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Who do you want to be Who? VOTE for the BBC's next Time Lord
Decisions, decisions. Lucky number 13?
Poll Peter Capaldi will demateralise as the 12th Time Lord this Christmas after four years.
Capaldi was cast as Doctor Who by franchise owner the BBC in 2013 but will bow out with a regeneration during this year's Christmas special.
Regenerations are always a reflective and throat-tightening event. Thanks, BBC – there goes my happy Christmas.
Succeeding the millennial-friendly and then-unknown Matt Smith was always going to be challenging for an actor with the age and experience of Capaldi, who has a considerable oeuvre and the ghost of the profanity-generating Number 10 spin machine Malcolm Tucker behind his – and Who's – shoulder.
And yet succeed he did: establishing an irascible Doctor, confident in his own brilliance, intolerant of, well, almost everybody, and carrying some of the finest and most confounding story lines of Who including a cause-and-effect conundrum (Before the Flood's Bootstrap Paradox), the creation of a vengeful stalker named Ashildr, and some life-or-death cerebral fencing with Davros and Missy.
But what's done is done and so the question presents itself – for which actor will number 13 be lucky?
As with James Bond, speculation and opinion are rife over who should fill the vacancy. And as with Bond, the speculation and opinion covers exactly the same ground: a nerd (Ben Whishaw or Richard Ayoade), a black Doctor (David Harewood), a female Doctor (Olivia Coleman).
Affording the chance for change is new writing talent: Steven Moffat, who's been on board since the 2005 Christopher Ecclestone reboot, is off and in comes Chris Chibnal, writer of ITV's dark crime drama Broadchurch.
Here then is your chance to cast your vote for The Register's official candidate for the 13th Doctor. ®
Disclaimer: This poll may not have any effect on the actual outcome.