Doctor Who fans are currently enjoying season 10 of the show, and counting down the weeks until Peter Capaldi is set to bow out. As with every Doctor, viewers are dreading the moment but are also excited to see how he’ll meet his end and regenerate into his next body. The most recent episode of the show even fooled us with a trick regeneration that wasn’t as it appeared.
Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Front Row recently, outgoing showrunner Steven Moffat teased that we should expect the Twelfth Doctor’s death to be “slightly different” from the norm. Intriguingly, he mentions that he’s conferred with incoming showrunner Chris Chibnall in order to find “a new way” to do it.
“You all know that the mighty Peter Capaldi will be bowing out, but we’re gonna do it slightly differently this time and I’ve been working with Chris [Chibnall] about how we do the changeover in a new way. I’m not going to tell you what that is. I’m excited by it, I think it’s gonna work well. Every regeneration is different, but we are playing it slightly differently this time. I think we’ve got a good idea.”
It’s hard to work out what Moffat means from his ambiguous comments, but his words do seem to support the popular theory that Capaldi will actually regenerate at the end of this season, even though he’s still set to appear in the annual Christmas special. This would make a lot of sense considering the season finale is titled “The Doctor Falls.”
Speaking of the relationship between the finale and the special, Moffat also talked about how the Christmas episode will balance the usual festive tone with the death of a Doctor.
“I kind of do the angst in the series finale. You’ll see how this pans out when you see the show, but finales are better at ‘last falls’, and moments of reflection, and anguish, and bloodbaths – which it certainly bloody is! Whereas, Christmas Day isn’t a great day to kill off a children’s favorite. It can be sad – and it is – but to actually kill off lovely old Doctor Who is not what you want to see on Christmas Day. So it will be a tale of redemption, and hope, and deciding to carry on, instead of being a tale of the Doctor falling.”
Doctor Who is currently airing on Saturday nights on BBC America and you can check out the promo for the next episode down below.