Peter Capaldi to Be the New 'Doctor Who'

Speculation about who will be the next actor to portray the ever-changing Doctor Who on the BBC TV series has ended. Peter Capaldi, the 55-year-old Scottish actor best know in Britain for his role on the BBC series "The Thick of It," will be the 12^th incarnation of the Doctor since the character's story first began airing in 1963.

The BBC reports that Capaldi had been asked, in secret, to audition at the home of the show's lead writer and executive producer, Steven Moffat. After the audition, Capaldi went off to Prague, where he was working on a BBC version of "The Three Musketeers." He was in Prague when he got the call—sort of.

"I had my phone on silent so I missed the call," he told the BBC. "It was my agent, and I rang her up and she said 'hello Doctor'—I haven't stopped laughing since."

Capaldi replaces Matt Smith, who has played the Doctor since 2010. Smith was the successor of David Tennant, who had the role from 2005 to 2010. The role has passed from actor to actor over the 50 years that the program has appeared on the BBC, and each casting change is written into the show. The changes happen when the Doctor, a time-and-space-traveling Time Lord, is injured in a way that would be fatal to a more fragile species. Each time the Doctor "regenerates," he takes on a new body and a somewhat different personality.

The "regeneration" that results in Capaldi playing the Doctor will happen on the "Doctor Who" Christmas episode this year.