Capaldi himself spent time on his final ever day of filming meeting fans, and told Digital Spy that he doesn't consider the extracurriculars of playing the Doctor to be any kind of hassle.
"I think that there is clearly a responsibility, which is very easy to address, because people don't really ask very much of you," he said. "They just like you to show up, and smile at them, and be nice. And actually that's an incredibly pleasant place to be, on the other side of that.
"As a kid, I liked Doctor Who, so I wouldn't have liked to have met Doctor Who and found them to be rather unpleasant, or preoccupied with other things. And it doesn't take much to be friendly. So I just try to be friendly to them, that's all."
It's nowhere in the contract, but series boss Steven Moffat agreed that there is "emphatically" a responsibility to playing the Doctor, one that "goes on for the rest of [the actor's] life".
"You will always be an ambassador for the show," he said. "I remember us saying that when Matt Smith took over – 'You have been rude to your last taxi driver... and we don't mean for the next three years, we mean for the rest of your life!'
"And I remember Matt himself saying, 'Imagine how awful it would be if somebody had to carry the memory that Doctor Who was rude to them. You would remember it on your deathbed, you'd still be thinking about that!'
"So you have to be Doctor Who forever... and nobody who's played the Doctor has ever thought, 'Am I contractually obliged to do this?' – no, it's a role for life."
Read the full article on Digital Spy by Morgan Jeffery
