Happy birthday to the Ninth Doctor legend!
As acting legend Christopher Eccleston celebrates his 60th birthday, we couldn’t help but revisit his iconic Doctor Who Radio Times cover.
The cover, released in 2013 as part of Radio Times‘s celebration of Doctor Who’s 50th anniversary, shows Eccleston as the Ninth Doctor in his recognisable leather jacket alongside some of his most famous foes – the Daleks and the Slitheen.
Eccleston has had an illustrious career thus far across stage and screen, but sci-fi fans will know him best as the ninth incarnation of the Doctor, and the man who brought the beloved Time Lord back to our screens in 2005 after the show’s long hiatus.
His casting was announced in 2004, and he starred as the Time Lord for one season with Billie Piper as companion Rose Tyler before he left the role, with David Tennant following in his footsteps as the Tenth Doctor.
While Eccleston has been open about the difficulties he faced on set, including disagreements with showrunner Russell T Davies, he’s also made no secret of his love for the character itself, and has even returned to play the Ninth Doctor in audio adventures for Big Finish.
At the time of his return, he said: “After 15 years it will be exciting to revisit the Ninth Doctor’s world, bringing back to life a character I love playing.”
Davies recently praised Eccleston’s performance in the BBC documentary Imagine… Russell T Davies, saying of the show’s reboot in 2005: “I had to keep all the good iconography but dust off all the rubbish. Part of the rubbish was kind of pompousness around the character.
“He’s a Time Lord, so in people’s minds, he’s become a lord, someone loquacious and pompous and ostentatious and posh. So Chris singlehandedly, in one moment, shook that off.”
Outside of Doctor Who, Eccleston is known for film roles including Malekith in Thor: The Dark World, as well as varied TV roles including DCI Bilborough in 1993’s Cracker, Claude in 2007’s Heroes, Robert in 2015’s Safe House, and Maurice Scott in The A Word.
Most recently, he starred as Ted Connelly in True Detective.