David Tennant is the most popular actor to play the Doctor of the modern era—arguably, brushing up against Tom Baker’s fourth incarnation to be the most popular of them all, full stop—so it’s no surprise that he’s kept slowly but surely returning as Doctor Who celebrates its big birthdays over the last decade. But after coming back as an entirely new Doctor last year, Tennant seems to be very much entering his Retirement Lord era.
“The door is not any more open than it ever was, because in Doctor Who if you want to bring someone back, there are endless ways of doing it,” Tennant told Radio Times of the end of the 14th Doctor’s story in “The Giggle,” which saw the Doctor bi-generate into a simultaneous, 15th incarnation of themselves, leaving the 14th with the reward of living out his days alongside his best friend Donna Noble and her family. “It’s very much the end of the story.”
“The Doctor’s happy,” the actor continued. “He is in a garden in Chiswick, being made mac and cheese by Bonnie Langford!”
Even on the possibility of a team up between the 14th and Ncuti Gatwa’s 15th Doctor, should the latter ever find himself around contemporary Chiswick, Tennant refused to be drawn. “You could also say, ‘Why has Patrick Troughton not landed here?!’ It unpicks if you think about that too much,” the actor continued. “I’m retired! The 14th Doctor is retired!”
So odds are, we won’t be seeing either of Tennant’s Doctors any time soon. There are just 9 years until Doctor Who’s 70th birthday, however, so there’s plenty of time for Tennant to rethink about whether or not he wants to do an anniversarial hat trick, however. And what does a retired Time Lord have, if not time?
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