Picture us furiously refreshing our browser Sunday morning in a tizzy of anticipation and nerves awaiting the BBC's announcement for who will replace Matt Smith as the time- and space- (and dimension-) traveling doctor on the cult sci-fi series Doctor Who. Then, finally, after 30 minutes of waiting through the special airing -- boom -- there it is. Peter Capaldi will replace the timey-wimey, bow-tie-lovin' Matt Smith as the 12th (depicted) regeneration in the series.
But wait, Peter who?
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Now, it wasn't a complete shock that Peter Capaldi was announced as the new doctor. The bookmakers, who kept the then-defunct series alive before the 2000s reboot, favored him as their pick. BBC even mentioned him in a list of possibilities, amid a few (gasp) black guys. How progressive.
While we love our Doctor Who, we're admittedly not all-out Anglophiles. We just like sci-fi and history and dudes in suits, so we haven't seen the BBC comedy, The Thick of It, which he is most famous for. The closest we get to knowing him at all is knowing he was in an episode of Doctor Who as an unfortunate civilian of the city Pompeii back when the doctor was, our favorite, David Tennant and his companion was, my favorite, Donna Noble (played by Catherine Tate).
Just because we don't know Peter Capaldi doesn't mean he's a bad pick. The producers are certainly going back up in age, after a bout of younger and younger doctors in the reboot. (Too bad for River, huh?) We didn't really know anything about Matt Smith or David Tennant before they were doctors and grew to love them both. So maybe it's just all a matter of trust, and we do trust the producers and bookmakers.
However, if we were going to have it our way, for selfish reasons, we would have gone with Richard Madden. Sure he's a little too hunky for the gig, but he is (SPOILER) out of a job.
A ginger would have also been an acceptable choice.
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