Doctor Who‘s 50th anniversary sees David Tennant return to the TARDIS to join Matt Smith’s Doctor, and he tells SciFiNow that that there were some nerves.
“You don’t know quite how you’re going to feel about it,” he explains. “And you never entirely know if it’s a wise thing to go back to anything.”
“But I suppose with Doctor Who there has always been the precedent for actors returning to it, so I guess it was always there as a possiblity. When you start Doctor Who the question you’re asked continuously is ‘When are you leaving?’ and as soon as you leave Doctor Who the question you’re asked continuously is ‘When are you coming back?’ So it’s been out there as a possibility so I would be lying if I said I hadn’t considered it.”
Indeed, he tells us that this isn’t the first time he’s donned the pinstripes since leaving. “I had had it on once in this time and the rest of the time it had just been in storage,” he grins. Peculiarly familiar, though, as well. Especially, you’re coming back to Wales and going into the trailer and it was all hanging up like it had been every morning for four years. It was a bit like ‘Did I just dream the last little bit?’ It was a weird surreal odd familiarity.”
However, he reveals it did take him a little while to get back into character. “There is something in the tone of Doctor Who and the character as well that I was finding a little elusive, I was reading the script and I was trying to kind of learn the lines and imagine it and I had to go and get a couple of DVDs out and rewatch it”
“I think it just came back, it’s something about the kind of energy of it, the kind of sort of kind of there’s just a sort of, because it’s not naturalistic in the way that most other things are, not that it’s not, it’s got an absolute reality to it but there’s a sort of , it’s the tone, the tone of Doctor Who is not like anything else.”
“It’s been a lovely thing to revisit, absolutely,” he concludes. “Because as I say, once you’re in it it feels very comforting and familiar. I had a very wonderful happy time here so it’s no great trial to have another wee go.”
The Doctor Who 50th anniversary special will air on 23 November 2013. Pick up the Doctor Who Series 7 box set on DVD for £34.50 or Blu-ray for £36.33 from Amazon.co.uk.
