#peterdavison

(This feature originally appeared in the Daily Record on April 30, 2015, with Peter Davison previewing the Doctor Who Symphonic Spectacular. I was over the moon - a Daily Record staff reporter was meant to be doing it, then she went on holiday, so ask they asked the person who knew a wee bit about Doctor Who to do it - I wasn’t complaining!)

DOCTOR Who star Peter Davison has revealed he knew his daughter was going on dates with Scots Time Lord David Tennant before SHE did.

Davison said he knew something was going on after his daughter Georgia Moffett and 10th Doctor Tennant, from Paisley, kept going to the theatre together.

David married Georgia in December 2011 and they have three children, Olive, Wilfred and Tyler, the actress’s son from a previous relationship who David adopted four years ago.

He was speaking before a trip to Glasgow next month to host the Doctor Who Symphonic Spectacular at the Hydro, which celebrates the world’s longest running science-fiction TV series.

Peter, 64, said: “I knew there was something in the air before she did.

“She worked with him and afterwards he kept inviting her to the theatre. She said to me, ‘He’s wanting to take me to Shakespeare shows. He wants to go to the theatre all the time.’ I said, ‘Obviously he likes you,’ and she said, ‘No, I don’t think it’s that – I just think he wants to educate me.’ I told her, ‘No, no, no, that’s not the way it works...’

“When they turned up to one of the shows I was in – I think it was Spamalot – I definitely knew.”

Peter, who played the Fifth Doctor from 1982-84, will be part of the Spectacular at The SSE Hydro, Glasgow on May 29. It features music from Doctor Who, with some of the iconic monsters appearing on stage.

One person who won’t see the show, which is playing at venues around the UK, is Tennant himself. The Broadchurch star is in America shooting Marvel’s Jessica Jones, in which he plays Zebediah Kilgrave, known as the Purple Man.

Peter said: “At the moment he’s in America filming something with Marvel for Netflix, but I’m sure my daughter will come along.”

Working in Scotland is nothing new for Davison.

He said: “My first big job was at the Edinburgh Lyceum. I did a season in the Nottingham Playhouse and then I joined the Young Lyceum Theatre Company, and did the Edinburgh Festival.

“I also did a detective show up in Glasgow as well.”

With Peter Capaldi as the current TARDIS incumbent and the show being produced by Steven Moffat, from Paisley, Davison laughed: “The Scots have taken over the programme – there’s a Scottish producer and a Scottish Doctor, playing it with a Scottish accent.”

With three Scots Time Lords, Sylvester McCoy, from Dunoon, Tennant and Capaldi, from Glasgow, Davison admits family ties sway him to pick his favourite Doctor from north of the Border.

The former All Creatures Great and Small star said: “I would have to say it was David.

“He did a fantastic job, even though he wasn’t playing it as a Scottish Doctor. It’s quite funny when he does the Doctor Who audiobooks, as he reads most of them in a Scottish accent and then does his London Doctor.

“Sylvester was fantastic, but I didn’t get to see much of him. You don’t tend to watch the Doctors immediately after you, not because you don’t like them, but you can’t suspend your sense of disbelief. You know the process by which it’s made, so it’s quite difficult to watch.

“One of the problems we had in my time was no special effects.

“We would also get writers in who had worked on Softly Softly or something like that the previous week, and then they’d come in and knock off a Doctor Who. Nowadays, it’s consistently well-written by people who love the genre.

“It surprised me when it came back as such a prestigious show, but it was brilliant. Russell T. Davies did a great job. The fans have started making the show –  people who had grown up watching myself and other Doctors – they’ve got into the business and wanted to carry on with it.

“When I made it, it was sold to 39 countries and spread far and wide while making the BBC lots of money, but it was never the prestigious programme it is now.”

The Symphonic Spectacular showcases the music written by Murray Gold for the revived TV series since 2005, and features 100 performers including the BBC National Orchestra of Wales and members of the BBC National Chorus of Wales, conducted by Ben Foster. Davison acted as presenter for the show in Australia and New Zealand.

He said: “At heart it’s an orchestral concert playing the music from Doctor Who, but we have lots of extras – it’s done in a very exciting way with a symphonic orchestra, with specially edited clips on big screens, and there’s monsters wandering around with Cybermen, the Silence and the Daleks.