According to our local paper, David T has laughed off he's quitting after the next series of Dr Who.

To me, Richard E Grant or Bill Nighy should be next.

But I suspect RTD and the BBC won't do that.

Interesting choice of words.

Sounds like it's coming from somebody who has been seriously considering it.

based on using the eye technique of detecting whether someone is lying then he is lying or not then he is lying when he says nobody has asked him about it. Although this method isn't 100 percent.

I haven't made a decision yet on whether to have toast for my breakfast on Saturday. And I haven't been seriously considering it either!

Charlie from Lost

Is that the Scottish guy who was also in Lord of the Rings?

No. The German guy. Dominic Monaghan.

That's the problem, there is no logic invovled involved sometimes and there is no real proof either. What the BBC understand though is that the first series started of very strongly (11m) and dropped and dropped into the 6's by the end, with not a huge amount of love for CE.

DT, on the other hand, upped figures from the 6's that CE ended on and brought them up to stay (mostly) in the 7's/8's (therefore "adding the 1.5m I quoted earlier) and has been consistent since.

What he's also done is win the women's vote. I'm not suggesting that the 1.5m are all women, but DT is a popular guy with the ladies. The kids also adore him and have warmed to him more than CE.

The BBC know that if DT goes, they're going to find it very, very hard to replace such a well-liked actor. All of his one-off dramas bring the ratings in regardless and I bet most Who fans don't even watch them. Hell, most fans don't even know that he was in Casanova before he was the Doc.

Essentially, it's diffucult to measure the effect of DT on the world of Who, but as an actor, he's brought viewers in and kept them, he's maintained credibility by doing his theatre and one-off's and the children and women love him. Finding someone new to keep Who at the top is nigh on impossible and the beeb know that.

But of course it dropped from the first episode's 9.9m (if you want the actual figure). It had dropped to 7.2m by the next week. You'd expect the first new Doctor Who in nearly a decade to rate well, and you wouldn't expect people to necessarily tune in for the whole series.


But what's important isn't the figures themselves, but the audience share. Which has actually dropped with Tennant. Eccleston regularly drew between 41% and 45% of the total audience watching TV. Tennant draws between 37% and 40%.

"The Girl In The Fireplace", for example, got 36.6% of the audience share, while "The Parting Of The Ways" got 41%. Which, however you slice it, is an amazing figure.

Hard to pin down why DT isn't quite as good as CE.
CE managed to give the character an 'edginess' or 'danger' that DT doesn't...
Still like DT. Just not quite as much as CE!

tbh i think tate is correct.
looking at the interviews hes given had he decided 100% to stay what value has he to gain from keeping people guessing hes a well thought of doctor and he filled a huge hole and done a very good job.
I tend to suspect hes more hacked off tate rumbled him.every sentence he talked about didnt sound like a chap who was staying more like stalling.