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Christopher Eccleston introduced a whole new generation of fans to Doctor Who. The face of the franchise’s 2005 reboot, he played the Ninth Doctor for only a single season, but he helped redefine the idea of what a modern-era Time Lord could be and do. (Not to mention helping to spawn a Whovian revival that is still going strong over two decades later.)
But while Eccleston’s limited time as the Doctor was truly exceptional — “The Empty Child”/”The Doctor Dances” is an all-timer of a two-parter — his shocking departure has always haunted fans, many of whom (read: me) still wonder what another season of Nine might have been like. The actor famously had… let’s just call it a rocky relationship with then-showrunner Russell T Davies, and the rest of season 1’s production team, citing poor working conditions and other behind-the-scenes issues. (Eccleston’s memoir, I Love the Bones of You, also goes into some detail about his mental health struggles at the time, including an ongoing battle with an eating disorder.) In short, it wasn’t a great fit, and the experience soured him so much on the character and the franchise that he refused to return for the series’ 50th anniversary, even though Steven Moffat clearly wrote the episode with the intent to include the Ninth Doctor in it.
But, they say, time heals all wounds, and these days, Eccleston’s relationship with the franchise he helped to resuscitate is slightly less fraught. He’s playing the Ninth Doctor again, in an ongoing series of (excellent) audio dramas for Big Finish, and he’s a regular on the convention circuit, where he often talks about his past experiences with the show or what he thinks of its current state. (He predicted a possible Billie Piper-as-the-Doctor twist back in 2022 and seems fairly into the idea of her playing the Sixteenth Doctor now.) He’s even laid out some conditions for a possible return to the show for himself.
Eccleston was a guest at this year’s Chicago Comics and Entertainment Expo (also known as C2E2), where he was, as he so often is, asked about the possibility of returning to the Whoniverse one day. And his answer was… unexpectedly great, somehow managing to be both uncomfortably forthright and surprisingly hopeful at the same time.
“I thought about this, [and] not with the four people who are running it now,” he said, bluntly.
Yet, Eccleston doesn’t close the door on the idea entirely, instead pivoting to a dream scenario for his return that many Whovians likely share.
“Here’s the thing: Doctor Who’s written for boys. There has never been a female showrunner of Doctor Who,” Eccleston said. “So my dream is this: there was a little girl who was, I don’t know — six, seven, eight — in 2005 when my series went out, and she gets the job, and she asked me back? I’d go back like a shot.”
With rumors swirling that the forthcoming 2026 Christmas special might be Davies’s last hurrah in the showrunner’s chair (again), it is certainly possible that the franchise could finally hand a woman the keys to the kingdom. Unlikely, given how much of this modern era has been about passing the proverbial torch to the perceived “next in line” — a trend which would probably point toward Pete McTighe or someone similar as Davies’s natural successor — but not impossible.
Besides, Eccleston’s got a point. Doctor Who has never had a female showrunner before, something that would almost certainly shake up the stories the show is telling and provide a much-needed new perspective on the Doctor’s adventures. And if that move somehow got us Eccleston back too? Well, to crib a line from Nine himself: just this once, everyone wins.
The post Christopher Eccleston Finally Reveals What Would Bring Him Back to Doctor Who appeared first on Den of Geek.
