Doctor Who has never been afraid of the occasional recast. Sometimes they’re even part of the story; Jenna Coleman officially made her debut in “Asylum of the Daleks,” with different incarnations of her character setting up an Impossible Girl arc around the companion Clara. On other occasions, it’s simply that the creative team enjoyed a performance and decided to bring an actor back; Colin Baker played a Time Lord who threatened the Doctor before eventually becoming the Sixth Doctor.
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One of the most amusing examples happened 18 years ago, though, in the David Tennant episode “The Fires of Pompeii.” This saw the Tenth Doctor and his companion Donna travel back to ancient Rome, where the Doctor uncovered the truth behind the AD79 eruption of Vesuvius. Along the way, though, they also met two faces who would become very important to the show – including a future Doctor.
Peter Capaldi Made His Doctor Who Debut 18 Years Ago
The first debut was future Twelfth Doctor Peter Capaldi. A lifelong fan, Capaldi happily joked that he last played the Doctor when he was a nine-year-old in the playground. In his teenage years, he campaigned to run the Official Doctor Who Fan Club and apparently haunted the winner with constant questions for the cast and crew. “I had a huge collection of Doctor Who books, autographs and pictures, but I threw them all away to go and drink lager and eat curries,” he told The Independent. “That was silly, wasn’t it? I wish I’d known that one day the geek would inherit the Earth.”
When he took over as the Doctor, Capaldi acknowledged the elephant in the room; his face had been seen before. He was already sure the show would figure something out, and he was right. Showrunner Stephen Moffat actually made it a plot point, revealing the Doctor had subconsciously chosen this face as a message to himself about what it meant to be the Doctor. “The Fires of Pompeii” saw the Tenth Doctor pushed to ignore the laws of time and save those he could from Pompeii’s destruction, and to be the Doctor was to be the man who saves people.
But Capaldi Wasn’t the Only Doctor Who Actor to Debut in This Episode
Capaldi wasn’t the only one to debut in “The Fires of Pompeii.” The episode also featured future Doctor Who companion Karen Gillan as one of a group of soothsayers, avoiding problems simply because she was in heavy makeup meaning her face wasn’t identifiable. “That was a really small role, but a nice introduction,” Gillan recalled in an interview with The Scotsman. “Although it wasn’t a case of the production team seeing me play a soothsayer and thinking, ‘Oh she could be a companion.’” The new production team didn’t actually recognize Gillan when she auditioned.
“The Fires of Pompeii” aired in April 2008. Gillan was officially announced as a companion over a year later, in May 2009, and – ironically – debuted as Amy Pond in April 2010. It took her just two years to move from a minor role to an actual full companion. Capaldi, meanwhile, wasn’t announced as a Doctor until August 2013, five years later, even if he did get the leading role.
Looking back, “The Fires of Pompeii” is a fairly typical Doctor Who pseudo-historical, albeit without the usual “celebrity character” like Charles Dickens or Agatha Christie. It’s rather ironic, though, that it features not one but two actors who would go on to play such an important role in the franchise’s future. Peter Capaldi’s Doctor has aged like fine wine, while Karen Gillan’s Amy Pond is generally seen as one of the best Doctor Who companions of all time. Even more ironically, both are Scottish actors, giving them even more in common. Sometimes time and space really do play the strangest tricks.
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