Still not Ginger!

Monday 17 July 2017

So the new Doctor is going  to be Jodie Whittaker, with whom the incoming showrunner has worked extensively on Broadchurch.  She is white, thirty-something and not ginger.  I may have been just a tiny bit wrong about the gender*, but apart from being female the casting seems completely in the usual pattern and therefore unremarkable.

So, leaving aside the competing and equally blinkered views of 'finally, a woman!' and 'it's ruined and I'm never watching again', what are we to make of the casting?

Firstly, Jodie Whittaker is an excellent actor. Her role in Broadchurch mainly involved a lot of emotional angst as a grieving mother, so it will be interesting to see how she deals with the more quirky aspects of the Doctor's personality.

Secondly, the publicity photos remind me quite a lot of Romana 2. (I mentioned this to my German colleague at work, but he had never heard of the Time Lady in question.  I am disappointed in him.) Will the Thirteenth Doctor actually turn out to be rather like Romana?   And if so, can we have a K9 substitute?  An electric parrot or a talking cabbage would be good.

Thirdly, will we now get a new male companion?  The last two series have ended with a female companion of the Doctor flying off to explore the universe along with another female character (Clara and Ashildr/Me last year and Bill and Heather this year), so two women flying around the space time continuum has been done. Perhaps Chris Chibnall could find a way of reintroducing Rory? It is important to have some sort of gender balance in the TARDIS.  If all else fails, Captain Jack will do nicely.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to Christmas.

*I'm open-minded about this.  I don't see any need for the Doctor to change gender, but don't mind as  long as it has been done in order to take the series in new directions and explore new stories, rather than as a gimmick or to appease the feminist lobby.