Posted in: BBC, Doctor Who, TV | Tagged: bbc, doctor who, peter capaldi, steven moffat

Doctor Who: Capaldi on Not Returning: Time to "Leave Things Alone"

Peter Capaldi played the Ultimate Classic Doctor under Steven Moffat but he's making it clear (again) why he's not returning to Doctor Who.

You could say Peter Capaldi played the Ultimate Doctor Who. Then, the showrunner created his Doctor as probably the last of the older incarnations to explore as many facets of the character they both wanted over Capaldi's three-series run. After his final story and regeneration into Jodie Whittaker, Capaldi has vowed that he would never go back to play the part again, not even for anniversary specials or crossovers. He hasn't agreed to reprise the role for Big Finish audio dramas either, and the character was played there by gifted (and much younger) actor Jacob Dudman, who has mimicked his voice and also Matt Smith's.

"I'm still a huge fan of Doctor Who," he told Hello Magazine recently while promoting his work with Magic Breakfast, a school charity that provided breakfast to children. "It's not that I have anything against it, but there comes a time when you have to leave things alone. I can't imagine the situation in which I'd be able to go back into it with enough influence over how it was going to be."

Capaldi also retold the story of how a trip to Mexico inspired one of the Doctor Who Christmas specials, "The Return of Doctor Mysterio," in which the Doctor goes to New York to encounter a bonafide superhero that he had inadvertently created.

 "They've had the show since the 60s," said Capaldi. "So they had a very deep kind of relationship with it that's aligned to the Latin connection with the supernatural, time, and death. That's where we got Dr Mysterio from, as they call it Doctor Mysterio. I said to Steve that I have to be Doctor Mysterio."

Capaldi had run the full gauntlet of stories and emotions his Doctor could possibly go through under Moffat. In fact, he played a different version in each season so by the time he ended his run, he and Moffat had pretty much run out of story his Doctor could possibly experience. Any more stories with the Doctor that might be a side story during his lifetime for Big Finish might be said to be just repetition and redundant, no matter how much fans might want to experience him again.

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