Who?
Head Writer and Executive Producer – Chris Chibnall,
Executive producers – Matt Strevens and Sam Hoyle, BBC
Starring Jodie Whittaker, Bradley Walsh, Tosin Cole & Mandip Gill
Jodie Whittaker had some big shoes to fill. There have been 12 doctors since 1963, the latest of whom was Peter Capaldi, he of the magnificently craggy rubber face and matchless Scots’ voice. She outrages traditionalists who think all Doctors should be white and male (reflect on the fact that in the UK, some people were outraged by Capaldi, because they felt a 10,000 year old alien from a planet 500 light years away should have an English accent, not Scottish). The fact is, Jodie Whittaker is a, you know, a “her.” The Sad Puppy sorts are all butthurt about that, of course.
She not actually the first female Doctor. Maisie Williams is Ashildr, who is a kinda sorta timelord with a TARDIS of her own who hangs out at the end of time. Of course, Time Lords aren’t necessarily Doctors, as witness the Master, now Missy. Actually, now Missing. The plot lines in Doctor Who are a bit hard to follow sometimes.
So what sort of Doctor is Jodie Whittaker? Based on the first episode, a pretty good one. As mentioned, she’s replacing Capaldi (and in fact spends most of the first episode wearing the clothing Capaldi wore before becoming Whittaker), and that’s a tough act to follow. He managed to combine William Hartnell’s mien with the best elements of the 21st century Doctors (Twenty-first century shows, that is: The Doctor usually have thousands of centuries). He was a mad mixture of Fred Gwynn (Herman Munster) and Christopher Lloyd (Back to the Future, Emmet Brown) with a Dunfermline accent. His face was like a Komodo dragon. Motionless. Motionless. Blinding Speed.
I don’t think Whittaker will evoke the same sort of comparisons, but I think she’s well on her way to making her own Doctor, and I think she’ll be a good one. And she has a proper Yorkshire accent, which as all Whovians know, is how the entire universe speaks.
Whittaker doesn’t have the frenetic energy of some of the more recent doctors, but that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It makes it a bit easier to track what the character is doing, both physically and verbally. What she does have is the humor, snark, and otherness that are the requisite elements for a convincing doctor. Her lines are exactly the sorts of things you would expect from the Doctor, and she has the same goofy willingness to just wing it that is a central element to a real Doctor adventure.
This year there are ten episodes plus the Xmas special, and apparently there will not be any Daleks, Ashildr, or any overarching story lines that traverse several episodes or even an entire season. Each story will be stand-alone.
The first episode featured a new alien with an interestingly paved face, and introduced us to the Doctor’s assistants—plural, three of them, Graham O’Brien, Ryan Sinclair and Yasmin Khan. They are a bus driver, an unsuccessful bicycle rider, and a police officer, respectively, which leaves them as well qualified to roam all of space and time as the Doctor’s assistants usually are.
On BBC1 and BBC America.