Doctor Who fans have long speculated that showrunner and scriptwriter Russell T Davies doesn’t exactly get along with former Doctor Christopher Eccleston.
For instance, when asked what it’d take for him to return to the franchise, Christopher said: “Sack Russell T Davies, sack Jane Tranter, sack Phil Collinson, sack Julie Gardner, and I’ll come back. So, can you arrange that?”
So it might surprise some to hear how Russell spoke about the actor in a recent discussion with Doctor Who Magazine held 20 years after Eccleston kicked off the show’s 2005 revival.
Speaking to the publication, Russell said: “I mean, the man is a master.”
“You get to work with a genius – someone who’s still at the top of his game all these years later. That’s what we were lucky to get.”
He added: “I remember walking on set one morning and Chris had discovered in some book or online that the Doctor was allergic to aspirin.”
That detail dates back to “something William Hartnell’s Doctor had said” (William played the first Doctor from 1963-1966).
“So we had this great morning of working out whether we could get aspirin into a plot.
“I did have to tell Chris, ‘Things that were said in the ’60s aren’t necessarily lore – you don’t have to absolutely follow them’. But that tells you a lot about how he threw himself into it.”
For his part, Christopher has previously said the show “almost destroyed” his career.
He also claimed he had been blacklisted by the BBC when he left Doctor Who.
“My relationship with my three immediate superiors – the showrunner, the producer and co-producer – broke down irreparably during the first block of filming and it never recovered,” he added in 2018.
“They lost trust in me, and I lost faith and trust and belief in them.”
When asked if he had a relationship with Russell, he responded: “No. I never will have.”
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