The new Doctor Who was announced last night, and you might be wondering why there was so much joyous profanity greeting Peter Capaldi. Well, we’ve got an answer for that.
The pick is perhaps unsurprising: Capaldi is, well, a skinny white British guy, and it’s not like the Doctor has varied much in his regenerations over the years. But we’re still holding out hope for The People’s Doctor.
Anyway, before Who, Capaldi was best known for his work as Malcolm Tucker, the aggressive “enforcer” for the Labor Party in the BBC series The Thick Of It. If you’ve ever seen Veep, The Thick Of It will sound familiar; a relatively trivial government department full of people under severe stress nonetheless saying the kind of things to each other that in the real world would get you shot. The two shows were actually conceived by the same writer, which explains why they’re so close in tone.
Anyway, even by that standard, Capaldi’s Tucker was blisteringly, hilariously profane. And it’s his dialogue that people often remember best from the show.
So, while we’re sure Capaldi will be a perfectly capable Doctor, allow us to generate an image in your mind of a Doctor who’s a bit more… blunt than you’d normally expect. Note that these probably aren’t work-safe, unless you work for the British government apparently.