For those of you who are not Doctor Who fans, you can move along now. This is vaguely movie related, and I am a big geek so I wanted to share.
With Doctor Who is somewhat of limbo with next “season” not really being a season at all but 4 TV Movie events they are calling “Special Episodes”, the big question lingering around has been if David Tenant, the most popular Doctor ever on the series, would return for the planned official season in 2010.
The answer is no.
Tennant stepped into the Tardis in 2005, and will leave the role after four special episodes are broadcast next year.
He made the announcement after winning the outstanding drama performance prize at the National Television Awards.
“When Doctor Who returns in 2010 it won’t be with me,” he said.
“Now don’t make me cry,” he added. “I love this part, and I love this show so much that if I don’t take a deep breath and move on now I never will, and you’ll be wheeling me out of the Tardis in my bath chair. I’ll miss it”
Tennant is taking the high road leaving the show while he is still popular before being asked to leave. He is the 10th person to take on the mantle of The Doctor.
With any luck this popularity will spill over to his continued career. Many of the previous Doctors were stung with the typecasting which has limited many of their careers. This alone prompted Christopher Eccleston to step down after only one season.
Speculation on the next Doctor includes Paterson Joseph, David Morrisey, James Nesbitt or John Simm.
And because she is intellectually sexy, I wanted to share this Catherine Tate clip, with David Tennant as her character’s new English teacher in a sketch performed for Comic Relief 2007. (When Tate starts reciting her sonnet, it… moves me.)
He is a great Doctor and will be missed. But they were all great (yes even Colin Baker). I look forward to the new incarnation.
This is absolutely unbelievable. David Tennant is an awesome Doctor but I guess we have to respect his decision; its better than seeing the series relying on Tennant to propel it. I really hope the writers bring back the Doctor’s daughter before they swap out Tennant or else it might get confusing.
Bummer. The kiddo will be disappointed that the rumors were true though I do believe she still enjoyed Chistopher Eccleston just a little bit more than Tennant.
As much as I think it might be neat to see a female Doctor, you know it won’t happen.
Gina Bellman for the Doctor!
Bellman played Claire JAckman (‘Mrs. Jekyll’) in Steven Moffat’s short-series “Jekyll where she plays the spouse of the latter-day schizo-shape-shifter.
Based on her performance there, she’d make a sensational 11th Doctor.
catherine tate is sexy in every way. ;D
Yeah, I noticed that now… I meant to say Opening the door for the 11th…
Oops.
I’m really sad about this. Hes my Doctor. Its going to be hard to get used to a new one.
Oh and btw Tennant is the 10th Doctor not the 11th.
@Unoriginal Guy, those “polls” you are talking about are the Ratings.
This show has NEVER been rated as high as it has with Tennant on board. EVER.
These ratings are gauged on market share, so while people were watching the original series, there are more people watching now and more demand on the market attention span and he STILL manages to be the one Doctor to draw more viewers to the show.
This could be a SPOILER…
but a UK paper took a photo of Tennant on set filming the Who specials, in which he meets a future version of himself and hes played by David Morrissey. of course this doesnt mean hes the next one, it could be a far future version
.
That’s a shame David Tennant won’t be continuing. I caught him in one episode and was instantly hooked on the show, but I couldn’t get into any of the older ones without him. I hope we see him in a lot of other projects. He’s one of my new favorite actors.
I am a big Doctor Who fan, and while Tennant will be missed…so was Christopher Eccleston before him.
Any one of the named actors will do fine, but two grab my attention automatically. David Morrisey is a person of interest because I could see his look differing from Tennant (and Eccleston) and it would not surprise me if Morrisey became the 11th Doctor he could be a slight tip of the hat to the 4th Doctor Tom Baker, with a bit of 8th Doctor Paul McGann thrown in.
Paterson Joseph is the other one. He’s done sci-fi stuff before, and from what I’ve heard and seen, the odds on favorite.
I think the polls calling him the “most popular Doctor ever” are a lot of rubbish. A lot of the people who answered the poll didn’t even watch the original series and are really only making a judgment based on the new series (e.g. Christopher Eccleston Vs. David Tennant).
I like David Tennant a lot, I think he is great, but he won’t ever be better than Tom Baker who is “the” Doctor and always will be. That being said David Tennant is leaps and bounds better than some of the Doctors that followed Tom Baker (e.g. Peter Davison, Colin Baker).