I think the phrase he used a few years back was that he supposed sooner or later he'd end up doing "one of those radio things," by which he meant BF, which were were being launched on Radio 7 I think.
Eccleston: "Doctor Who Almost Destroyed My Career"
- Thread starter Allyn Gibson
- Start date
Some-one posted a link to it soon after she got the role in Doctor Who.
Iirc it was Antigone (would have bee nice if that version was around when I did Classical Studies in high school but Jodie was only 7 at the time).
How could Doctor Who destroy someone's career? Did they not use the profile of the series to boost their exposure? Or is there really a type cast that happens after the role?? Is Eccleston right to have been afraid of the role's impact on his career as a whole? The only thing I have really seen him in after Who was Destro in the GI Joe movies.. meh.. Yet, I think he was great in that zombie flick before nuWho.. 
Random..
I wonder what a modern remake of This Island Earth would be like?
I remember the Ikea interocitor. Tho MST3K had some great fun with it in their movie. a Fav of mine to watch.
Random..
I wonder what a modern remake of This Island Earth would be like?
I remember the Ikea interocitor. Tho MST3K had some great fun with it in their movie. a Fav of mine to watch.
He was on Heroes for awhile.
How could Doctor Who destroy someone's career? Did they not use the profile of the series to boost their exposure? Or is there really a type cast that happens after the role?? Is Eccleston right to have been afraid of the role's impact on his career as a whole? The only thing I have really seen him in after Who was Destro in the GI Joe movies.. meh.. Yet, I think he was great in that zombie flick before nuWho..
Random..
I wonder what a modern remake of This Island Earth would be like?
I remember the Ikea interocitor. Tho MST3K had some great fun with it in their movie. a Fav of mine to watch.
I would love a 4k interocitor.
well that is perfectly understandable from the BBC corporate perspective. I can see that. He has no one to blame for that decision then himself. Tho had he stayed we wouldn't have gotten Tenant.
Talked about mixed feelings! I enjoy Tennat, and certainly thought he did great as the Doctor, but I really wanted more Eccleston.
If only they could have done both!
Blame? He decided he didn't want to stay because he didn't like the job. The BBC were the ones that messed up that announcement, including his wanting to leave because of "typecasting." They dropped that right as it was about to premiere. They embarrassed him.
Is that what happened? Forgive me, I don't remember the details in the aftermath of his leaving..
Eccelston has only recently been more forth coming about why he left, what happened, etc.
Eh.. I lost interest in anything Eccleston had to say after GI Joe.. so I'm kinda just cobbling together the comments I see in this thread, because the title is a draw. I can see typecasting being an issue, back then no one had successfully made a transition to another high profile series or movie before then. Tho, I think I remember the original Narnia series featuring Tom Baker (the Silver Chair?) , and wasn't Baker in Black Adder as a legless sea captain? Those performances were pretty good and made me take note. Maybe because I was a whovian already.. But if his problem was because of it's type casting, it was a legitimate concern. Tenant seemed to have also broken that mold. Matt Smith has tried to break that, and to some extent has made some strides in that arena. Particularly seeing him in Terminator Genisys.. Blech.. not the best of the franchise. He did play a pretty good villain tho.
Except, Eccleston's problem wasn't typecasting. When BBC announced his departure, they said it was because of typecasting which was false, and Eccleston lodged in official complaint on the matter. Given it is against the BBC Charter to lie, intentionally or unintentionally, this was quite the media stir at the time.
Something like this doesn't happen by accident. If there was a falsehood reported about Eccleston by the BBC, he has very legitimate reason to believe someone there had an axe to grind.
There's certainly form for Doctor Who having a negative effect on the lead's career, even when they're a long lasting success in it. Tom Baker's always been fairly honest he had to wait for the kids who watched him to grown up and start working in TV before he got good regular work again (a large part of it being that generation viewing him as a great eccentric rather than the difficult sod to work with his contemporaries had come to see him as) .
Yeah. Although Hugo Weaving & Mads Mikkelsen made a little bit more of a meal out of it than Eccleston did.
Funny because I often feel like Eccleston & Tennant are the 2 most similar Doctors out of any in the entire history of the series. Eccleston was a bit darker & more wounded than Tennant but I think he had to be because that was right after the Time War. I figure that Eccleston's Doctor would have mellowed in a similar fashion had he lasted longer on the show.
I figured it's because the cameras & lighting during the 1st season were shite. Granted, they were pretty shite during Season 2 as well, but maybe Tennant is just popular enough to justify re-airing those.
If it has to do with Eccleston's residuals, that might also make sense. IIRC, Eccleston got paid more than any other Doctor has. Even by the end of Tennant's run, he was still making less than Eccleston got.
No deep space in Season 1. Every episode in Season 1 is in our solar system. In fact, the first time they substantially got away from either Earth or New Earth was in late Season 2 in "The Impossible Planet."
Probably the Season 2 episode that feels the most Eccleston-ish is "School Reunion," particularly with just how much of a jerk the Doctor is towards Mickey.
My sister would agree.
For the most part, I think that most Doctors get better as they go on. William Hartnell was a little too curt in his first few stories but pretty well hit his stride by mid-Season 1. Tom Baker & David Tennant both came to the role pretty fully formed but I think they got even better in subsequent seasons. Even in the one season that we got, I think Eccleston showed marked improvement in the 2nd half of the season. Peter Capaldi's performance was always firing on all cylinders but he spent a lot of his first season fighting against the material he was given.
The big exception, IMO, is Matt Smith. Outside of his first couple recording blocks (basically "The Beast Below" through "Flesh & Stone"), Smith was at his best during his first season. But once he got to his 3rd season, I think he realized that there wasn't anything new to discover about the character, so he got bored. (He did up his game a bit when Tennant & Hurt showed up for "Day of the Doctor.")
I just finished rewatching Series 1 and I have only one word. Fantastic! I wish Eccleston had stayed.
Some people think the CGI were not so good but I think TV and movies have gotten so focused on outdoing each other with CGI that th e stories have suffered. The Series 1 stories were great - very well developed. The only episode I had a problem with was Boomtown, and becauseI thought it was too quick to bring back the same alien.
Eccleston also had far more charisma than Smith or Capaldi. Smith was too frantic. He always seemed like he was just reacting and not truly figuring out each problem that faced him. Capaldi just bored me. Eccleston's Doctor balanced humor, resourcefulness, a little arrogance and genuine compassion. For me, he was awesome. I think the show and his career would have been better off if he had continue.
This takes nothing away from David Tennant who I think was great as well.
Some people think the CGI were not so good but I think TV and movies have gotten so focused on outdoing each other with CGI that th e stories have suffered. The Series 1 stories were great - very well developed. The only episode I had a problem with was Boomtown, and becauseI thought it was too quick to bring back the same alien.
Eccleston also had far more charisma than Smith or Capaldi. Smith was too frantic. He always seemed like he was just reacting and not truly figuring out each problem that faced him. Capaldi just bored me. Eccleston's Doctor balanced humor, resourcefulness, a little arrogance and genuine compassion. For me, he was awesome. I think the show and his career would have been better off if he had continue.
This takes nothing away from David Tennant who I think was great as well.
I always felt that Eccleston had just started to really "get" the role and then he left. I think that the production team really only began to work out fully what they were doing at around the same time. A second season for Eccleston might have cemented him as one of the best Doctors of all. But then we probably wouldn't have got Tennant who is one of my favourites. I'm not a big fan of the audio adventures, but if Eccleston ever signs up to do some Big Finish I'll definitely spend money on them.
As an addendum to my Eccleston story, when I met Camile Coduri last weekend, I got the impression that's someone who isn't a fan of his. She found his quick squibble signature in the book absolutely hilarious, it pretty much reduced her to tears and she was showing it to the person next and going on about how some people put no effort it in a way it's hard to imagine her doing about, say, Tennant.
When I mentioned it wasn't a proper signing and he'd been mobbed by about 200 people, her response was "Serves him right!"
Notably he was very much "Christopher Eccleston" to her as well, not Chris, or even Chris Eccleston...
When I mentioned it wasn't a proper signing and he'd been mobbed by about 200 people, her response was "Serves him right!"
Notably he was very much "Christopher Eccleston" to her as well, not Chris, or even Chris Eccleston...
