Former showrunner, Steven Moffat, says that Eleventh Doctor actor, Matt Smith, wishes he were still filming Doctor Who.

During the special episode of Doctor Who Unleashed which celebrates 20 years of 21st Century Who, Moffat, who was the head honcho during the Eleventh and Twelfth Doctors’ eras, says:

“Today, as I sit here, is the 15th anniversary of when the Eleventh Doctor fell to Earth and ate fish custard [in The Eleventh Hour]. I WhatsApp’d Matt this morning saying it was 15 years, and he said, ‘I wish I was on that set now’. See? You see, Matt? Don’t leave.”

Matt left the part in 2013, just after the franchise’s 50th anniversary celebrations, bowing out in The Time of the Doctor. He’d be succeeded by Peter Capaldi.

It’s rather a lovely programme actually, with Moffat talking so warmly about his time on the show with Karen Gillan and Arthur Darvill, who played Eleventh Doctor companions, Amy Pond and Rory Williams respectively, also recalling it with great love and enthusiasm.

And Matt is My Doctor, so I miss his era a lot. I wish he’d have stayed longer, especially given that the Siege of Trenzalore would’ve apparently been the focus of a potential Series 8 where Smith stayed on — that would have been really unusual for the programme, presumably with the Doctor stuck on one alien planet for a whole season, defending it from various onslaughts; a bit like the early Third Doctor era but with the Doctor ageing substantially across the run of episodes and dealing with a sort of grief, given he’d run out of regenerations.

Conversely, I wouldn’t want Matt back right now, as it feels like Doctor Who is leaning into its own lore far too much. (Still, he’d elevate the season.)

What do you think, dear DWC readers?