Tales from the TARDIS: Chris Eccleston on Finding the Doctor, Loss and New Adventures with Big Finish
- Marielle Bokor
- 9 hours ago
- 6 min read
It’s hard to properly convey the privilege of having gotten to see Christopher Eccleston at Chicago TARDIS this year. As fellow Whovians, we are always super hyped to see a Doctor or companion grace the stage of any local convention, and we’ve been privileged to pack into panel rooms where the likes of Tennant, Tate, Smith and Gillian were set to appear. They’re amazing pieces of the Doctor Who legacy.
Still, we can’t overstate what it meant to be in the room with the Ninth Doctor - a cornerstone of the series and someone without whom the series may not have continued.
Doctor Who is a sci-fi show that’s stood the test of time in a way almost no other series has. Beginning in 1963, it’s managed to make its mark not just in the UK where it originated on the BBC, but worldwide. Every Doctor and every companion has added to its tapestry with their own take on the Time Lord, a singular hero who roams time and space but always returns to his love affair with the human race, and admiration of their tenacity.
Each actor who’s taken on the iconic role has left their mark, from the curmudgeonly First, Hartnell, on to the Cosmic Hobo, Second Doctor Patrick Troughton and the beloved and bescarved Colin Baker’s Fifth Doctor.
Fans in the UK and abroad could count on these Doctors to solve impossible problems, take on incredible companions, and take them on incredible journeys. Until they couldn’t, when the show went dark after Paul McGann’s run.
After a long absence, Eccleston took up the mantel, and the Ninth Doctor leapt to life on the screen, with his now iconic companion, Rose. His Doctor caught the attention of a new generation, and at the same time reminded lifelong fans why they’d follow the Doctor across space and time.
But for Eccleston, it wasn’t a walk in the park. In fact, it was anything but, with his run famously being shorter than we’d hoped due to problems behind the scenes with showrunners and executive producers that he made clear, but were not resolved. In a series with missing episodes we’ve searched for across decades, Eccleston’s short tenure felt like one of the biggest missing pieces of them all.
Regardless of what was going on behind the scenes, it’s impossible to look away from Eccleston’s Doctor. He’s immediately everything we love about the Doctor - a lonely alien with a warm heart(s) that’s burdened to roam space and time with companions that can’t follow him to the end.
Episodes like The Empty Child show off Eccleston’s amazing range and ability to switch from darkness to impish, childlike joy and exhilaration.
One of the first questions he was asked as he arrived (against all odds, just like the Doctor would) in the middle of a blizzard, was how he found his character, and given his complicated past with Russell T Davies, the answer was quite a surprise, and perhaps a sign that that conflict has since been resolved:
“Around this time, Russell T Davies used to wear a big brown leather jacket, and he’d specified in the script, the very first scene, that he’s not dressed like, you know, a children’s entertainer. It’s just - he looks normal.”
Paying a compliment to the showrunner, he continued
“So basically…and of course, Russell’s intelligence is off the scale - so I based it kind of on Russell in terms of energy - and that’s why. It’s always been a boy’s world, unfortunately - and that’s why we need to have a female Doctor Who showrunner.”
“So I thought about Russell’s otherness, which he had because of the level of his intelligence.”
He went on to explain his take on the Ninth and how he approached the audition -
“I was running, and I thought, I’m going to ask for an audition for Doctor Who because I thought - Time Lord - he’s a lot of times, falling through time, so he doesn’t have a home. I can play that”
“There’s something sad about the Doctor - because he lost his planet,” Eccleston continued, a look of recognition on his face.
“He’s lost his people, which is why he loves humans so passionately, why he’s always trying to save things - because he’s lost them.”
“Did you ever discuss this [with Davies]” asked Jason Haight-Ellory, who took over as the panel’s moderator when Eccleston arrived.
“No, we didn’t. No. Oh not at all.” said Chris.
Eccleston went on to mention working with Davies on another project called Second Coming:
“I remember one sequence in Second Coming where the character I played, who was the second incarnation of Christ, was receiving information as he was speaking. My director was a little bit lost so I asked Russell, I said ‘How’s he doing this? How’s he getting this information?”
“Oh, he’s downloading it” was his response.
“Actually, it’s quite abstract, but it’s quite clever” Eccleston said of the response, “so I worked with tht, and I think I probably gained insight on how Russell wanted the Doctor playing from that note.”
The actor went on to recall his first encounter with the Doctor.
“The first Doctor I remember was Patrick Troughton. It was a black and white image. I remember - and the only time I was interested in the Doctor, considering me professionally and as a child, was when the regeneration happened. I was really taken with this notion that it’s the same character with a different physical appearance - as a child and also from a technical point of view, wanting to see how they did that.”
“It’s the character” interjected Annette Badland (who had taken the hotseat in the beginning of the panel as fans awaited Eccleston’s arrival in the snow, and who we will feature in a separate article soon)
“We are all aliens. We’re all different. We respond in different moods, to someone new. We have many faces. So I think we relate.”
“That’s brilliant” quipped Eccleston “I wish you directed!” before going on to say
“I think the hardest thing with the role is, if you don’t do a second series, you can’t look at the things you did wrong. I think that’s very- I think if you watch every single Doctor - they get better in their second series because they go - with actors, I think, they’re tryin to do that. There’s a lot of professional pride in me talking - but it’s the otherworldliness, how you present that”
“It’s one of the greatest roles you’ll ever play,” Eccleston continued. “You rely on your heart and your goal. I think he’s got - he, she, it, they, whatever the Doctor is is most wonderful. You can be anybody now and it’s always good. It’s all about empathy, isn’t it?”
On Margaret,Annette Badlands’ infamous villain, he said,
“Certainly Margaret was the first character challenge. We were in Cardiff Bay, in a restaurant with the twinkling lights, and it was like we were in Edward Pond. It was playful, it was flirtatious, but one was going to destroy the other. That’s where he [The Doctor] gets dark - when there’s a threat to humanity, and the darkness is there to counterbalance the lightness and levity”
We certainly appreciated the time we had with Eccleston, even if it did get cut short just like his run as the Doctor so he could safely escape the storm. We could easily bask in his charm, appreciate his intelligence and humor, and look forward to adventures we might have in the future, since it WAS at this panel they announced Eccleston’s amazing Ninth Doctor would be making a return to the series with a brand new run of audio adventures with Big Finish, which we got to see a live action trailer for (and which will include Billie Piper as Rose) that we’ll look forward to and may or may not already have on our pre-order lists.
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