Character
Wilfred Mott
Wilfred Mott in Doctor Who (2005), played by Bernard Cribbins.
Wilfred Mott is Donna Noble's grandfather, an elderly widower who spends his nights at the allotment shed with a telescope, watching the stars and half-hoping something out there will notice him back. He's gentle, garrulous, quietly lonely, and treats the impossible things happening around him with more wonder than fear.
Cribbins plays him without a trace of comic-relief condescension — Wilf is often the only person in the room telling the truth, and the show trusts an old man's decency to carry real weight. His warmth toward the Doctor feels earned rather than sentimental, and Cribbins finds enormous feeling in small gestures: a salute, a nod, silence.
He was also a one-time travelling companion of the Tenth Doctor, and the final companion with whom the Doctor travelled in that incarnation. Unlike many of the people of Earth, Wilfred was willing to believe aliens would come in peace one day, and that humanity would eventually travel out to the stars and mingle with them.
Played by
Appears in
Doctor Who2005