And the Twelfth Doctor is . . .

Scottish!

That makes a quarter of the actors playing the Doctor Scottish. That makes me, as a proud Scots girl, a very happy lady. But that's not the only thing I'm taking from this.

Peter Capaldi.

An excellent actor. Best known for The Thick of It, as Malcom Tucker. So best known as a foul-mouthed spin doctor losely based on Alistair Campbell. Not the most obvious Doctor. But he's a very talented actor who's played a great many different parts. Besides The Thick of It, in the recent years I've seen him as a transexual suspect in Prime Suspect 3, a philandering painter in an early 1990s Poirot, King Charles I in The Devil's Whore, and an 1950s newsman in The Hour. That's a very ecclectic set of characters. And it doesn't include his two previous Whoverse appearances. 

He was patriarch Lucius Caecilius Iucundus in the Tenth Doctor adventure The Fires of Pompeii. He was also the hard-nosed civil servant John Frobisher in Torchwood: Children of Earth. So Whovians have already seen him in action.

He's a good choice. Simply by dint of his age and life experience he will be different to Matt Smith. He won't be able to help it. Which is good because if a new Doctor is too similar to the last there will always be more critical comparisons. There will be comparisons anyway, but if you can take the role and make it your own then people are more able to separate your differing portrayals. He is a mature and experienced actor, and a well-established name to close out the 50th anniversary year.

He's a good, solid choice. Some might say a safe choice, but there's really no such thing when you're casting the new Doctor. But I have no doubt he will do very well.

Now just to find out what John Hurt is up to...