Peter Capaldi, of “The Thick Of It” fame. Here’s the inevitable mash-up of foul-mouthed Malcolm Tucker as the Doctor:
Capaldi is a life-long fan of the series:
“It is so wonderful not to keep this secret any more,” he said. “For a while I couldn’t even tell my daughter. Being asked to play the Doctor is an amazing privilege. Like the Doctor himself I find myself in a state of utter terror and delight. I can’t wait to get started.”
Jenny Colgan approves:
[I]f we are to have a 12th white male … could we have done any better? Working on the excellent template of angular Scottishness perfected by David Tennant, the possibilities for Peter Capaldi, an actor with such extraordinary experience and range, are fun and immense. There will be an undeniably dangerous edge: not just of Malcolm Tucker – viewers may also remember him as the Angel in Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere, full of purity and beauty while hiding terrible secrets within; or the gentle, heartbreaking moral conflict of his John Frobisher in Torchwood’s Children of Earth, one of the most underrated pieces of television of the past 10 years.
Mary Elizabeth Williams likes the pick as well:
He’s a versatile everyman who’s also utterly unique. In short, he is everything a classic Doctor should be – able to pivot from slapstick goofball to heartbreakingly tragic figure in the span of a single scene. And as one of the oldest actors to play a man who’s already nine centuries old, Capaldi also brings a worldly gravitas that will serve in contrast to the lithe physicality of his previous two predecessors.
Ted Kissell bemoans the choice, sighing, “another white male”:
[N]ot taking a bolder leap in the casting and switching up the gender and/or race of the Doctor feels like a missed opportunity. The Feminism of Doctor Who Tumblr, in anticipation of the announcement, ran a feature called The Time Lady Project, which suggested dozens of potential actresses who could play the part. Some of these were pie-in-the-sky because they were such big stars (Tilda Swinton, Helen Mirren, Emma Thompson), but many of them were in that really-good-but-not-too-big-to-commit-to Who’s-grueling-schedule range. And having a woman as the smartest, bravest person in the universe, being able to fix any problem, save the world with her wits, a magical vehicle, and boundless courage–who wouldn’t want to watch that show?
SEK is on the same page:
I wanted Steven Moffat to make a selection as outrageously ambitious as the show itself can be, and Peter Capaldi is more of the same. Which isn’t to say he’ll be a terrible Doctor, as Capaldi’s a fine actor and will bring to the role a gravitas it’s lacked since the end of David Tennant’s run. But as heroes go, the Doctor’s just “a madman with a box” whose power, such as it is, is the ability to bluff his way out of a war. And as powers go, “intelligence” is limitless in its potential appeal because everyone likes to think they’re smart. Having him embodied by an endless parade of white British males creates an unwholesome and unnecessary connection between intelligence, acts of extreme whiteness and penises.
Previous Dish on the expectations for the 12th Doctor here and here.
The Dish 