Doctor... Oh.

So, Auntie Beeb made us a special program, a program to unveil the person that would step into the shoes of Matt Smith, none other than the current Doctor Who! They made an announcement that the show would be live! They built it into what we will classify here as 'A Thing'! They made the show over half an hour long!

This is gonna be good right? That's what I was thinking!

All day I joked that Idris Elba was coming out on stage. All day I built that joke up, at home, on twitter, in my head. It was going down a storm with me (pretty sure no-one else was listening) and I was joking... But I really wasn't.

No, I wasn't waiting for just one actor and none other would do. Nope. I was hoping for something that I thought was I finally going to see; an unconventional choice for the flagship science fiction role on British television! I wanted science fiction to do what it's always done in the past; push the envelope with casting selections.

The show started, the guests were... well, it was all a bit dull. People going, 'oh, isn't Who good!'

Well yes, we fans were all tuning in. We didn't need celebs to tell us it was cool... But thanks anyway.

Anyway, so Matt Smith told us he was really pleased and that's fair and cool. Then Moffat came on the video and told us it could be anyone, any colour, any sex, any age! He went on about the person to take the role and said he was really excited. That it was going to be cool!

It sounded like they were going to do something special...

Here comes the Elba!!!

Boom! The end of the show approaches! The lights go down! Zoe Ball issues on the new Doctor!! Here he comes!!!

It's....

Peter Capaldi.


Now don't get me wrong. Capaldi is an excellent choice and I'm sure he'll be great. But lets face it, this isn't some stunning casting choice. It's a slim white dude, like all the others.

Doctor Who is going to be marvellous with Capaldi as the main man. I wanted an older Doctor to follow and he's cool. But he has been in both Doctor Who as a Senator in Pompei and in Torchwood as a major character that goes home and kills himself and his family in Children Of Earth. It was a major role and he was brilliant... But he has been in it. Twice.

Let's face it, Capaldi was a safe choice. It didn't evolve the character. It didn't push the boundary and it did not fulfil the ill-placed hype. There are plenty of actors out there, black, white, Asian, Oriental, male, female, gay, straight, bi, trans, and everything in-between. There was an opportunity here for Doctor Who to step forward and do something not massively brave but something that was really needed.

A new Who for a new generation.

I read somewhere that Neil Gaiman said a black actor was approached in the past but that he turned it down. Should the role have been filled by someone non-Caucasian just because? No. But there are thousands of actors who haven't been in Doctor Who, who would have been excellent and who may or may not be different in colour or sex when compared to the other Doctors.

Peter Capaldi is a great choice, but it wasn't brave. It wasn't cutting edge. It wasn't worth the hype and I'm pretty sure that Moffat doesn't really get it.