Capaldi was joined for the excitable Hall H panel by co-stars Jenna Colman (Clara) and Michelle Gomez (Missy), and the brains behind the operation, showrunner Steven Moffat.
As has become something of a tradition, nobody was in the mood to give away many spoilers about the new series. Indeed, when asked what he could tell us about Maisie Williams' role, and that enigmatic “What took you so long, old man”, he replied: “Well, nothing. It's going to be surprising what she gets up to, but obviously I can't say a single thing about it or it would spoil it all.”
We do know, however, that Michelle Gomez’s Missy (aka the Master) is definitely back to make the Doctor's life more difficult. “She has to come from a different angle, which is kind of surprising and exciting to play,” said Gomez. “There's a slightly different dynamic to her, and to be honest I still can't quite believe that they asked me back, so I'm still relishing that. There's something that's slightly different to her. It's all very odd.”
“The way that she comes back into the Doctor's life is not something you're probably going to predict, it's very, very different,” Moffat added, and expanded on the idea that the two Time Lords are actually BFFs. “I don't think this is a new idea the Doctor and the Master being good friends. “One of the first things I did when I started writing this was go back and look at the Jon Pertwee/Roger Delgado version and they absolutely play it as best friends – one of them wants to blow up the world, the other wants to stop it from blowing up, but hey, you can't let those little things get in the way can you. You imagine they'd go to a gentleman's club and share a brandy afterwards, so it's not new. So we do play on it, but don't worry – she's just as vile and psychopathic as ever. In a lovely way.”
As for the Doctor and Clara, the two leads suggested that the Time Lord/companion dynamic will be more fun than it was before.
“There's kind of a freedom, it's our glory years, it's all about living in the moment and pushing the adventure right up to the edge and obviously with that comes extraordinary danger,” said Colman. “It's just been very fun.”
“It's been a gas,” admitted Capaldi. “I think because Clara and the Doctor feel more in a groove I think they're really enjoying being the luckiest people in the whole of history because they get to play in this immense toybox which is time and space, and the universe and they throw themselves recklessly into the pursuit of adventure, which is lovely. It's fun, it's witty and it's clever. We also have men in rubber suits pretending to be monsters, which is always one of the great things about Doctor Who. There's a B-movie element that still survives.”
Doctor Who returns to BBC One in the UK and BBC America in the US on Saturday 19 September.
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