The Doctors Who's Who (27 page)

Through the years Capaldi has played a large number of supporting roles, rarely losing his Scottish accent to play them. Like the two other Scottish Doctor Whos, he appeared in Scottish comedy series
Rab C Nesbitt
. Capaldi’s role was a little more sedate than that of his Doctor Who counterparts, playing a street preacher called John who gets heckled by Nesbitt.

But life wasn’t completely filled with supporting roles and bit parts. In 1985 he starred as one of The Beatles in the TV movie
John and Yoko: A Love Story
. Although centred around the relationship of John and Yoko, the movie includes the impact that relationship had on The Beatles, to the extent where John Lennon asks the rest of the Fab Four for a divorce so he can marry Yoko Ono.

Capaldi himself played George Harrison, known to many as ‘the quiet one’ in the band. But George’s deep-thinking ways detect the growing relationship between John and Yoko very early on; and he knew he couldn’t do too much about it. The way Capaldi presents this, without saying too much at all, is simply great acting.

Like the other actors, Capaldi plays one of the most iconic musician’s of all time and, although he doesn’t get the voice quite right, he looks the part in what is a well-scripted and emotional film.

Capaldi played manservant Azolan in the award-winning
movie
Dangerous Liasions
(1988). The movie starred Glenn Close, John Malkovitch and Michelle Pfeiffer in some of their finest roles. Capaldi is quite under-rated as Malkovitch’s stooge; he sees everything but is powerless to interfere. His underplayed role is a perfect balance to the chaos of Close and Malkovitch, and won him much respect.

Another under-rated performance was in 1992 in the TV series
Early Travellers in North America
. Capaldi appeared in several episodes playing iconic Scottish writer Robert Louis Stevenson. Capaldi’s lean figure and long features, along with his native accent, helped him make the part a notable one, but it was sadly ignored and quite lost today.

In 1993 Capaldi joined the
Comic Strip
team in the episode ‘Jealousy’. Capaldi opens the show in a balaclava climbing over a house to spy on his wife (Jennifer Saunders). Harry (Capaldi) is a jealous husband who is destroying his marriage through a twisted interpretation of his wife’s social calendar.

‘Jealousy’ unfourtunately isn’t the most memorable of Comic Strip episodes. It has its moments; but it is quite dark and unsettling, and one cannot but worry about the twisted mind of poor Harry. Capaldi turned his hand to directing in 1995 with the film
Franz Kafka’s It’s a Wonderful Life
, for which he won the BAFTA Best Short Film. The following year it tied with short American film
Trevor
for the Oscar for Live Action Short Film. Capaldi’s film detailed the frustrations of the writer (Kafka) when writing his most famous novel
Metamorphosis
and truly showed his talents behind the camera for a quality one-off film.

In 1996 Capaldi appeared in the BBC serialisation of Iain Banks’s bestselling novel
The Crow Road
. The screenplay, by Bryan Elsley, was an excellent interpretation of Banks’s intricate novel of family secrets and mysteries; so much so that
Banks himself confessed of the screenplay: ‘Annoyingly better than the book in far too many places.’ Was this comment from Banks too kindly? In fact, no, as he explained to me in 1999: ‘I was nervous to begin with. I wondered what the BBC had done to my book, but as I watched it I became very happy with it. I thought the cast were excellent.’

The Crow Road
was a milestone for many people – author and actors alike. It also started a good relationship between Banks and Capaldi in the respect that the actor started to narrate some of Banks’s audio books and appeared in a radio play of Banks’s musical novel
Espedair Street
(1988), alongside John Gordon Sinclair (
Gregory’s Girl
).

Capaldi played Uncle Rory in
The Crow Road
, one moment happy family member, the next moment restless spirit. Like the book, the TV series is formed of a central story with many flashback scenes, as the mystery of Rory’s disappearance is unravelled. The cast, including Joseph McFadden, Bill Patterson, Stella Gonet, David Robb, Dougray Scott and Valerie Edmond, were all really involved with their characters Banks stated that when he visited the set, he could see their passion for the character interaction which was more than he could recall from his novel.

The Crow Road
ranks as one of Capaldi’s most memorable performances, alongside his stunning – and quite surprising performance – in
Torchwood
.

Capaldi played John Frobisher in ‘Torchwood: Children of Earth’ in 2009. The role was not a light one.
Torchwood
was considered to be a more adult-themed interpretation of Earth-based
Doctor Who
adventures, with Captain Jack (John Barrowman) continuing his role from the Christopher Eccleston and David Tennant years of
Doctor Who
.

Capaldi played a straight-laced civil servant whose world
comes crashing down when he is faced with a terrible decision: give his children up to an alien intelligence or take their lives instead. It is an incredibly powerful episode of the show, and one in which Capaldi gives an amazing performance – not unlike his role as tough-guy head-of-news Randall Brown in series two of
The Hour
. Perhaps the most memorable scene is when Brown learns of the death of his daughter. The anger and despair is perfectly balanced to the point where you actually feel great sympathy for the character.

Capaldi was only the second Doctor Who to ever appear in the programme before taking on the lead role (Colin Baker being the first). He appeared as Roman Caecilius, an artistic, caring husband and father (like the actor himself) in ‘The Fires of Pompeii’; which also included Karen Gillan before she took on the regular role of companion Amy Pond.

David Tennant was the Doctor, with Catherine Tate as companion Donna Noble, in what was nothing short of an excellent episode, mixing in some traditional
Doctor Who
themes (ancient sisterhoods and mythical monsters) with some stunning CGI moments. But Capaldi’s interpretation of the Doctor was still just over five years away. In the meantime he would conclude his role as foul-mouthed spin Doctor Malcolm Tucker in the BBC series
The Thick of It
.

‘I’m off to deal with the fate of the planet.’

Malcolm Tucker
 
The Thick of It

The Thick of It
entertained TV audiences over the course of eight years with four amusing seasons (2005, 2007, 2009 and 2012), and mainly through Capaldi’s outrageous character Malcolm Tucker, who was just an exaggeration of a real
politician. Some said that he was an interpretation of Tony Blair’s spin-doctor Alistair Campbell; but Campbell wouldn’t have got away with Tucker’s escapades. His trip to Washington was as hysterical as his episodes in London. Malcolm Tucker really made an impression on the public and the media alike, so much so that jokes of bad language in the TARDIS were rife when it was announced that Capaldi would become Matt Smith’s replacement.

Some may have thought that Capaldi was an interesting and not obvious choice for the Doctor; but many around the programme
did
think he was an obvious choice. It was clear the programme would be taken in a new direction with Capaldi at the controls of the TARDIS, perhaps even reverting back towards the first Doctor, but Steven Moffat was excited about the new direction of the show and the scripts that had already been written ahead of the announcement of Capaldi succession.

Rarely had an established actor taken on the role. The early Doctors were well-established of course, but most of the others were all fairly young when taking on the role. So Capaldi brought the show almost full circle during its 50th year. It was an interesting concept; but how would Capaldi look? How would he act? What effect would the Doctor have on his career? The age-old questions raised themselves once more, but this self-confessed
Doctor Who
fan relished the idea on setting out in the TARDIS with his faithful companions and whole new menagerie of monsters and megalomaniacs.

The
Doctor Who
adventure continued; and so did Capaldi’s career outside the show. Like the other new millennium Doctor Whos, Capaldi managed to undertake other projects at the same time as committing to the world’s longest running science fiction series. While the early Doctors had to commit, priesthood-like, to the cause of
Doctor Who
, their later
counterparts didn’t and the fear of typecasting diminished somewhat. In 2012, while winning Best TV Comedy Actor Award yet again for Malcolm Tucker in
The Thick of It
, he managed to be a part of two Hollywood movies, one with Angelina Jolie (as the king of the fairies in
Maleficent
), and one with her husband Brad Pitt (in the zombie movie World War Z), commenting that the duo were very warm and friendly and had watched the box set of
The Thick of It
over one weekend in order to learn how to swear. Capaldi said that he couldn’t confess to be friends with the famous Hollywood couple but was amazed by how friendly and open they were for a married couple so famous.

Doctor Who
had come at an amazing time in Capaldi’s career. He had achieved so much and was experiencing the height of his Hollywood limelight at the same time as being the Doctor, assuring the world that his career was as fresh and exciting as it ever was, and in fact, possibly more so.

‘It’s an incendiary combination: one of the most talented actors of his generation is about to play the best part on television.’

Steven Moffat on the announcement of  Peter Capaldi becoming the 12th Doctor

CONCLUSION

‘But lips where smiles went out and in –

There was no guessing his kith and kin!’

The Pied Piper of Hamelin
 
Robert Browning

A SHOW THAT ENDURES
over 50 years must have something magical – and sustainable – about it.
Doctor Who
doesn’t have a cult following, it has a broad and diverse following. It is today, as it has always been, family entertainment and if the younger ones get scared, the older ones will reassure. For generations of British TV audiences,
Doctor Who
was an integral part of growing up. A mysterious man – a Pied Piper – who you know very little about, but nonetheless follow religiously.

The Pied Piper analogy is a strong one. Look at the Doctor’s many companions: they follow him, care for him, dance with him – love him. But he is an isolationist, the boy who never grew up, the man who can only watch people grow old and die, a man who can never really love a human woman.

He is the Pied Piper, just as William Hartnell described
himself while playing the Doctor; just as Patrick Troughton depicted the Time Lord, with pipe and all; just as Jon Pertwee described himself; just as Colin Baker dressed, and the very role Sylvester McCoy performed on stage before taking on
Doctor Who
and bringing back that air of mystery. And what about Tom Baker’s pied scarf? Television viewers dance to the merry tune, but is it a merry tune, or something more sinister?

As Queen Victoria stated to Christopher Eccleston’s Doctor, there is something evil about him – the Time Lord – and, perhaps there is something evil about the Pied Piper too. This is something that is echoed in
The Sarah Jane Adventures
when she confronted clowns and similar fairy-tale images. It’s as though, in an acting sense, the Pied Piper wears the two faces of variety theatre, the happy and the sad, and can quickly change between the two; surely that sums up the Doctor and his tetchy mood swings?

In ‘Black Orchid’, a two-part Peter Davison story, the Doctor wears a harlequin suit and mask – very Pied Piper-esque – and evil adopts the same costume too. Yes, there is something sinister about the Doctor, something that makes the actor playing him a little superior. Maybe this was the ‘twist’ Sydney Newman was looking for when developing the character all those years ago. We seem – as in all good stories – to get more from less. The fact that we don’t know certain aspects of a character’s make-up allows our imaginations to run riot; and when the critic is at odds with himself, the artist is in accord with himself (to misquote Oscar Wilde).

So the Pied Piper continues his merry dance, with hordes of TV companions and generations of real-life children behind him, happy to dance and play, and continue the legend that is
Doctor Who
into his fifth decade, more popular and sophisticated now than he has ever been. And yes, we follow
the Piper into his cave – the TARDIS – because he promises a life of happiness and excitement, but is it always?

What happens when the tune stops? When the Piper puts down his pipe, exhausted, and the rock rolls back and those who danced have all disappeared? What lies beyond that rock? Is there a happy land where only children play; the child inside us all? Is that why adults continue to watch
Doctor Who
, to regain their youth, locked away in the mountainside of maturity? Or is it the secret yearning of the human race to dream of wandering amongst the stars in search of… what exactly? The question to the answer ‘forty-two’ perhaps, or maybe the reassurance that life goes on after death?

Sarah Jane waited but grew old and disillusioned before the Doctor returned. Time is relative to him, but not to the girl – or girls – who waited.

Doctor Who
will one day stop forever. The Doctor – like every mortal creature – will have to die, like the original actors who have played him, such as William Hartnell, Patrick Troughton, Jon Pertwee and Peter Cushing; actors with incredible careers surrounding that iconic part. The part they played for little over four years at most, but a part that has endured and remained in public memory for decades after they cease to be Doctor Who.