The Moment Doctor Who Turned A Weird Casting Choice Into A Moment Of Incredible Pathos
How does the Doctor choose a new face?
Why does the Doctor in Doctor Who have so many different faces? Well, in the real world, it allows the show to continue on with a brand new actor in the same role; an innovation that saved and redefined the series way back in 1966. But, within the reality of the Who canon, the regeneration process of the Time Lord known as the Doctor follows a mysterious set of rules. In “The Day of the Doctor,” the 10th Doctor (David Tennant) described regeneration as a “lottery,” while the 9th Doctor (Christopher Eccleston) called the process “dodgy.” But was there a hidden meaning behind the Doctor’s faces? Were these visages truly random?
Ten years ago, on October 17, 2015, with the release of the episode “The Girl Who Died,” the 12th Doctor (Peter Capaldi) learned that the reason his face was so familiar was because, sometimes, the Doctor sends themselves messages via the next regeneration.
Clara (Jenna Coleman), the Doctor (Peter Capaldi), and Ashildr (Maisie Williams) in Doctor Who’s “The Girl Who Died.”
While well known as the 12th Doctor now, actor Peter Capaldi has already appeared in the Whoniverse twice before as two different characters. He played the compromised civil servant John Frobisher in Torchwood: Children of Earth, and, perhaps more memorably, the Roman Lucius Caecilius in the 10th Doctor (David Tennant) adventure “The Fires of Pompeii.” Capaldi wasn’t the first guest actor in the Whoniverse to later be cast as the Doctor. In 1983, future 6th Doctor Colin Baker played a different Time Lord named Maxil in the 5th Doctor (Peter Davison) serial, “The Arc of Infinity.”
Similarly, Lalla Ward played a character named Princess Astra in “The Armageddon Factor” in February 1979, and then, when the Time Lady Romana (Mary Tamm) regenerated in September 1979 for “Destiny of the Daleks,” she would take on the role of Romana II. The start of “Destiny of the Daleks” made a big deal out of this, making it clear that Romana had the ability to choose the appearance of this particular regeneration, which startled the 4th Doctor (Tom Baker) at first, since he thought she was Princess Astra.
But, prior to “The Girl Who Died,” Doctor Who never established that the Doctor, specifically, could control their regenerations. The moment with Romana and the business with Colin Baker appearing as a different character was mostly forgotten in the post-2005 Who era, fandom era. Even Freema Agyeman’s appearance in Season 2 as a minor character, prior to her regular appearances as Martha Jones, was hand-waved away as Martha having had a “cousin.” But once Capaldi was announced as the 12th Doctor, fandom discussions heated up. Could there be an in-universe reason why this face had appeared in the Doctor Who mythos before? And before Season 9 aired, both Russell T Davies and Steven Moffat mentioned publicly that there was a plan to address why Capaldi’s face existed in previous installments of the Who canon.
The many faces of Peter Capaldi in Doctor Who canon: the 12th Doctor, John Frobisher in Torchwood, and Lucius Caecilius in “The Fires of Pompeii.”
The answer finally came in a pivotal moment in “The Girl Who Lived.” Faced with a question of whether or not he should help Ashildr (Maisie Williams) and her village of Vikings, the Doctor decides that yes, he will go over the top to save the day. And this epiphany leads to a moment that the modern era of Who had never attempted before: A complete flashback to a previous episode of the franchise. Yes, in 2013, “The Day of the Doctor” used archive footage of all previous Doctors for the grand finale, and in that same story, David Tennant’s 10th Doctor was plucked out of a backstory only previously hinted at in “The End of Time,” from 2010.
But none of this represented a true, actual flashback. In fact, at the time, the now-familiar montage, which shows us all the faces of the Doctor, was still a somewhat new gimmick. It was a novel idea in the 2008 special, “The Next Doctor,” and an epic moment in 2010’s “The Eleventh Hour.” But, in the first season of Capaldi’s era, other than a cameo from Matt Smith in the first episode of Season 8, “Deep Breath,” the chances of seeing the face of a previous Doctor were very small.
But all of that changed when Capaldi gazed into the puddle of water in “The Girl Who Lived,” which recalled a similar moment when he caught his reflection in “Deep Breath.” The question he asked in that episode, his first regular appearance, was “Who frowned me this face? Why did I choose this one? Why did I choose this face?” And with “The Girl Who Lived,” we got the answer.
Despite previous episodes establishing that the 12th Doctor couldn’t seem to remember everything from his previous lives (he hilariously fails to recall the clockwork robots in “Deep Breath”), this flashback in “The Girl Who Lived” is crystal clear. We see Donna Noble (Catherine Tate) begging the 10th Doctor (David Tennant) to “save someone” as Pompeii burns. And when the 10th Doctor saves Caecilius and his family, we flash back to the relative present.
“I know where I got this face and I know what it’s for!” the Doctor says triumphantly. “To remind me. To hold me to the mark. I’m the Doctor and I save people!”
After this moment, the Doctor brings Ashildr back to life, despite saying that he’s “not supposed to” just moments before. Indeed, this big revelation has massively mixed results. Arguably, the Doctor giving Ashildr immortality created a kind of curse, which is evident in the following episode, “The Woman Who Lived,” as well as the finale of season 9, “Hell Bent.” Like so much of the Capaldi era, what plays out as a more traditional, David Tennant-esque moment of heroism, is in fact covertly tragic. This big Capaldi speech happens at the end of “The Girl Who Died,” but it doesn’t end up representing the triumph we think it does. In “Deep Breath,” the Doctor said, “It’s like I’m trying to tell myself something,” referencing his familiar face. But one could argue, because of what happens to Ashildr later, the message is still something of a puzzle.
That said, after “The Girl Who Died,” the doors were flung wide open for Who to do this kind of thing more often. Just a few episodes later, in “The Zygon Invasion,” we got another flashback, this time to “The Day of the Doctor,” which featured Doctors 10 and 11, Matt Smith and David Tennant, performing more feats of heroism, which the 12th Doctor is saddled with cleaning up.
And after Steven Moffat stepped down as showrunner, following the last Capaldi episode in 2017, “Twice Upon a Time,” the Who canon would become somewhat obsessed with the idea that the Doctor’s new faces represent something deeper and more personal than just random sci-fi storytelling and meta-textual casting decisions.
David Tennant as the 14th Doctor, a Doctor with the same face as the 10th.
Since returning as showrunner in 2023, Russell T Davies has employed this trick not once but twice. David Tennant’s 14th Doctor had the face of the 10th Doctor, again, and initially didn’t know why. And then, most recently, the 15th Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa) regenerated into the face of Billie Piper, best known as Rose Tyler, companion of the 9th and 10th Doctors.
Arguably, without the casting of Peter Capaldi as the 12th Doctor and without this specific moment in “The Girl Who Died,” the Who canon wouldn’t have gotten to this new precedent. In “The Girl Who Died,” the meta-commentary about an actor playing a different role was full of dramatic irony. Has the trick since then been as effective? Fans surely each have their own opinions about the short tenure of the 14th Doctor, while seemingly nobody knows what to make of the new Billie Piper Time Lord. But a decade ago, Doctor Who turned an Easter egg stunt into a moment of pure pathos and depth. Whether the show could ever pull something like this off again seems, for now, next to impossible.
