David Tennant: As I approach the beginning of the end of my time as the Doctor I am very jealous of the chap who’s coming next, who’s got all this extraordinary journey to look forward to.

Russell T Davies: When I heard who they’d cast as the Eleventh Doctor my absolute initial reaction was jealousy. I was so jealous they were going to get to work with him and work together on a new Doctor and make it brilliant and I never expected that.

Steven Moffat: We had literally on the first day, I think the second or third person through the door, was the one we wanted. Just... He was just spot-on. Right from the beginning. The way he said the lines, the way he looked, his hair... You just thought, “Oh – that’s him!”

DT: Everything that’s about to unfold and the way his life is about to change in so many ways... Its... erm... It’s exciting.

With David’s resignation announced, the speculation began. Who would be next?

DT: And now there’s the youngest Doctor ever, which will be fascinating to see how that goes... and where that takes this character again. And I can’t wait...

SM: The funny thing about being at the heart of the media storm about the new Doctor is that I keep forgetting that I am... I’ve always, all my life, eagerly read articles speculating about the identity of the new Doctor and I still do. And then I’m sort of halfway down the page thinking oh no hang on! I’ve got to choose them... yeah, that’s slightly different.

SM: Poor old David Morrissey’s being having a rougher time than I have. No-one’s really... No-one’s phoned the house, no-one’s searched my bins as far as I know. Fact is, our Doctor is younger than anyone who’s been before, and just about younger than anyone who’s been suggested in the press... He’s an actor who’s... if you know your television you’ll have seen him around but not hugely famous. Brilliant, but not famous. The Press will call him an unknown – that’s slightly unfair on a man who’s had several leading roles. But he’s young and he’s unknown.

RTD: The show is the Doctor and the Doctor is the show. And cast the right man and you’re laughing.

SM: We’ve cast a young man – a 26 year old. One thing I was very emphatic about, and I remember being quite brittle and argumentative in a meeting at the Beeb about this and saying there are too many young people on this list. I’m not really convinced there’s all that many people that young who can play this part. I think we’re looking for somebody in their forties, late thirties maybe. David is a unique case and he can play it at that age but nah, he should be an older man. Of course I just ended up casting a 26 year old in the part.

Piers Wenger: Age just becomes an entirely irrelevant factor really. It’s such a hard part to play, its such a hard part to make real, and when somebody does that, it doesn’t really matter how old they are.

In 2010, the TARDIS will welcome an even younger Doctor.

PW: He has the look of someone who has lived before.

SM: There is something quite old about him, so looks old and young at the same time. I think that’s terribly important.

PW: Those sorts of qualities are the ones that got him the part and which will make him the Doctor.

SM: Possibly the single cleverest thing in Doctor Who, and it’s a format that’s full of very clever things, is the idea of regeneration. This was going to happen. And if you’re going to do Doctor Who properly you better get used to the idea that you face the major staffing problem every so often. And you get a new bloke in. And it is the single most exciting thing about Doctor Who is the fact that the Doctor, who is the most familiar character on television, can become brand new...

MS: How do I feel? I’m flabbergasted. I haven’t slept really, to be honest. Truthfully, I haven’t. I probably look a bit bags under the eyes now. Because its sort of an iconic part of our culture, and my granddad knows about it, my dad knows about it, and what its been going since 1963? And I think it sort of has the iconic status that Robin Hood or Sherlock Holmes... and I’m sort of taking that on! That’s my responsibility. Its exciting, nerve-wracking... exciting. Exciting. Stops me sleeping.

RTD: I’m actually jealous. That’s the truth of it. That was my first reaction when I discovered who they case, cos I’ve loved my time on Doctor Who and I’ve been happily sailing off and I’ve been really strongly thinking “ooh lovely, done my, look forward, move on” and when I heard what they’d done I felt jealous, like a great bit gut kick .. Damn! That’s gonna be good.

SM: We auditioned people in what I’ll call top secret locations but were just actually slightly unpleasant hotels. We got all these wonderful actors in, in deadly secrecy and you’ll never know their names, to stand there and pretend to be the Doctor for a while.

MS: The audition process was mad. A mad audition process. It’s unlike anything I’ve really ever embarked on for an audition, because usually at an audition you’re allowed to tell people, and usually its in an office or a studio or something, and this was in a hotel.

SM: He was spot on, right from the beginning. The way he said the lines, the way he looked, his hair.. You just thought, “Oh – that’s him!”  Trouble is, it’s the first day. Trouble is, its one hour into the process, and you’ve been bracing yourself for months so you can’t believe it.

PW:  I don’t think we let ourselves believe it until about three weeks later because we all felt we had to be utterly diligent.

SM: We thought we had to keep going and keep looking and keep finding other people... but in the end, it was Matt.

PW:  I got a message from Steven, an email from Steven, at 4:30 on Saturday afternoon where he basically said “It’s Matt, isn’t it, and it kind of always has been?” which was what we sort of knew from the start.

MS: Obviously its quite a weird audition because you’re auditioning for the Doctor and there’s a huge legacy that comes with that and there are huge expectations, and I just think its important to, and this is what I told myself, to be brave enough to make my own choices that were choices that were based on me and my personality and my life and the age of my life and the time of my life and my relationship with the show and the text and the world, I guess, and stuff. Y’know?

PW: I think the reason that we went for Matt was simply because he’s a superb actor. He’d proven himself in Party Animals and in Ruby in the Smoke, and shown that he had the sort of versatility and the energy and the dynamism and the swagger that we were looking for for the Eleventh Doctor. I just believe him as someone who is 900 years old, who has two hearts, who is from an alien planet, and actually of all the people that we saw, there’s very few people who have ability to both act their socks off but also have that special slightly mercurial quality. And that’s what made this a very very easy process.

MS: What’s brilliant about this audition process is that it seems to fit with the show. The sense, I don’t know, the hidden-ness and the secret and the... It just makes it a bit more magic in a way.

Part 2 coming soon...