One of Doctor Who’s actors has thoughts on how David Tennant began to “disengage” from the Tenth Doctor role during his final season.
On June 18, 2005, Doctor Who fans watched Christopher Eccleston’s Ninth Doctor regenerate into Tennant’s Tenth Doctor at the end of “The Parting of the Ways.” The latter incarnation of the Time Lord made his full debut later that same year in “The Christmas Invasion,” and the Tenth Doctor era ultimately lasted until the beginning of 2010 across three seasons and a handful of specials. However, Alex Kingston, who debuted as River Song during this period, believes that Tennant started separating from the role more than a year before his exit.
While speaking with Oxford Mail, Kingston recalled that the announcement of Tennant’s leaving Doctor Who “just happened or it was about to happen” when they were filming the season 4 episodes “Silence in the Library” and “Forest of the Dead.” So with that imminent departure, the River Song actor sensed that there was an “energy” that “somehow something had shifted.” She continued:
I don’t think he ever wanted to stop playing the Doctor, as he loved it so much. It wasn’t that he didn’t welcome me because he absolutely did, but I think it was him starting to already disengage with the character. I’m not even sure whether he knew he was doing that consciously or not, but there was just something there.
Kingston contrasted this with when Matt Smith joined Doctor Who to play the Eleventh Doctor, saying that he “was looking for that support to help him step into David’s very huge shoes, enormous feet!” Though Doctor Who season 4 concluded in July 2008, Tennant continued to play the Tenth Doctor in five specials that aired from Christmas 2008 to January 1, 2010. Tennant’s Doctor regenerated into Smith’s at the end of “The End of Time — Part Two.”
“Silence in the Library” and “Forest of the Dead” ended up being the only times that Tennant and Kingston shared screen time on Doctor Who. Because of River Song’s complicated timeline, the Doctor’s first encounter with her ended up being her final time seeing him while alive. Kingston subsequently recurred as a younger River during Smith’s Eleventh Doctor tenure, then returned to the TV series one last time to perform opposite Peter Capaldi’s Twelfth Doctor in the 2015 Christmas special “The Husbands of River Song.”
After “The End of Time — Part Two,” Tennant reprised the Tenth Doctor in the Doctor Who 50th anniversary special, which co-starred Smith and John Hurt as the War Doctor. Then in 2022’s “The Power of The Doctor,” Jodie Whittaker’s Thirteenth Doctor regenerated into the Fourteenth Doctor, who resembled the Tenth. Tennant then played this version of The Doctor in the three Doctor Who 60th anniversary specials, where he reunited with Catherine Tate’s Donna Noble and eventually bi-generated into Ncuti Gatwa’s Fifteenth Doctor.
Despite their short time together on the Doctor Who TV show, Tennant and Kingston reprised the Tenth Doctor and River, respectively, together in the Big Finish audio production The Tenth Doctor and River Song, which was released in November 2020. Tennant will vocally return as the Tenth Doctor in The Tenth Doctor Adventures Vol. 4, which begin its bi-monthly release in August 2027. Kingston can next be heard as River in The Death and Life of River Song: River and Rory, which comes out in January 2027.
- Release Date
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2005 – 2021-00-00
- Directors
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Graeme Harper, Euros Lyn, Douglas Mackinnon, Jamie Magnus Stone, Charles Palmer, Rachel Talalay, Joe Ahearne, James Strong, Jamie Childs, Saul Metzstein, Toby Haynes, Wayne Che Yip, Nick Hurran, Richard Clark, James Hawes, Daniel Nettheim, Colin Teague, Keith Boak, Azhur Saleem, Adam Smith, Andrew Gunn, Nida Manzoor, Lawrence Gough, Paul Murphy
- Writers
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Steven Moffat, Russell T. Davies
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Jodie Whittaker
The Doctor
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