Oh, I had heard that Anthony Head might be it! Ah, well.

They shoulda broke the mold and gone for Rob Morrow, I’m tellin’ ya. Hyperverbal crankiness of a somewhat different provenance, but still: hyperverbal crankiness.

Ah, well. C’est la vie. Richard E. Grant would have been my alternate. Or maybe Helen Mirren.

Geoffrey Rush or Bill Nighy would’ve been interesting.

Helen Mirren? Hmmm, well if Timelords can change bodies…and it would certainly have vamped up the slash fictioneers.

Not who I’d thought of. But once I heard it I thought, brilliant!

I guess Rowan Atkinson would have been out of the question :-)

Boy, that conjures up some images…

I was hopeing for Tony Head, too. But I like this choice.

As for Helen Mirren, I’ve always thought they should do that (Tom Baker teased the idea when he left) but I figure they would never have the guts.

On the 40th anniversary someone suggested any former Python/Goodie, and since then I have, absurdly, hoped for Graeme Garden, but assumed it would be Bill Nighy (who would have been fine). But Eccleston is much better than I had realistically expected. And, yes, Helen Mirren would have been great, but no chance. For that matter I’d have been keen on Mary Tamm (if she’s still alive).

AFAIK, Harry, Mary Tamm is still alive - she joined the large number of ex-DW actors who’ve appeared in Jonathan Creek a couple of years ago, and I’ve not heard of her dying since.

I think the interesting thing about Eccleston is that he was really no one’s choice as no one expected him to want the role or even to be considered for it. Speculation was around actors like Nighy, Grant, Izzard, Atkinson etc and Eccleston was quite out of the blue. I did a quik search the other morning and only found one or two mentions of his name in web discussions of the topic before Saturday.

David Warner. Picture it, hold it in your head. Just the right edge of weird and dark and crazy in there. That would have been an inspired pick.