In what is truly fantastic news, the Ninth Doctor from the rebooted Doctor Who, Christopher Eccleston, talked about his return to the Doctor Who franchise after exiting at the end of Series One. He answered questions online from fans, and we got some of the humor, intelligence, and wit that makes him so lovely.
“It is a role that has brought me a great deal of love and I return it,” he said in response to a question from a Brazilian fan about what it means to have “enchanted” a whole legion of fans with his performance as the Ninth Doctor.
When asked if there was a period he’d like to go back to, Eccleston mentions the 1920s and ’30s Salford, England. Salford is a working-class area that was visited by both Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels to study the plight of the British working class, which was shared in In the Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844.
Engels described Salford as: “really one large working-class quarter … [a] very unhealthy, dirty and dilapidated district which, while other industries were almost always textile-related is situated opposite the ‘Old Church’ of Manchester.”
Salford is where Eccleston’s parents are from, so it holds a special value to him, and Eccleston is known for being outspoken and candid about class issues in the U.K.
A fan asks “what was the deciding factor” in returning to the character of Nine, and the answer was: money. It’s a pandemic, it is paid work, and he’s got children and himself to support. Also, the writing was quality, and that attracted him to it.
Eccleston said that he found it easy to slip back into the character because of the quality of the scripts, and Big Finish, the production company behind the Doctor Who audio dramas, was great at knowing the lore and writing scripts that reflected Eccleston’s previous performance. He does admit he had issues keeping still because his Doctor was very physical, but that’s a bit of a problem he’s always had, which I do relate to.
What made me laugh out loud is him admitting he has no real idea who The Master or River Song are, but he is happy for his Doctor to “meet anybody,” which makes me pray that he will meet River. Nine and River would be such a hoot! The flirtations. The sass. Ugh, please.
If he could pick a serious topic for Doctor Who to tackle, it would be climate change, and in his mind, it fits because the Doctor is all about protecting the planet Earth “and the Apes on it.” He also thinks homelessness would be a topic worth addressing. Eccleston is an ambassador for The Big Issue Foundation, which helps to combat issues like homelessness and unemployment.
“The beauty of Doctor Who is it can deal with things like that without soapboxing,” Eccleston says. “But certainly that’s something I think the Doctor is interested in.”
Oh, and he does not have the iconic leather jacket, but he does say fantastic!
It is a lovely Q&A, and once more I am totally delighted by just how good Eccleston is. He is and has remained my favorite Doctor because of the warmth, candor, and activism he brings into everything he does. A truly fantastic actor.
(via YouTube, image: Screengrab)
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