Rittenhouse 2024 Doctor Who Series 5-7 – Sealed Box

A factory-sealed hobby box of Rittenhouse's Doctor Who Series 5-7, released June 2024 — 24 packs of 5 cards, with 4 on-card autographs per box including one inscription. Base set of 117 cards.

The youngest Doctor ever cast, and the producers wanted somebody older

Matt Smith was 26 when he took the part in 2009. Every previous Doctor had been at least in his thirties, most considerably older, and the production team had gone into casting looking for a man in his forties — someone with visible authority to replace David Tennant, who had been enormously popular.

Smith auditioned anyway, and Steven Moffat's account is that he arrived playing the character as something far stranger than anyone had asked for: an old man in a young body, physically awkward, with the mannerisms of someone who has forgotten how to be human.

That reading is the whole performance. Smith plays the Eleventh Doctor as ancient rather than young, which is why the bow tie and the flailing arms work — they read as an old man's idea of what a young man does, rather than as a young actor being quirky.

He stayed four years. The casting was announced to considerable scepticism and is now generally cited as the moment the production learned to trust an audition over a brief.

Who signs

All autographs signed on-card, with one inscription per box: Matt Smith, David Tennant, Christopher Eccleston, Paul McGann, Karen Gillan, Catherine Tate, Freema Agyeman and more.

Set composition

Base set of 117 cards — three per episode across Series 5, 6 and 7.

Insert sets: hand-drawn sketch cards · Companion puzzle cards · Allies and Adversaries chase sets. Dual and triple autograph cards were available as multi-case incentives.