Christopher Eccleston finally speaks about why he left Doctor Who
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Seems to me he didn't expect how overwhelming the cult following would be or how grueling the schedule would be, but at the same time, was proud to be part of Doctor Who. With that in mind, I can also only hope that he'll return for a 50th anniversary special.
And yet, it seems like that was Eccleston's most enjoyable experience. Huh, fancy that. Maybe it's not as bad as you think it is.
This is very important to note, and I want to reinforce Bones' point. Diplomacy is needed when you're fairly popular and you've got as many contacts accordingly. As much as we all like to think of film and TV as leisure projects (especially in the sci-fi/fantasy realm), we have to remember that for people like Eccleston, Tennant, Smith, RTD, Moffat, etc that it's still an industry, and every industry needs a degree of professionalism and business atmosphere.
Now, the article also notes that Eccleston was proud of the work nonetheless and that he thinks being the Doctor is more important than why he quit, which is very true, and neither is mutually exclusive from hating the experience. I don't think it's far off to imagine that the reason why we have Doctor/Companion-lite episodes is because of lessons learned from Eccleston's run, and lightening the workload. Sure, it started slow (Love and Monsters) but it gave us some pretty good times after that.
The only redeeming thing I found about that episode was that it gave us the one and only Doctor/Rose/Jack/Mickey team-up. Is it the only time in the revival that we've had the Doctor + 3 companions? (Yes, I know Mickey didn't count YET, but he eventually counts!)
I think season 1 while the weakest is still a solid enough year of Who while you feel most of it is total shit.
If it wasn't for TUD, Dalek & The Empty Child 2 parter, Season 1 of new Who would be dire imo...
Well that's just speculation. I could equally assert that he saw what utter shite Boom Town was and he hated doing that as much as anything else. Besides, rumour has it he was on his worst behaviour while filming The Unquiet Dead, and that's easily the best of that season for me.
Unquiet Dead, Dalek, and EC/DD were good/great to me. I also gave Father's Day a pass, just. Series 1 is classic television compared to series 2.
Series 2 had a Doctor/Rose/Sarah Jane/K-9 team up.
Series 4 ended with the biggest team up of all outside of The Five Doctors with Doctor/nuDoctor/Donna/Rose/Captain Jack/Martha/Mickey/Jackie/Sarah Jane/K-9/and Wilfred (who became an official companion with The End Of Time).
Absolutely. When I worked on X-Files in 1996, we were hitting 80 hour weeks. I remember driving home from a shoot at the airport at 7am on Saturday morning (shot all through the Friday night), and had to be at the location in the forest at 4:30am Monday. Maybe the environment he is talking about is the grind of shooting an ambitious weekly television show. Maybe on top of that he didn't think that it was being run very well? Maybe he didn't want to be typecast as "Dr. Who" for the rest of his career on top of other things he wasn't happy with.
He's being diplomatic, pure and simple.
He hasn't actually said anything new, you notice.
I think the response we are getting here saying more about the people making them than Christopher Eccleston.
My own view is that RTD used to eat all the chocolate biscuits.
Maybe he just really wanted to play Destro in the New Gi Joe movie 
What tosh, he's about the same age as me.
Age has nothing to do with being bigoted, there are plenty of young homophobic idiots out there..
Indeed, Eccleston's well-known homophobia is why he only worked with Russell T Davies on The Second Coming and never again.
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