Doctor Who: 10 Qualities That Made Peter Capaldi's Doctor Great
4. The Impassioned Preacher
Pretty much all of the Doctors have had their defining soliloquys, but the Doctor as rhetorician has been a distinctive hallmark of Steven Moffat’s era. Peter Capaldi’s Twelfth Doctor might lack the massive audiences of the Eleventh Doctor’s Pandorica and Trenzalore speeches, but nonetheless when he does cross into preacher mode he certainly pulls no punches.
The best written Twelfth Doctor episode to date might very well be Listen, but as a showcase for Peter Capaldi’s acting range the single-hander Heaven Sent is the stand out story. Here he gets to talk to himself for the whole forty-five minutes, in contemplation, in confession and even at the end by preaching at the confession dial:
“The hybrid is not half Dalek. Nothing is half Dalek. The Daleks would never allow that. The Hybrid destined to conquer Gallifrey and stands in its ruins … is me.”
It is one of the most extraordinary performances ever seen in Doctor Who.
But the Doctor who apparently doesn’t care, gives his most powerful and passionate speech in The Zygon Inversion, when drawing from his experiences in the Time War he advocates peace between humans and Zygons:
“And do you know what you do with all that pain? Shall I tell you where you put it? You hold it tight till it burns your hand, and you say this. No one else will ever have to live like this. No one else will have to feel this pain. Not on my watch!”