“We can only hope.” Jodie Whittaker, Peter Capaldi and Doctor Who
- Adam Tye
- Jul 20, 2017
- 6 min read
Remember when we all thought the next Doctor was going to be Kris Marshall? That all seems pretty hilarious now doesn’t it?
Of course, you may not have heard, but Jodie Whittaker has been announced as the thirteenth Doctor, ending months of speculation that has been both weirdly tense and frequently annoying (What’s that 'Express'? Tilda Swinton might be the next Doctor? Have you been paying attention to the show for the last 50 years?). I suppose there is a benefit to this in that any website which legitimately thinks that Emma Watson has a shot at being the next Doctor can be ignored forevermore, safe in the knowledge that they have no idea what they’re talking about.
Given the previously-noted expectation of a Kris Marshall-type entering the TARDIS next year, Jodie’s casting feels stratospherically removed from that prospect. There’s a weird sense that this isn’t actually a thing, probably because most of us weren’t prepared for the BBC to actually go there. But they have. It’s happening. The Doctor is…still not ginger.
It feels almost a little unfair to talk about Jodie’s casting in a sense that avoids Jodie herself. The talk of the importance of a female Doctor has been thrown around endlessly the last few days with mostly lip-service paid to Jodie herself. Unfortunately, I’m not going to be able to really rectify this as, to the best of my knowledge, the only thing I have seen her in is the Black Mirror episode ‘The Entire History of You’, which was a while ago and I don’t remember it all that well (ironically). Nor have I seen Broadchurch or Attack the Block (that last one is on my watchlist though). Honestly, I’m actually tempted to not watch any of these now and go into Jodie’s era completely fresh, much like I did when Matt Smith became the Doctor. In the interest of giving Jodie her due, however, I have been told by several people (largely Broadchurch watchers) that she is excellent and a great fit for the role. I half wonder whether she will represent a more grounded approach to the role than Capaldi and Smith’s interpretations, which would not only fit in with both her and Chibnall’s previous style of work, but also with the BBC’s rumoured desire for a more Tennant-ish Doctor (who looks positively human next to the larger-than-life Smith and Capaldi). Either way, I, along with millions of other Whovians, welcome Jodie Whittaker to this universe and hopes she enjoys her time in what is arguably TV’s most iconic playground.
Now having discussed Jodie herself, I have to turn to the much ballyhooed prospect of an actual female Doctor in the TARDIS. Other people have already talked at length about the topic – arguably people for whom this might be an even greater moment in both TV history and their own personal lives – but I’m going to throw my hat in anyways and give this a go. Because the Doctor’s integral allure of being able to be played by anyone has just gone from potentiality to actuality. An established character that has been ingrained within the popular consciousness to the extent that they transcend notions of character to become a part of the cultural landscape just went from male to female. Sure the show has had to had a bit of a run-up to reach this moment (something I’ll get to in a bit), but it’s actually there!
I feel like for me to discuss at length the impact that Jodie’s casting will have upon all the girls and women that watch Doctor Who would be to write without really capturing the magnitude of this moment for them – a magnitude that I could probably describe, though without properly doing justice to it. Instead I'd like to touch on a slightly different angle. See, arguably one of the most fascinating parts of female-casting in sci-fi and the like is the backlash argument that ‘boys won’t be able to empathise with the main character anymore’. Avoiding how impossibly insulting and stupid that train of thought is, it highlights an important facet of pop-culture – one that I don’t think gets discussed often enough: boys are rarely required to identify with female protagonists, because they’re often isn’t that many! Now of course, the ‘issue’ of cross-gender empathy isn’t actually an issue at all and what better character to teach people this than the Doctor. Not only do girls now have a truly Earth-shattering feminine icon to look up to (a point which I really cannot stress the significance of enough) but now guys get to be taught in a pretty profound way about the importance of looking for role models outside of their own gender.
I’m really not going to waste much time on the hateful responses to Jodie’s casting, except to comment that these people are not fans of Doctor Who. They haven’t absorbed either the logic or the emotion of the show they aim to defend so viciously, nor would I wager are they the sort of people that have been watching the show, or would have watched it anyway no matter who was cast in the role. I only hope that Jodie does not take these people to be representative of the show or the fans that actually respect its ideology of kindness and hope. Right now, Jodie embodies hope for a vast amount of people in a way that few other actors before her have been tasked with. That’s not something to shirk at and I’m really looking forward to seeing it pay off - by which I don’t mean Christmas this year, when she first appears on screen, but rather episode 4 or 5, when we’ve all forgotten that this character used to be a dude and that such a thing used to be worth commenting on.
With Jodie’s casting announced, I also find myself turning back to the show’s current flagbearer – Peter Capaldi. I’m worried about the temptation for fans to turn on his incarnation of the Doctor in impatience for the arrival of Whittaker which would be incredibly disrespectful both of Peter’s contribution to the role as well as the significance of his Doctor in paving the way for a female one. Capaldi’s Doctor represents arguably the show’s most concerted effort to move the character away from nakedly sexy territory and towards a more neutral state. We see this in obvious ways, such as the lack of a romantic narrative between him and his companions, but in other ways that showrunner Steven Moffat has been lacing into the show over the last three series. Obviously the change of Master to Missy is crucial, as is the first on-screen regeneration that changed both a timelord’s gender and colour, but let’s not forget what must be one of the show’s most groundbreaking statements from World Enough and Time. Time Lords have moved beyond humanity’s petty obsession with gender – a comment on both the logistics of regeneration gender-change as well as why no-one needs to throw their rattle out of the pram about it.
BILL: So, the Time Lords, bit flexible on the whole man-woman thing, then, yeah? DOCTOR: We're the most civilised civilisation in the universe. We're billions of years beyond your petty human obsession with gender and its associated stereotypes.
This is what I mean regarding the show taking a run-up towards Jodie’s casting. Even this exchange from The Doctor Falls…
The Master: Is the future going to be all-girl?
The Doctor: We can only hope.
…whether deliberate or not, suggests a conscious shift towards accepting this change. Was such a run-up strictly speaking necessary? I’m not sure. People have been calling for a female Doctor for a little while now and the idea has been bandied around since the days of Moffat writing Comic Relief sketches, so there’s an argument to be made against it. On the other hand, if I may make a confession, I remember before Capaldi’s casting being of the opinion that the Doctor should always remain a male. Now that was a while ago, with university and many other factors serving as a nice kick up the backside for me, but I wonder whether this kind of run-up helped as well. The answer, I suspect, might be a healthy mix of all the above – certainly it did not take up until World Enough and Time for me to hop aboard the female-Doctor train (I’ve been entertaining the possibility of Hayley Atwell taking on the role for a good while now).
At the end of the day, Jodie stands as our thirteenth Doctor and not a moment too soon. Her casting invigorates my excitement for an eleventh series that, up until now, I had been feeling decidedly squiffy about. The upcoming shift in the show’s infrastructure represents a moment of change in the show so seismic, that this year’s Christmas special is feeling a little bit like the show’s grand finale for me. Jodie’s casting has helped alleviate that feeling somewhat. I cannot pretend to have much of an idea what Chibnall’s vision for the show entails (I imagine there aren’t many people that can), but if anything I can be thankful that beyond the exit of Steven Moffat and Peter Capaldi, it truly feels like Doctor Who won’t be disappearing. I’m not sure I could have asked for much more than that.
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