Doctor Who: What the Actors Who Played the Doctor are Doing Now
Which roles are coming up for the Doctors old and new? Here’s where next to see Christopher Eccleston, David Tennant, Matt Smith, Peter Capaldi, Jodie Whittaker, Ncuti Gatwa and some of the Classic era Doctors.
While it’d take a laboratory staffed by several PhDs and a mega-computer to comprehensively track what each incarnation of the Doctor is doing at any given time (they’re all simultaneously dead/alive/on a multi-Doctor adventure/working at the National Gallery/eating macaroni cheese in Donna Noble’s garden), tracking the actors who played them is much more straightforward. So that’s what we’ve done.
From movies to TV, Big Finish audio to theatre, find out what the Doctor Who stars have coming up next, and mark your calendars accordingly. In reverse chronological order…
Ncuti Gatwa: The Importance of Being Earnest (and Series 15!)
Gatwa’s Doctor has already filmed the 2024 Doctor Who Christmas special “Joy to the World”, plus the show’s eight-episode next season, which is due to arrive in 2025. And though a recommission starring Gatwa has yet to be officially announced, we’re crossing everything that he also sticks around in the TARDIS for another festive adventure and at least a third run of episodes after that.
In between his Doctor responsibilities, Gatwa also has an undisclosed role in the currently filming 2025 British comedy drama feature The Roses. It’s an adaptation of Warren Adler’s novel The War of the Roses, which was memorably made by Danny DeVito into a 1989 movie starring Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner. This one has Olivia Colman and Benedict Cumberbatch as the married leads whose ‘perfect’ lives descend into bitter chaos.
Bigger than that though, is Gatwa’s leading role as Algernon Moncrieff in Oscar Wilde farcical comedy play The Importance of Being Earnest, which is running at the Lyttelton Theatre at The National in London from November 2024 to January 2025. Hugh Skinner also stars, alongside some Doctor Who alumni in the form of Sharon D Clarke and Julian “Davros” Bleach.
David Tennant: Rivals & The Thursday Murder Club
When Den of Geek welcomed you to “the year of David Tennant” in 2023, we may have jumped the gun – the actor’s no less booked and busy in 2024. In October, he’ll be seen playing TV producer aristo Lord Tony Baddingham in a new TV adaptation of Jilly Cooper 1980s bonkbuster Rivals coming to Disney+. He also has an as-yet-undisclosed role in the currently filming adaptation of Richard Osman’s mega hit cosy crime mystery The Thursday Murder Club, directed by Chris Columbus and produced by Steven Spielberg’s company.
On stage, Tennant will return to the role of Macbeth in October as the production in which he and Cush Jumbo starred at the Donmar Warehouse earlier this year comes to new venue The Harold Pinter Theatre.
Jodie Whittaker: The Duchess of Malfi & Toxic Town
Not since 2012’s staging of Antigone (alongside Christopher Eccleston) has Jodie Whittaker starred in a full-sized theatre production, and in October 2024, she’ll be doing it again with an 11-week run as the titular lead role in The Duchess of Malfi opposite Paul Ready.
Whittaker has already filmed her role in new four-part Netflix drama Toxic Town, written by Jack Thorne (His Dark Materials, Best Interests). In it, she stars alongside Sex Education’s Aimee Lou Wood and Bridgerton’s Claudia Jessie as three mothers fighting the power in a dramatisation of the true story of the Corby toxic waste poisonings. She’s also voiced a role in Richard Curtis-written Netflix animation That Christmas, due out this December. That’s as well as her and Mandip Gill’s return to the TARDIS for Big Finish audio drama series The Thirteenth Doctor Adventures, due out in July 2025.
Peter Capaldi: The Devil’s Hour & Criminal Record Season 2
The second season of Capaldi and Jessica Raine’s supernatural mystery The Devil’s Hour is poised to arrive in the next few months on Prime Video. In it, Capaldi plays Gideon Shepherd, a man with a peculiar ability that gives him a god-like perspective on the world. He is great in the part – unknowable, scary and captivating. And speaking of unknowable characters, Capaldi will also be back as DCI Daniel Hegarty in the second season of Apple TV+’s Criminal Record, opposite Cush Jumbo. The Twelfth Doctor actor also made a recent return to the directing world (he won an Oscar for his 1993 short film Franz Kafka’s It’s a Wonderful Life, and directed Jo Brand, Vicki Pepperdine and Joanna Scanlan’s NHS comedy Getting On before taking on the TARDIS), with a parenting comedy pilot for Sky, starring Anne-Marie Duff and based on Sarah Naish’s memoir.
Matt Smith: Starve Acre, Nick Cave, HotD Season 3
Fans have a lengthy wait to see Matt Smith as Prince Daemon Targaryen in the third and final season of HBO fantasy House of the Dragon, as filming isn’t due to begin until early 2025, which means the new episodes may not arrive until 2026. There won’t be a Matt Smith-drought, however. Following up from his run earlier this year in Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People at the Duke of York’s Theatre, he’s about to be seen in British folk horror feature Starve Acre, alongside The Rings of Power‘s Morfydd Clark, coming out in UK cinemas on September 6.
Smith has also been filming feature film The Death of Bunny Munro, the story of a twisted travelling salesman, which has been adapted from the novel by musician and writer Nick Cave. He’s also in Darren Aronofsky’s next film Caught Stealing, about an ex-baseball star in the dangerous 1990s NYC crime world, and stars alongside Elvis‘ Austin Butler and The Batman‘s Zoë Kravitz (whose directorial debut Blink Twice is excellent, incidentally). Finally, Smith is due to play one of the titular sons to Bill Nighy’s character in & Sons, the story of a reclusive novelist who attempts to reconnect with his estranged boys, based on the 2014 novel by David Gilbert and adapted by Women Talking‘s Sarah Polley.
David Tennant: Rivals & The Thursday Murder Club
When Den of Geek welcomed you to “the year of David Tennant” in 2023, we may have jumped the gun – the actor’s no less booked and busy in 2024. In October, he’ll be seen playing TV producer aristo Lord Tony Baddingham in a new TV adaptation of Jilly Cooper bonkbuster Rivals coming to Disney+. He also has an as-yet-undisclosed role in the currently filming adaptation of Richard Osman’s mega hit cosy crime mystery The Thursday Murder Club, directed by Chris Columbus and produced by Steven Spielberg’s company.
On stage, Tennant will return to the role of Macbeth in October as the production in which he and Cush Jumbo starred at the Donmar Warehouse earlier this year comes to new venue The Harold Pinter Theatre.
Christopher Eccleston: A God Amongst Men & Out of the Dust
May 2024 saw the release of the last of The Ninth Doctor Adventures, the Big Finish audio drama series that welcomed Christopher Eccleston back to the Doctor Who fold, on his own terms. No further adventures have yet been announced, but we’d love to hear more (a Rose Tyler return featuring Billie Piper? Pretty please). Still on an audio tip, Eccleston also appeared in BBC Radio 4’s adaptation of The Man Who Fell to Earth earlier this year. Before that, he gave an acclaimed performance as Ebenezer Scrooge in Jack Thorne’s adaptation of A Christmas Carol at The Old Vic (the production is being restaged this winter, but with John Simm stepping into Eccleston’s shoes).
On TV, Eccleston has just been announced as appearing in new UK drama Out of the Dust, about an escaped prisoner and a cloistered Christian community, which co-stars Asa Butterfield, Molly Windsor and Siobhan Finneran, is filming now, and coming to Netflix. Film-wise, Eccleston is due to star opposite Nicholas Pinnock in A God Amongst Men, a British film based on the true story of Muhammad Ali’s 1977 visit to a Tyneside boxing club. He’s also playing a radio personality in 2025 picture Whispers of Freedom, which is based on the tragic true story of one man’s attempt to escape East Berlin during the Cold War. Prior to those screen roles, he was in multiple episodes of the most recent season of True Detective starring Jodie Foster, and appeared opposite Star Wars‘ Daisy Ridley in Disney+’s Young Woman and the Sea.
Paul McGann: The River and Live Big Finish Recording
This October, McGann will be appearing in a new production of The River, by acclaimed playwright Jez Butterworth (Jerusalem) at the Greenwich Theatre. It’s an eerie, slippery story about a man (McGann) who takes a woman to a remote fishing spot on a particular moonless night… Before that though, he’ll be part of a full-cast live recording for a Doctor Who audio adventure to celebrate Big Finish’s 25th anniversary on September 14. The Stuff of Legend recording is taking place at London’s Cadogan Hall, and will feature McGann as the Eighth Doctor alongside Nicholas Briggs, and India Fisher as companion Charley Pollard. There are more Big Finish adventures in the pipeline too.
On screen, fans should look out for McGann in two episodes of Bookish, the new 1940s-set murder mystery series co-written by Mark Gatiss and BBC Radio 3’s Matthew Sweet. That’s coming to Alibi in the UK in 2025.
Sylvester McCoy: The Seventh Doctor on Tour
81 years old and still a whirlwind, Sylvester McCoy is, at the time of writing, on a US tour and generously making appearances at fan conventions and celebrations. He’ll be following that up with an Australian tour at the end of 2024, too, so is showing precisely no signs of slowing down yet. Father Brown fans will have enjoyed McCoy’s appearance in an episode of the clerical cosy mystery earlier this year, and he can be seen on screen in Brit flick Dead Before They Wake, among various other in-development titles. There are more Big Finish audio adventures on the way for the Seventh Doctor too, with three further story collections planned for release this November, and then in June and November 2025.
Colin Baker: A Christmas Carol on Stage
There are more Sixth Doctor Adventures coming from Big Finish, from Trials of a Time Lord this month, starring Baker with Nicola Bryant, to two more as-yet-untitled stories arriving in March and August 2025 (in addition to The Sirens of Time re-edited remaster release, starring Baker alongside Peter Davison and Sylvester McCoy). On screen, in addition to 2023’s Tales of the TARDIS appearance, Baker has various roles in development including British horror The Beast of Riverside Hollow. On stage, following on from the success of the Crime and Comedy Theatre Company’s production of Hound of the Baskervilles, he’s due to play Ebenezer Scrooge alongside Peter Purves in a touring production of A Christmas Carol this winter. Dates and more info available here.
Peter Davison: Kiss Me, Kate and more Big Finish Adventures
Following his appearances as the cad Richard Baxter on hit BBC spinoff Beyond Paradise, Peter Davison spent the summer as The General in Cole Porter musical Kiss Me, Kate at The Barbican Theatre – you don’t have long to catch it, as the production wraps up in mid-September.
Another series of BBC crime thriller The Gold is on the way, which may feature the return of Davison’s seedy cop Assistant Commissioner Stewart, a recent role for Davison in addition to parts in The Darling Buds of May remake The Larkins, plus The Windsors, Good Omens and others. And of course, there are more as-yet-untitled Fifth Doctor Adventures on their way in April and May 2025 too, courtesy of Big Finish.
We’ll keep this list updated as more news and further roles are announced.
Doctor Who returns to BBC One, BBC iPlayer and Disney+ in December with Christmas special “Joy to the World”.
Written by
Louisa Mellor is the Den of Geek UK TV Editor. She has written about TV, film and books for Den of Geek since 2010, and for…