Entertainment

What To Expect From 'Doctor Who's Twelve

by Alanna Bennett

Now that we are (sob) about to say goodbye to Matt Smith's Eleventh Doctor, it's time to look ahead to Peter Capaldi's Twelfth. Steven Moffat just made the announcement that, unlike last season, Doctor Who 's eighth season will not be split in two. So let's look at that, as well as at what the Doctor Who fandom's dreaming of so far re: That season and the Twelfth Doctor.

Our next Doctor Who episode is the Christmas special, which will be Matt Smith's last on the show as Eleven regenerates — probably in some spectacularly tragic fashion — into Twelve.

The following season, Season 8, will come along around eight months later, in August of 2014. Unlike Season 7 — which aired six episodes (with Ponds!) in 2012 and eight episodes in 2013 (without Ponds, with Clara) — this one will feature "no split," although Moffat did not elaborate. We assume, however, that this means vaguely less waiting, and perhaps a more tied together first and second half of the season.

As for Caparldi himself, he's only been glimpsed so far once in Doctor Who. Well, as Twelve — he was of course present in the episode "The Fires Of Pompeii" as a character who is (as far as we know) not the Doctor.

Regardless! We saw his face, or at least his brow region, in his cameo in "The Day Of The Doctor," wherein he joined with all the other Doctors to help save Gallifrey. But here are some things we can expect from Twelve in his coming un-cut season, paired with some things that the fandom wants from him.

What we can expect

His costume will mix the new with the old

Capaldi’s costume mixes old and new – is a “bit old fashioned to denote the fact that he is the oldest Doctor” but is also “looking to the future as well” says the well-placed sourced.

He is the thirteenth DoctorHe's still being called Twelve, so don't fret about that quite yet. It's all very confusing and wibbly-wobbly and timey-wimey (translation: convoluted), but Moffat confirmed that, after Capaldi, the Doctor is, well, out of regenerations.He will spend his time searching for GallifreyAs the 50th Anniversary Special set up, the Doctor's got a new big arc, and it's finding his lost home planet of Gallifrey. We're sure he and Clara will get into all kinds of mischief in one-off episodes as they go about it, but it's certainly a change-up of motivations from the perpetually guilty conscience of the past few Doctors.

What we want

Peter Capaldi is known, amongst those who dwell on the Internet, mainly as that rage-filled British dude who cusses a lot. And no we are not mistaking him for Martin Freeman — though, those two should definitely be in some sort of R-rated dark buddy comedy together or something — the dude cusses a lot on his own.

The chances of Capaldi carrying over this accidental trademark into his time as the Doctor as slim, as Doctor Who is still considered a family show in a lot of ways and even if the Brits are somewhat more lenient with their public use of language than Americans, they probably still won't allow something like this:

But we want it. We want it so badly, you guys. All we want is for this trailer to be real. If we're just gonna have another white dude we gotta shake things up a little somehow.

This is a character who's been alive for a millenia. Of course he's run out of patience, and after Eleven's trademark silliness it'd be weirdly refreshing to go back to the rage that Nine had, but way more off the handle.

In the meantime:

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