But Eccleston also made it clear that, as much passion as he has for the character, his love of the
medium his Doctor is returning in is just as strong. “I love audio drama. I do quite a lot for radio. I do audio books, and I get great creative satisfaction from that. Again, it’s because I’ve always been passionate about writing and writers,” Eccleston said of his choice to return for audio—and
explicitly not on TV. “There are no visuals, you know? All you have is the word and your voice. And I felt I could do something with a character that I’ve played in a visual format. I felt I could do something, and explore it, technically, in a vocal sense, as well.”
It’s a love the actor has had since he was a child. “I was born in 1964 and one of the big moments of my life—we were all there, me, my mum, my dad, Alan and Keith, my identical twin brothers—there was a power cut in the ‘70s and it was very exciting to me, because my mum and dad lit candles put them in bottles, and we had a battery run radio and I—being a not particularly technical kid—I was like, ‘How is that
working? It’s the only thing that’s working...’. Of course, it was running on a battery. My mom and dad tuned into a radio drama. It would have been on BBC 3 or 4—I can’t remember what it was. But we were all transfixed. I would say we’d never listened to one before, and the candlelight and....just the audio and our imagination creating the pictures, it had a profound effect on me. I can remember exactly where I sat in our back room, so maybe the love was born there. I love audio drama. Love it.”