Ahead of the Doctor Who Christmas special, which is just one week away now, the BBC has dropped this short new featurette which dives behind the scenes of Peter Capaldi’s final days on set, as he prepares to say goodbye to the Twelfth Doctor.
“It’s a total privilege to be here for Peter’s exit,” explains Mark Gatiss, who’s guest starring in the episode, which is titled “Twice Upon a Time.” He then reveals that, at the same moment he was filming his interview, Capaldi was shooting his regeneration elsewhere at the studio.
In a chat with the man himself, presumably shot much earlier during production, the outgoing Time Lord said that his impending exit from the show wasn’t affecting him at that stage, as he was still knee-deep in the role.
“It’s quite odd, really. It’s this strange situation where I don’t think that I will have a sense of ending until I’ve done what lies ahead of me. Which is another four weeks of filming.”
The video features a few more comments from Gatiss as well as Toby Whithouse, another Doctor Who writer who’s guest starring in the special as a WWI soldier, and also shows us some clips of Capaldi greeting fans outside of the studio in Cardiff, on what looks to be his final day working on the series.
Of course, the Twelfth Doctor gets the last words in the featurette, explaining that he just has an instinct that this is his time to leave Doctor Who. Though he’s come to terms with vacating his dream job, it’s clear that it was still an emotional decision for him. As Capaldi put it: “There comes a time when it’s time, you know, and I think… It’s time.”
Doctor Who “Twice Upon a Time” sees the Twelfth Doctor encounter the First Doctor (David Bradley) as they embark on an adventure to solve a series of weird time anomalies. Be sure to catch it when it airs this Christmas Day on BBC One/America.
