David Tennant has shared his first ever television memory, and it happens to be a Doctor Who serial dating back to 1974. The story in question was the sixth and concluding chapter of Planet of the Spiders, Jon Pertwee’s last episode as the Third Doctor.
He’d served as the Time Lord since the turn of the 1970s and made way for Tom Baker’s highly popular fourth incarnation. Tennant would have only been three on the day the sixth episode of Planet of the Spiders aired (June 8, 1974), so credit where its due for remembering the moment so vividly.
Baker would go on to play the character for seven years. In an interview with The Radio Times. If you’re old enough to remember the scene, here’s Pertwee’s regeneration in full at the link below.
Tennant described the memory of Pertwee’s regeneration as “weirdly specific, especially considering things that have happened in my life since. I remember thinking, ‘That man just turned into another man. That’s wild.”
In regards to landing the role as the Doctor (twice, since Tennant will be back as the Fourteenth Doctor later in the year), the 52-year-old described the “utterly unpredictable” way in which he secured the role, hailing it as “so fantastically unlikely. The odds are so ludicrously small that if I think about it too much, it makes me feel vertiginous.”
Doctor Who is available to stream via the BBC iPlayer, with classic episodes available on Britbox. What are you most excited to see from the future of the series? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!
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