent: the CSIRO found out in the 70s or 80s, by use of some guy, binoculars and countless manhours, that yes, sheep tend to hang out with the same sheep again and again when people aren’t running around scaring them. They may look alike to you or I but they recognise each others faces, just like we do!)

ANYWAY. Say you’re a person coming in to herd them. They’ll ignore you until you get close to the boundaries of that personal space bubble then the ones nearest to you will start looking at you nervously in a, “Gosh, that guy better not be moving towards me. Sandra, do you think he’s coming towards us?” kind of way, and will be trying to decide whether to go or stay - just like one might when the creeper comes into the party and starts walking towards you.

Now, the leader sheep, that they all follow? She’s not the smartest or most independent one, she’s the one with the smallest personal space bubble and the distance you’ve walked to get the others nervous is close enough to get her unhappy. She’ll run in the direction opposite to you. In which case her supportive buddies flocking instincts kick in and they go, “Oh shit, Sandra thinks it’s a threat. Cluster up, girls!” and all zoom off together, away from the threat. Sandra has no idea where she’s going, she’s scared, but if another predator turns out to be in the direction they’re running the flock will split and run on either side of them to merge again, rather crowd at the train station around a pylon kind of way.

(Tangent: In low stress stock handling, the welfare gold star modern method of livestock handling, we take advantage of this by teaching sheep their boundaries will be respected. We move to the edges of their their flight zone - that is, personal space bubble - and let them move away, letting them learn that we will not push too much or hurt them. If they gently keep pace we’ll steer them towards the yard with food while respecting their wishes to not be near us. They don’t get scared, and no one - us or them - accidentally gets hurt by a panicked stamped)

Returning to the above photo! The problems start if they are so used to you the flight zone is tiny. You’re an adopted member of the flock, they actually are cool with you being at arms distance. You can’t cuddle them, you’re not an actual sheep, but you have to really get close, go, “OI! MOVE IT LADIES!” and wave your arms around to get them moving, because they know you’re not a threat. Same applies to cars actually. And they can tell motors apart by sound. The ute is kinda boring, but the tractor or gator? Holy shit, food delivery time!

And that is how we’ve ended up with sheepnados around the gator, which we were using because it was a four wheel drive and the ute would get bogged, but I had experiments to do. And they decided this meant food and bailed me up until I fed them. I didn’t even have more than a bucket on me. I had to run ahead, sprinkling it like bird seed to get them to move, so we wouldn’t accidentally kill them. Annnnnnd I’ll bet you anything that the sheep in the picture were used to being fed by exactly the same kind of ute, if not by the same one, and the poor driver is trying to inch forward to get to town but the sheep are just FRIEND? FOOD FRIEND? HI FRIEND. FOOD NOW? NOW?

Supporting visual evidence? Look at how there’s no running away from the car, when ute herding, complete with horn beeping is actually a very common way to herd flocks. Look at how the ute is miserably inching forward, giving them a clear direction to run, but they are so not scared that at the moment flocking instinct has kicked in but not enough panic to actually direct it. I Imagine the driver is honking like crazy, to no avail. Look at the random terrifying predator human by the wall, who is sensibly turning his back to the sheep, because if the predator has his back turned you can run behind him! But no sheep is utilising the supplied alternate route. Yeah, these guys aren’t scared, this is an armed robbery of an empty pizza delivery truck.

…And though you fight to stay alive Your body starts to shiver For no mere mortal can resist The evil of the…