David Tennant in 2005, preparing for his first publicity photos as the Doctor.
In Doctor Who Confidential: The Eleventh Doctor, David Tennant spoke of his own experience of taking on the role of the Tenth Doctor in 2005. “It’s a very exciting journey to go on,” he said. “It’s a great honour to be in the middle of something that gets that much attention and love from people, but it can be quite overwhelming at times. It’s a big decision to take something like this on, and of course you don’t really know that at the time. You don’t quite know what you’re letting yourself in for.
“There’s the initial decision to take the part at all and then once you’ve done that you slowly start to realise you’ve got to make some quite big decisions. ‘What’s the Doctor going to wear?’ is a question you’re asked 14 times a day. You realise that you’ve got to make these quite fundamental decisions that will define what you are in this role, and you’re making all those decisions before you’ve started filming. So it can be a little bit intimidating.