Somehow it manages to be very daft while tugging at the heart strings. It starts with the Christmas special Voyage of the Damned, a remake of Titanic in space with Kylie Minogue as the Doctor's companion after Martha Jones walked out on him last series. Never has that been more obvious than in the fourth series. The best thing about Doctor Who is that no time, place or genre is off limits. Perhaps we'll see, later in the year, a story which sends the new Doctor back in time to spy on himself when he was gallivanting around space and time with Donna. The Fires of Pompeii was a fan favourite long before Capaldi was cast as the Doctor, for all its intrigue and drama, but now you have to wonder whether show runner will find some way of working Fires of Pompeii into the new Doctor's back story.
While we will have to wait until August to see the new Doctor join Clara Oswald (Jenna Coleman) on her adventures in time and space a less than subtle clue to Capaldi's abilities appear in the fourth series of Doctor Who episode The Fires of Pompeii recently released on high definition Blu-ray for the first time.īack in 2008 David Tennant was the tenth Doctor, Catherine Tate his third companion Donna Noble, and Capaldi the Roman trader whose home the Tardis ended up in ahead of the eruption of Mt Vesuvius in 79 AD.
His few seconds in the role at the end of The Time of the Doctor will have been watched and rewatched by fans the world over who are curious to know what he will make of the job.