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New Doctor Who was not a fan
9 March

New Doctor Who Christopher Eccleston has admitted that he was not a fan of the sci-fi series a child.

Eccleston, who plays the Time Lord in the new series which starts on BBC One on Saturday 26 March, said it may have been the previous Time Lords' posh accents that put him off.

Speaking at the launch of the show in Cardiff, Eccleston said, "I'm different from the other Doctors in that I'm northern. All the others spoke with this RP (received pronunciation) accent - maybe it was that that put me off.

"I think it's good that we teach kids that people who speak like that can be heroic."

A northern Doctor is not the only way the series has moved with the times as sidekick Rose injects the companion role with a dose of feisty independence.

Eccleston said: "There has been no heroine for 12-year-old girls before and Billie pulled that off just like that. She saves the Doctor in the first episode, she is a heroine."

Of their on-screen chemistry, Eccleston said, "They are in love, it's love at first sight, but not a conventional love affair. It's more complicated than that."

Co-star Piper admitted that she preferred the stronger female role created for Rose.

She said: "I found other Doctors slightly chauvinistic, slightly patronising, but this time they are on a par. They work together and they educate each other."

Piper said the Time Lord was not always an easy character for Rose to live with. "He can be cold as ice at times and it gets to the point when it really starts to grate on her," she said.

Although Eccleston's Doctor has a clear northern accent (but then again, lots of planets have a north), he's not the first Doctor to come from that part of the UK. Tom Baker and Paul McGann were both from Liverpool and Sylvester McCoy was Scottish, and he certainly didn't speak with an RP accent.

As for Eccleston's comments about heroines for 12-year-old girls, what about Buffy or Xena? back to the top