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Ninth Doctor Christopher Eccleston didn't like Doctor Who as a kid - apart from one key part of the lore
Doctor Who wasn't a big show for Christopher Eccleston growing up, aside from one particular recurring feature that he had to check out
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Just because Christopher Eccleston and Billie Piper were the faces of the 2005 relaunch of the BBC’s iconic Doctor Who doesn’t mean that they were fans of the show before that — just the opposite, in fact.
Asked during the A Doctor and His Companion panel at Rose City Comic Con 2025 about whether or not they were avid Whovians during the show’s initial run, Billie Piper admitted, “I don’t have much of a relationship with Classic Who,” to which Christopher Eccleston responded, “I have less!”
There’s a good reason for that, though: “As a child, I was always playing out[side]. I was feral, outside at the shops with my mates,” he explained. But there was one part of the show that he always tried to check out whenever possible — and it’s a particularly exclusive-to-Who moment of television.
“The bit that I was always fascinated by as a child, and it would be in the press — because I was born in 1964 and I think the show started in 63…? So the bit that I was always fascinated by was the regeneration as a child, I thought, ‘What? So it's the same character, but they look different..?’ So philosophically, that was interesting. And then technically, I was fascinated as to how we were going to do it. And so I watched that bit, and then I’d go out again.”
Somewhat fitting that Eccleston was part of the show’s first regeneration scene after it was revived, really — especially that he basically went back out of the series entirely after it was done.
If you would like a relationship with Classic Doctor Who, might we suggest you check out our guide to watching the series?
About Rose City Comic Con 2025
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