Mark Gatiss has spoken on William Hartnell, Peter Capaldi’s performance and more in a new interview with the Radio Times.

Speaking prior to An Adventure in Time and Space‘s disappointment at the BAFTAs this past week, writer Gatiss said he believed the first Doctor actor William Hartnell would be “amazed and delighted” with the show in it’s current incarnation:

“I’m sure the actual pace of the show would slightly baffle him now but when I interviewed William Russell (who plays Ian Chesterton) in preparation for writing this script he said to me ‘you know what Bill would like the most?’ he said, ‘I’m on a stamp!’ He would have been unbelievably overwhelmed… utterly delighted.”

And for Mark, An Adventure in Space and Time was one of the highlights of his distinguished career:

“It was fantastic. The whole process of making it was genuinely delightful – it was one of the best experiences of my career, which is what I hoped it would be. But the reception has been something else and not just from Doctor Who fans. It’s been so moving really. People seemed to really get it on a human level. What I particularly wanted to do was to make it an everyman sort of story – it’s about someone losing the thing they like most in the world, so it didn’t have to be about Doctor Who.”

And Gatiss added his own voice to the flood of praise for current Doctor Peter Capaldi’s performance in the lead role:

“Peter Capaldi is fantastic, it’s going to be really something”

An Adventure in Space and Time lost out on the best single drama award at the BAFTA’s, losing to Channel 4’s Complicit. Which nobody watched. #sourgrapes