It was Christopher Eccleston’s birthday last week, and Big Finish just released the final boxset of The Ninth Doctor Adventures Series 1 — so it feels a good time to look back at the time Eccleston played the titular role in Shakespeare’s Macbeth.

And tomorrow (22nd February), it’ll be a year since I interviewed Christopher for the DWC. He was my first Doctor, the man who introduced me to this show, this universe, so it was a real privilege. And he proved to be a truly lovely guy, perfectly embodying who the Doctor is.

I asked him if he thought any of his other performances would translate to audio (i.e. for Big Finish). He replied:

“Well, I’m not finished with Macbeth. I did 119 performances of Macbeth; I want very much to revisit that on the stage in London in a much smaller, more script-based, intimate, stripped-back production. I really want to do that on stage, and I will go back to it; I’m not finished with Macbeth. And I would very much like to do Macbeth with Big Finish. There’s a couple of Shakespeares I’d like to do – Richard the Third, Coriolanus, Shylock in Merchant of Venice.”

So here’s a mesmerising scene from his 2018 Macbeth performance.