Doctor Who: Jodie Whittaker

I’ve waited a while before imposing my opinion about the upcoming changes for Doctor Who. Knee jerk internet jerks are no doubt still frothing and bubbling in their mother’s basements about the fact that the Thirteenth Doctor is to be played by a woman. Or, worse, rubbing their knees and nethers in disgusting boyticipation. Mostly they are decrying what to them is a step too far for a science fiction show.

Science fiction, lest anyone has forgotten, is all about fantasy, imagination and the possibilities at the edge of probability. In the shape of Doctor Who science fiction has always, absolutely always, been about breaking rules, imagining the impossible and making fantasy seem so almost-real that young kids who get hooked on it are still obsessed when they are approaching their dotage.

As one such uber-nerd I should like to point to the very first edition of the show, all the way back in 1963: An Unearthly Child. And who was that child? It was the Doctor’s granddaughter, Susan, a woman, no less. A Time Lady, dontcha know. I'd wager that while she was mostly a damsel in distress sort of character, as was common back then for most females in action-driven shows aside from the odd possessor of her own agency such as Honor Blackman, she was also canonical proof that Timelords do both genders.

And when the Doctor eventually visited his homeland onscreen in the seventies Time Ladies were in evidence, despite the ‘Lords’ still being more front and centre. Until Romana, that is, the second longer-term Time Lady incumbent in the Tardis. Both male and female characters, even The Brigadier, played second fiddle to Tom Baker’s Puckish Fourth Doctor, so it's no surprise Romana was often also somewhat damselly and distressy.

All of this long before Who was rebooted by a generation of screenwriters infected by a more modern ‘political correctness gone mad’, as some are still assuming is the reason for casting a woman in the role of the Doctor for the first time. It's as if those who most loathe the idea of a female Doctor are privileged white male misogynists who may well suffer with varying degrees of homophobia and racism, isn't it? 

Hmm, whatever. If they don't like the direction the show is going in they could always choose not to watch it and save themselves from some kind of seizure.

Jodie Whittaker, like Matt Smith before her and even David Tennant to a degree, is a moderately well known purveyor of the acting arts yet to make the step up into being a big name. Like both of them, Peter Capaldi and Christopher Eccleston, she is also a brilliant purveyor of said arts, despite only being moderately well known thus far. She has range, she has a unique energy, she can totally inhabit the roles she plays: all perfect qualifications for being the Doctor. Does the lack of a penis create a demerit so enormous that those facts about her as an actor are irrelevant? No, knee jerk internet jerks, it does not.

I'm going to miss Capaldi. But I was also going to miss Smith. And Tennant. And Eccleston. And McGann. And…skips a bit here to the next one I really, really was going to miss…Tom Baker. And Jon Pertwee. I’m not quite ancient enough to remember watching Troughton and possibly never did more than hear Hartnell’s bumblesome tones from my pram. The point is, virtually every actor who has played the Doctor made the role their own; Jodie Whittaker will do exactly that too and not because she’s a woman but because she’s brilliant.

And when she leaves the show to be replaced by a robot fish I will miss her like heck too. Until halfway through the first episode of the Fourteenth Doctor’s adventures.