Peter Capaldi Confrims New Companion on Doctor Who

Peter Capaldi, the twelfth incarnation of the Doctor in the massively popular reboot of Doctor Who, has announced that the next companion for the series has been cast. The companion is an integral role in the series. Traditionally, the companion is a human woman who is swept up into a world of time travel and fantastic alien encounters in the iconic TARDIS. While there have been male companions such as Rory Williams, they have always been more of a secondary role to the main companion, in much the same way that there has yet to be a female incarnation of the Doctor, which is not out of the realm of possibility.

The TARDIS permanently bears the shape of a blue police telephone box due to a malfunctioning cloaking device. The TARDIS is the Doctor’s time-traveling space ship, which The Doctor stole at the beginning of the series, which originally started in 1963. TARDIS stands for Time and Relative Dimension in Space. Since the reboot of the show in 2005, there have been six major companions: Rose tyler (Billie Piper), Donna Noble (Catherine Tate), Martha Jones (Freema Agyeman), Amy Pond and her husband Rory Williams (Karen Gillan and Arthur Darvill), and the current companion, Clara Oswald (Jenna Coleman).

Capaldi’s iteration of the doctor has only had Clara for his companion. Though we know that Capaldi has confirmed that the next companion has been cast, the fandom is anxiously awaiting news of whether or not Capaldi himself will be returning to the show after season 10, despite the fact that he was believed to have been asked to return. While speaking to the Brazilian website Omelete, Capaldi confirmed the impending appearance of a new companion.

“Obviously I know who that is and we’ve been doing a bit of work together already and it’s very exciting, Because it’s a very different sort of take on it.”

This different take is most likely due to the fact that, like previous companions, but unlike the current one (Clara), the newcomer will have no previous experience or knowledge of the Doctor and his adventures.

“Clara had prior knowledge of the Doctor. It was conceived as a human connected to your timeline, and so had access to the cosmic nature of the Doctor. She understood a little about how he was. And as she was already with Matt [Smith], she knew the Daleks and the TARDIS. Now we have someone who knows very little about the Doctor.”

” I’m not going to be working on Doctor Who again, Everyone’s hyping about it, which is very exciting, but I guess that’s more of a publicity thing. But no, I’m not going to return, I have a lot of other really exciting projects lined up instead.”

Doctor Who‘s ninth season aired in 2015, ten years after the revival in 2005. This was Capaldi’s first season as the beloved Doctor. Capaldi has done a great job following the Doctors that came before him, David Tennant and Matt Smith being the most recent. However, the success of the show is not totally based on the performance of the Doctor. We will have to wait and see whether or not the next companion can live up to the standards that all of the companions before have set. Rose Tyler, Amy Pond, and Clara Oswald have left some massive shoes to fill. Who knows, there might even be the first male companion that doesn’t occupy the shadow of a leading lady.

[Photo by Mark Kolbe/Getty Images]