Mark Gatiss says Doctor Who has “a spring in its step” with Ncuti Gatwa

By Morgan Jeffery

Published: Friday, 23 December 2022 at 12:00 am

Returning Doctor Who boss Russell T Davies has promised that his comeback will deliver “lots of content” with “no gap years” between series – and now former colleague Mark Gatiss has suggested that this “regularity” will be key to the show’s future success.

Speaking to RadioTimes.com to promote Count Magnus – his latest M R James adaptation for the BBC’s A Ghost Story for Christmas strand – Gatiss insisted that, despite having formerly contributed scripts to Doctor Who and remaining friends with Davies, he’s not sitting on a huge amount of insider info about the next instalment.

“I don’t know a thing. The only thing was… Russell came to Nolly [Davies’ ITVX drama, in which Gatiss plays TV entertainer Larry Grayson] on my last day in Manchester and it took about four-and-a-half seconds for us to talk about Doctor Who! And then he showed me the regeneration from Jodie into David and that was very exciting, so I held on to that as a little piece of the Key to Time for a bit…

“But no, I know nothing. I really know nothing. I haven’t a clue. And that’s a lovely feeling, to just be watching as a viewer. I’ve no idea what the structure is, or what’s happened. Who is David? He is the Fourteenth Doctor, isn’t he? So what’s happened? Who has done that? The only clue is, he says, ‘I don’t know who I am anymore.’”

With a chuckle, Gatiss added: “I suspect some kind of celestial intervention!” (So we can chalk him up as one more fan who suspects that Neil Patrick Harris is playing classic Doctor Who villain The Celestial Toymaker and that it is he who’s responsible for the Fourteenth Doctor’s old/new face.)