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Sep 05, 2014 By Gavin Dunbar Scotland Week

We have a special theme on Under the Radar’s website this week which we’re simply calling Scotland Week. All throughout the week we will be posting interviews, reviews, lists, and blog posts relating to Scotland and in particular Scottish music. In this guest blog post Gavin Dunbar, bassist for Glasgow-based band Camera Obscura, writes about the new season of Doctor Who, which is the first to feature Scottish actor Peter Capaldi in the lead role as The Doctor. This is not the first time huge Doctor Who fan Dunbar has written about the show for us, last year he also wrote about the iconic British sci-fi show’s 50th anniversary and listed his favorite episodes for us.

Camera Obscura was formed in 1996 by Dunbar, vocalist/guitarist Tracyanne Campbell, and former vocalist John Henderson. The full current lineup now features Dunbar, Campbell, Carey Lander (piano/organ), Kenny Mckeeve (guitar), and Lee Thomson (drums). Stuart Murdoch of Belle and Sebastian produced Camera Obscura’s 2001-released debut album, Biggest Bluest Hi Fi, and the two bands share a similar indie pop aesthetic. The band’s true breakthrough came with their critically acclaimed third album, Let’s Get Out of This Country, which was recorded in Sweden and released in 2006. The album was Under the Radar’s fourth best album of the last decade. Camera Obscura’s most recent album was 2013’s Desire Lines, released on 4AD. The band’s videos for “The Sweetest Thing” and “Troublemaker” have referenced Doctor Who.

For the uninitiated, Doctor Who features The Doctor, an alien who travels in time and space via the TARDIS, often with a female companion from Earth (specifically England). The show launched in 1963 and to keep it going when the original star, William Hartnell, was too ill to continue as The Doctor, the producers worked into the plot that The Doctor doesn’t die but regenerates into a new body and personality, allowing new actors to easily take on the role. Doctor Who airs in the U.S. on BBC America on Saturday nights at 9/8 central.

Doctor Who is back on television with a new series and a brand new actor in the lead role. A new regeneration gives the series a chance to move on, to renew itself, and to give the character a freshen up. The first episode, Deep Breath, roared onto screens weekend before last, bringing with it the highest ever viewing figures for the U.S. and highest in the U.K. since 2010.

The new incumbent of the TARDIS is Doctor number 12, played by Glaswegian actor Peter Capaldi (the third Scots actor to play the role after Sylvester McCoy played the Seventh incarnation and more recently David Tennant’s Tenth Doctor).

The BBC has made a fairly bold step casting 55-year-old Capaldi; the oldest actor to play the role since the first actor William Hartnell in the 1960s. In the modern era of Doctor Who, all the actors that have played the role have been comparatively young, especially the most recent 11th Doc, Matt Smith, who was the youngest actor to ever play the role.

So with much talk of taking the show off in a new direction, a new older Doctor ends up in Victorian London, with a large Tyrannosaurus Rex, and a collection of clockwork robots, trying to come to terms with the fact that he now appears to be Scottish. Head writer Steven Moffat being Scottish also, allows for a bit of self-deprecating humor. “I’m Scottish! I’m Scottish!! I can complain about things… I can REALLY complain about things!”

While most hero characters, whether on TV, in film, or in books/comics tend to be young, supercool and, it’s kind of nice that in the biggest sci-fi show on British TV the hero figure is a middle aged Scotsman with a sarcastic grumble dressed up in a sharp coat (and cardigan).

Capaldi is one of the Glasgow School of Arts’ most famous alumni, and has had a long career in music, comedy, and acting that sets him up as a fine Scots elder statesman of the arts. His portrayal of the role is undoubtedly enriched by the fact he is old enough to have actually watched the original episodes, and has been a lifelong fan of the show. It’s also nice to have an Oscar winner taking on the role (even if his Oscar was for directing a short film rather than acting). The fact he seems like a lovely fellow too is a bonus.

It’s definitely worth checking out his previous most famous work, The Thick of It (U.K. series from the folk who write Veep), and early film Local Hero, directed by Scots film legend Bill Forsyth.

There is also this great interview with him on Craig Ferguson’s show from 2009 (Ferguson and Capaldi used to be in a post-punk band in Glasgow together called Dreamboys).

www.camera-obscura.net

On this week’s episode of Doctor Who:

A selection of Camera Obscura videos:

Dreamboys, the band featuring Peter Capaldi and Craig Ferguson: