Jodie Whittaker To Be The 13th Doctor Who
July 17, 2017 by deltagamegirl22
We knew it was just a matter of time (get it?), and that time is now. We will be seeing our first female Doctor Who as they've announced that actress, Jodie Whittaker, will be the 13th Doctor.
The very premise of the show allows for marvellous cast changes that make sense and eliminate that often awkward, "Hey! That's not the same person!", a moment when unexpected casting changes occur.
It will be an exciting time for Doctor Who and I'm looking forward to seeing how Ms Whittaker does in the role.
What do you think about the news of our 13th Doctor?
"It will be an exciting time for Doctor Who and I'm looking forward to seeing how Ms Whittaker does in the role..."
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Can’t wait 🙂 Looking forward to the new series and what Christmas brings!
She is interesting choice and from what I heard she was actually always first choice for role but they didn’t mention her often to keep it as much secret as possible.
That said this choice has already divided Doctor Who fandom in very bad way but that was to be expected considering that we live in internet outrage culture. So now it’s up to her, show runners and everyone else working around series convince audience that it was right choice by giving us high quality program.
The show has been setting this up for a while now, from talking about Timelords that changed sex, to showing one (that general, who had only been male once after 10 or so regenerations), to the Master / Missy (the latter being awesome).
I don’t think it’s a tremendous loss if the people who were watching the show, no longer watch it purely because a woman is now playing the role of the Dr. Why bother catering to them?
I don’t really have a dog in this fight, so to speak, because I can’t stand Dr Who. However with viewing figures for the show currently in decline can’t afford to lose more. Even if their reasons for abandoning the show may seem misguided to you, their loss will be felt. I also think that the existing fans of a show are people you should cater too rather than alienate, rather than gambling that by losing some whilst hoping to gain a larger number of new fans. It doesn’t work like that. While there may be people who now boycott the show because of the change, it is unlikely that there is an army of people out there who weren’t watching because the doctor was a man. There may be a few hardcore ultra radical feminists who live that way but they’re a very small number (so are the people who will no longer want to watch the show because of the gender change, truth be told)
Actually, I have a number of friends who’ve stopped watching, but are planning to come back because of the changes. “Catering to existing fans” can also mean bringing those people back.
Did they stop watching because the Doctor was a man or because the writing was shit.
Also, unless you have literally millions of friends in that situation, I don’t think you’re disproving my point. I know people who stopped watching for various reasons. They number less than 10 and wouldn’t even register as a change in viewing figures if they start watching again.
A handful of people might stop watching because it’s a woman, a smaller number might start (or restart) watching for the same reason. Generally speaking most people who DON’T watch Doctor Who do so because they don’t like it or aren’t interested in it. Making the Doctor a woman isn’t going to change many of those minds. But if making her a woman does change the minds of existing fans and turns them away then even if you don’t like their views they’re the people you have to cater to because they’re the people keeping your show alive.
Just to point out that that Doctor Who viewing share on a Saturday night is about 25% and you can comfortably add a million plus extra viewers onto the overnight stats once iplayer is included.
Average viewing figures are currently down at the ~5m mark, from ~7m in 2014 when Capaldi took the role. That’s not Capaldi’s fault and it likely won’t be fixed by Jodie Whittaker either. The new writer might turn it around but the move to a female doctor as his first major action may have lost him some fans (although not as many as are actually saying they won’t watch it, many of those will be just all bluster and noise).
“we live in internet outrage culture.”
Sadly this is very true. What is worse, if the next series ‘bombs’ the actress will probably (and unfairly) get the blame. For such a long time, Dr Who has been built on the foundation of a very old trope that you just can’t use when you have a female Doctor.. and I don’t know if the writing team will have the chops to pull off a season that keeps the viewers attention without having that crutch to rely on. Sure, viewing figures will go up BECAUSE some people want to see a show with a female Doctor.. and that will be counteracted by a drop in figures because there will be people who refuse to watch it for the same reason.
What I’m interested in is the reaction of the third group.. the fans who would watch the show regardless. Will it still feel like Dr. Who to them? I suppose only time will tell.
I think the number of people currently not watching the show because they don’t like the fact that Dr Who is Male is fairly negligible. I also think that the number of people who will actually stop watching because she is going to be a woman instead (as opposed to just saying that they will stop watching) is also fairly negligible. However ratings for the show have been steadily declining and most people who I know who watch the show (which doesn’t include me) say the biggest issue is the actor it’s the writing. So you are right in that the show will live or die based on the quality of the writing (and there is also a change of writer as well).
Nothing wrong with a lady in the role. Baker is the Dr. of my time and I rarely watched after he was gone, but if this is what fans have been seeking, give them what they want.
Well my 10 year old daughter is thrilled by it… but then she adores Missy already!
Its nice for her to finally have a choice of female heroines in Fantasy/Sci-fi media.
“The Doctor can’t be a woman!”
“Why did they get this old guy to be the Doctor?”
“Do they think this guy can hold a candle to David Tennant?”
“Who’s this Scottish guy trying to be the Doctor?”
Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera, ad nauseum. We get this with every regeneration. People will get over it.
Technically, wouldn’t she be the 14th Doctor? Everyone forgets Captain Grumpy (John Hurt).
Isn’t everybody forgetting Joanna Lumley or is that not canon
Joanna Lumley wasn´t canon… because then, Rowan Atkinson would also be canon as Doctor. ^^
@dekinrie, not cannon alas. That was the Comic Relief special from 1999 where the Doctor was played by several actors, including Lumley.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tp_Fw5oDMao
If that was canon then the Eastenders cross over would be canon, and that can’t be allowed to happen
In exchange for Doctor Blackadder I’d accept it 🙂
Gallifreyans can regenerate as male, female, black, white, Scottish, English and even gingers 🙂
So I don’t understand why people are now switching off surely they would have switched off when the master became missy……
I’ll tune in for the new series but if the writing stays as it has for the past few series I won’t be tuning in for long.
The big travesty here is that we’ll get a rubbish mini of her from warlord instead of an epic mini from crooked dice!!!
I can see why people are upset, just because it can regenerate as a woman doesn’t mean it should. When you have established a character as male over a long period of time, fans do tend to object to re-imagining/rebooting/recasting those characters in ways that fundamentally change them. Now, I don’t watch Doctor Who, so I can’t really say how people view Dr Who, but I know that if someone did the same thing to a character in a different show or movie that I did like I most likely wouldn’t be happy about it. I don’t mind whether a lead character is male or female but I do mind that being changed once the character has been established.
A few things that need to be considered when comparing previous gender swapped characters, in this case Starbuck
1) The original show was aired decades ago and had largely fallen out of the public consciousness. In that case the writers could almost do what they wanted, it’s almost like starting again from scratch. The number of people who will remember or even care about the original show after 30 years is fairly small and the remake had to build an entirely new fan base. Conversely Dr Who is currently an active show with an active community and fan base, some of whom don’t want the Dr to be gender swapped – as is their right.
2) I never watched the original BSG so although Starbuck was gender swapped I had no investment in the original, nor did many fans of the remake. To me and people like me, Starbuck wasn’t gender swapped, she was always Kara Thrace. Dr Who has been an established character for over 50 years. Even factoring in the break from 1989 it’s been established for 12; the Dr is very much a part of the public consciousness, even for people like me who hate it. This is an important thing to remember with reboots; if people can still remember in recent memory the thing you are rebooting you will face much more resistance to big changes the more popular the original was.
3) The reimagined BSG was carried by some fantastic writing and so even if I were upset about Starbuck being gender swapped, the quality of the show would have far exceeded any resentment I felt at the gender swap. I suspect Dr Who is probably now in that same position.
except most shows can’t do a gender switch without going for a reboot (battlestar galactica).
This show at least has the option …
whether or not it is a good choice depends on when she is replaced.
There’s also the fact that they had dropped so many hints in the ‘new’ series that it was going to happen when they found someone suitable.
“I can see why people are upset, just because it can regenerate as a woman doesn’t mean it should.”
Why not?
The series is declining in viewership as you said before, this gives some potentially fresh story telling opportunities and challenges.
What parts of the Doctor character are out and out male, it doesn’t have a sonic penis just a sonic screwdriver (not a euphemism:) )
“in ways that fundamentally change them.”
But this isn’t a fundamental change, it’s still the Doctor its just got boobs now 🙂
Regeneration is one of the most fundamental parts of the Doctor I’d say as fundamental as the tardis and time travel.
There has always been the possibility the Dr could regenerate into a female body.
This isn’t James Bond now being female, this isnt Wonder Woman now being a dude.
I guess you could also ask why should you make her female? Are there really people out there who don’t watch Dr Who because the Dr is male? And if there are should we be pandering to those people any more than listening to people who say they will boycott the show now that she is going to be female?
I can’t personally tell you what parts of Dr Who are out and out masculine because I can’t fucking stand Dr Who – Jodies Whittaker isn’t going to change that and nor is the new writer. What I can tell you though, as someone who would be upset if this happened to a show I liked, is that Dr Who has been established as a male character for over 50 years and to the Whovians who are upset about it, this is very much the same as changing James Bond to a she. You would have to ask one of them the specifics of what they see as masculine about the Dr, besides the actor, because to be honest I couldn’t care less about it; I’m just telling you why people feel the way they do because I might feel the same if it was done to a show I cared about. Interestingly, from reading Facebook today, I know a couple of people who have said that they didn’t like the Master/Missy story that you mention. Not that that means anything to me but the people I know who are disappointed (and I use that word deliberately because they’re not raging) generally also follow the trend that they didn’t like that story either.
Finally, unless the switch from male to female is a fundamental change, it doesn’t actually offer any new opportunities for telling stories than any other reset of the Dr. For it to offer new opportunities, it would need to offer something new, something fundamentally different. It is a fundamental change because you’re telling it from the perspective of someone with a vastly different set of personality traits, because male and female personalities are very different. People who don’t want that kind of change in their TV shows are perfectly entitled to feel that way, it’s perfectly normal to feel that way and it doesn’t make them sexist.
For someone who doesn’t care about the character or show, you sure are posting a lot in an article about it 🙂
I can see where your empathy is coming from but I can see as well that this isn’t the same situation as your empathising with.
This isn’t the same as making James Bond Jane Bond, it’s not the same as whitewashing it’s not the same as Jonny storm becoming black, even starbuck becoming a woman.
Taking away the what if they changed my bro on so so to a chick….
Put your empathy in context of the matter at in question.
This is a TV series where an “Alien” regenerates into a new person when they die. That person is for the most part a completely different person.
But I’ve typed enough and as you said you don’t care about the series or character so I’ll stop trying to explain.
I don’t care about Dr Who. I do care about making changes to established characters
I think that for many of the people upset about the change it is exactly like changing James Bond to a woman; you try and dress it up as being different using Dr Who lore but you could probably justify Jane Bond on similar grounds. There’s no rules that say 007 can’t be a woman is there? But that fails to capture any sort of nuance. So I think my empathy is entirely within the context in question; the fact that the time lord regenerates into a new person has until now regenerated into a male form. That in itself has created a tradition, an unwritten rule, that for many fans has become part of the character and what he is and means to them. But if regeneration can be into anything, why always a human male? Forget gender, why limit it to just humans (bbc budgets aside)? Science fiction and fantasy need rules and although they aren’t always written down they sometimes occur by tradition, as has happened for some people with the Dr and generally speaking people don’t like traditions being changed.
But I also have to say there are far more people upset about people being upset, sort of like pre-emptive outrage. I have seen something like 2 people on my Facebook feed who are disappointed by the announcement. 2. I have seen hundreds of people outraged by people who don’t like the idea of a female doctor and they’re all banging on about sexist men and crying man babies. But where are they? Where are all these people who are so bitterly complaining about the female doctor? They’re certainly not on Facebook, maybe they’re on Twatter?
LOL
As you dont care your clearly bringing bagage into this from elsewhere..
Lore dictates a character if James bond was a codename for whoever was 007 then why not cast a woman but it’s not according to the lore.
I see no issue with this because of the lore you do out of principle…whatever
The Dr Who characrter soft reboots every time it regenerates. It’s been played by a wide range of actors who collectively bring little more in common to the character than they are white and have a penis. Neither of those things are intrinsic to the character to the extent anything would lost if the skin colour changed or there was a vagina instead of a penis. James Bond’s casual misogyny wouldn’t quite work if the character had a vagina, but even that isn’t much of a loss. The Starbuck character changed more than Dr Who will due to the gender swap, but that didn’t mean it didn’t work. I look foward to the day when we stop caring about this bullsh*t, and judge the actor on their performance, which is all that matters.
I already told you where I am coming from. I don’t personally care about Dr Who but I do care about making fundamental changes to established characters. And I can totally understand why some people might feel disappointed with this move because Dr Who is their big thing and this is a big change that potentially turns the character into something that they don’t feel is in keeping with what they understand the Dr to be. It would actually be very easy for me to just say I don’t understand what all the fuss is about because, as a non fan (putting it mildly) I can’t really understand exactly why they don’t like this because it seems to me that the lore supports it. But I haven’t spent years following the show or investing time and energy (and maybe money) being a fan of it so I’m also not prepared to simply write off people’s disappointment and tell them to just suck it up. I still haven’t personally seen anyone who is going to boycott the show because of it, only people who have said they don’t like it but will still watch it.
As for other characters changing gender, James Bond wouldn’t work as a woman. If you made “Jane Bond” you would have to accept that you are not making a female James Bond, you are in fact making an entirely new and distinct character. Lore itself isn’t enough to justify a change to a character on that level, you have to also consider the effect that it will have on the character; James Bond is a good example of how changing the character’s gender would have a HUGE affect on the character.
If you strip away the womanising and charm you’re left with Mission: Impossible…
Kara Thrace I have covered elsewhere – the short of it being that Kara Thrace was an entirely different character in nearly every way but because the original show was so short lived and so long ago the reboot got away with it.
Pretty awesome choice. I’d rather have seen Idris Elba take a run, but there is always next time. I just hope that the stories are more interesting in the post-Moffat era.
Well I grew up with Doctor Who, Tom Baker is still by far the best of the them. this change has been brought about by nothing more than an attempt to boost the diversity in the show, something that has been creeping in over the last few series constantly. The truth is it has sufferred from some truely dreadful stories. I personally never was keen on how the Master changed, i dont like the Missy character, and it just showed how bad it was when John Simm returned and totally out performed her in the last two episodes of the last series.
I personally will take some time to get used to this change, as I think that the Doctor was one of the very few, no macho, non overtly violent positive male role models on TV… but as my 8 yo son said well The Doctor still has the same brian so its still the Doctor…very true from the mouths of babes
I came to this thread expecting to find vitriol and spite, but the BoW community wins again!
I’m certainly interested in seeing how Whittaker’s Doctor turns out, although I’ll stick with being cautious for the moment.
If the writers focus on writing a good story in which the Doctor happens to be a woman, I think this could work out well. Sadly, thanks to the more toxic elements of feminism more recently, it’s just as likely for the writers to put out a bad story relying purely on the fact that the protagonist is a woman. If this happens, we will probably see a similar uproar to the recent Ghostbusters movie, with anyone daring to criticise the show whatsoever being decried as a sexist irregardless of what they’re actually criticising.
In short, if they focus on writing a good story, and don’t just rely on Whittaker being a woman, we should be fine.
Look….as long as she gets her tits out i`m ok with it……….” Giggles” only joking peeps…but did sound funny in my head….
Good luck to her, not a huge fan but the script writting I think is it’s biggest challenge. As for the noise on the tinterwebs kinda sad and pathetic I have been waiting on a lady doctor for a while. Pretty certain it happened in a Death’s Head crossover comic
Personally, I’m excited for what this actress can bring to the role. And I think that’s the correct way to look at it; put aside judging people by whatever group we can assign them to and instead judge individuals by their competence/character/etc.
That being said, I think that the reason why some may be against a female Doctor is because they PERCEIVE that Political Correctness/Social Engineering entered into the casting decision, given that current society is hypersensitive to ‘social justice’ issues.
The only people I have seen who are upset about this (a total of 2 people) are upset because they don’t feel that changing the Dr to a woman is in keeping with how they identify with the Dr. One of the two people is male, the other is female and they’re both lifelong fans.