New Doctor Who named

… And apparently the announcement has broken the internet, because she’s a woman.
I’m not familiar with her work but she’s a well regarded actor. I will miss Capaldi, though.
http://www.news.com.au/entertainment/tv/the-13th-doctor-who-to-be-unveiled-after-the-mens-wimbledon-final-on-sunday/news-story/c0da0db87036ba8b0efbd7b1c9bebac4



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31 Comments

  1. I am so excited. 😀
    I am indifferent to the fact that it is a woman. I am just excited to know who it is and that she’s a good actress. Love this show.

    • Tennant is my fave Doctor. Can’t believe some people are saying they won’t even watch it but “I’m not sexist”. Watch it and THEN if you think she was miscast, stop watching. Simple!

  2. She was in Broadchurch as Beth Latimer.

    Not a surprise as in the final episode of this season the words uttered were ‘the future is female.’

  3. I’ve had a rocky relationship with Dr Who for years. As a nerd, I feel like I’m supposed to like it, but it tends to be very hit and miss with me.

    I didn’t really watch much of Clara’s last season (although apparently I’m one of the few people in the world who really liked Clara), and I caught Bill’s first episode, but it didn’t do anything for me at all (and I thought the writing was really heavy-handed) so I pretty much cut my losses and gave up.

    I don’t see myself tuning back in, when a male Doctor didn’t really do much for me, but part of me thinks, props to BBC for doing it. It’ll be interesting to see what they do with the companion, whether they keep the gender balance or not.

    (after all, he’s not the Doctor if he isn’t ruining somebody’s life. He abandoned Amy and Rory in the 30’s, he led Clara to her death, Bill got turned into a Cyberman, and I’m still annoyed, I think, about what happened to Donna Noble. Sorry, I’m just venting. Part of my issue with Who is the companion is the audience surrogate, yet if you ever saw that blue box, you should run screaming in the opposite direction as fast as you can. Because something awful is about to happen, or you’re just going to kill yourself in an absurdly-awful way, which is all that ever happened when Davies’s Doctor ever met anyone. Sorry. The whole thing still rubs me the wrong way)

    Still, it wouldn’t be the internet if things weren’t interesting.

    • Yep, the Doctor pretty much ruins all his companions. And he has committed genocide. The Clara years were not good ones for me but there is a new showrunner now so hopefully we will get some strong storylines.

      • Yeah, that’s the one thing that’s always bothered me about the franchise. The writing always paints him as this great awesome hero, but there’s always a Biblical-level tragedy that he shows up too late to stop and just feels bad about it as he wanders on to the next adventure. And don’t get me started on the companions. It’s why I’m not a good fit for Who, I just don’t click with the overall feel of the show (and it was far worse during the Davies era, as much as I liked some of Tennant’s episodes).

        I keep waiting for the Power Rangers or the Justice League to teleport in and save the day while the Doctor just stands there feeling bad about it.

        I didn’t mind Clara’s years with Matt Smith (although, of course, Danny died and whoops, we can’t save him). But like I said, I quite liked Clara. Sure, her contribution to saving the day usually involved crying at the right moment, but if it worked, it worked.

        • Did you watch it as a kid? We only watched ABC as kids and not much TV, but Who was a must. This would be the Pertwee/Baker/Davidson days

          • No, I actually started watching the Tennant era by accident (my parents were overseas and I was recording the show on after Doctor Who that my mother liked).

            My first episodes were the Library/Forest of the Dead episodes, and I really liked the concept of River Song. But I tracked down DVDs of the past Tennant seasons as well.

  4. Doesn’t bother me that the new Doctor will be female as long as the actress does a good job in the role and the writers create good plots/story lines. I have not enjoyed Peter Capaldi’s Doctor so I will not miss him. I was not a fan of Clara and did not like Bill. Hoping that the next companion will be better.
    I’ve never watched the season with Eccleston so have been doing that and I’m enjoying it. However, Tennant is my favorite Doctor.

    • There is a degree of virtue signalling in the comments highlighted.

      The issue is whether Jodie Whittaker was casted as the best actor for the job or as a statement on identity politics. Buried in the commentary is the dismay that Jodie Whittaker skin colour is the wrong shade for progressive politics. When the casting of an actor becomes about how many boxes that person can tick as an individual rather than can they carry the show it is rather problematic.

      We find it ironic that if the character is conceived as a white male then somehow in any perspective reboot that those identities (gender and race) are somehow non core to the character’s experience.

      There will need to be brilliant writing to pull this off as the audience will not be so forgiving and there will be greater weight on who is casted as the companion and how the companion is written (as we may be left with the doctor playing the companion role).

      • This is the only thing in my Facebook newsfeed tonight, which tells me a few things. Mostly it tells me that my friends are all nerds like me, heh. But it also tells me that it’s a slow news day.

        I don’t know.

        I think it’s impossible to look at the decision without considering the prism of gender relations in the 21st century. And I think it would be silly to not think that, at least a very small part of the decision, was about shaking up the status quo in a gigantic way. Not when he’s been a bloke since the 1960s.

        I saw a comment on another message board. They said that, “The BBC picked the best person for the role … but the second part of that sentence is, the best person for the role ‘in a story that they wanted to tell’.” And I thought, that was a smart way of looking at it. They clearly wanted to mix things up and have him regenerate into a woman this time (the franchise has done it before, I mean. It’s not like this is too out of left-field). That’s the story they wanted, so that’s what guided the casting process.

        Honestly, I don’t think I care that much, but I’m not too invested in the Who franchise anyway, so I’m just kinda, “meh” about the whole thing. Besides, the actress will do a couple of seasons, get sick of it, ask to be killed off, and the Doctor will regenerate into someone else (probably a bloke next time), so nobody’s really losing anything here either way.

        I don’t even know who either of those actors is, so, what do I know?

        I do take your point though, Maz, that people can look at these things in the wrong way.

        This last season of Power Rangers, called “Ninja Steel”? The initial cast reveal saw all five main Rangers as non-Caucasian actors. Not a single white guy amongst them. It was the most diverse cast ever, and everybody cheered over colour-blind casting (the idea of ignoring racial background and just picking the best individual performer for each role). But … when the Rangers flew to New Zealand to begin filming, the Yellow Ranger (a black guy) had to drop out. Nobody’s sure what happened, and he hinted that it might’ve been Visa issues. Unfortunately, the second-best actor for the Yellow Ranger role … was a blond Caucasian guy. And that’s when the shit the fan.

        And that’s what annoyed me. When there were no white people, it was a triumph of diversity. But when the *second* choice candidate for one of the roles just happened to a blond guy, suddenly it was a racist conspiracy to marginalise minority ethnic groups (when “Power Rangers” has had one of the most diverse casts in television history. It’s never just a bunch of white people, every single season has featured an incredibly diverse cast, right from the start of the show in ’93). And that really annoyed me.

        I just think sometimes it can all get a little hypocritical. The best person for the job sometimes swings both ways, and being in a majority doesn’t make you a bad choice or somehow faulty by default.

        And what I can see happening here is Ghostbusters for 2017, that everybody spends all their energy attacking everyone who doesn’t think like they do, and it creates a really toxic atmosphere around the franchise that’s just unnecessary, and does more harm than good.

        Sorry for the meandering post. It’s politics, and politics these days is complicated business.

        • There has been some blunt messaging in Dr Who which at times has been at the cost of the storyline.

          There was the thesis that Dr Who is an examination of English musclinity…what does today’s casting say?

          • Yeah, Doctor Who has always been pretty loud and blunt, when it comes to progressive social values. Sometimes it’s a good thing, sure, but sometimes they completely **** it up.

            I still remember a Time Lord general regenerating from a man into a woman, and complaining about, “how do men do anything with all that ego and machismo?” or something. And I just thought, *wow*. Imagine if the gender roles were switched. That’d be an *outrage*. Feminists the world over would (rightly) want to hang the writer by his toes from the London Tower.

            But negative gender stereotypes are perfectly acceptable when they’re leveled against blokes? And we wonder why everybody gets defensive and angry when it comes to this discussion. It’s like, geez, people. C’mon.

        • Good comment Windy. I don’t care if Dr Who is a woman or man. I hate pc dictating what I should think, say or feel.
          When did towing the line with politics ever become cool?

    • Kris Marshall is rumoured to be the new companion. As good an actor as he is, I don’t think that he has the presence to outweigh Jodie. If it’s true, it will be a good pairing.
      I am gathering that there is a lot of goodwill out there for this casting. I am confident.

  5. Remember when there were rumours that there was going to be a non caucasian James Bond and people lost their minds about it. People just don’t deal well with change which is hilarious in relation to Dr Who that changes regularly.
    I agree with Bobi, regarding Kris Marshall being a good match as companion. Jodie Whittaker is a strong actress and I’d like to think she got the gig on merit.

    • Yeah, the only thing I’ve really learned from any of this so far is that I don’t watch enough British drama because I don’t have any clue who either of them are :).

      • Broadchurch ( first season) was great.
        Not so much season 2 & 3. Maybe it was just in comparison. It can be hard to live up to expectations.

      • Try the repeats of Death in Paradise on ABC Saturday nights for Kris Marshall or rent out Love Actually.

    • I’ve never seen Jodie Whittaker or Kris Marshall in anything. I’d seen a few shows with Peter Capaldi and he’s a very good actor but his Doctor never worked for me.

    • And the comments (discussion) were even more hilarious than the actual video. lol
      Some lovely man trying to gently explain why a fictional, regenerating female Doctor is going to be the death of this show – to the polite giggles of the crowd. Worth the visit.

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