With Doctor Who season 12, Jodie Whittaker hopes “the gender question” is answered

The twelfth season of Doctor Who kicks off with a two-parter on New Year’s Day, and Whovians the world over are thrilled to rejoin the Doctor and her crew aboard the Tardis, ready for a new suite of time-traveling, space-faring adventures.

This season will be especially important for all the new cast and crew members who started on the series in season 11, most obviously Jodie Whittaker, who’s playing the 13th iteration of the iconic character. “I feel like I’ve been accepted as the Doctor,” she told The Big Issue magazine. “There was a pressure. If I’d have been a guy in this role I’d have only been representing my own casting as an individual. But it felt like I could hold people back if nobody liked what I brought to the Doctor.”

"The gender question is now going away. Hopefully it won’t make the news next time."

Indeed, ahead of season 11, there was a lot of chatter about what it meant for there to be a woman playing the Doctor. Then the season aired, the reviews were great, viewership went up, and we can leave the question behind and focus on what will hopefully be a terrific suite of stories.

One of those stories will definitely include Cybermen, frightening metal monsters who have fought the Doctor since the earliest days of the series. “It’s a story in which you’re going to be encountering a particularly relentless and ferocious set of Cybermen,” showrunner Chris Chibnall told Radio Times. “It’s interesting, because although you can talk about it as old versus new [monsters], that’s slightly a false definition. Because even if you bring the Cyberman back, that’ll be the first time for some kids and for some viewers. So you have to make sure that they feel fresh and there’s an idea behind them.”

"I think, with any series of Doctor Who, you want it to be this wondrous array: a bit of old, a bit of new and some surprises. You want a bit of everything: stuff for kids and new viewers, and stuff that, if you’ve been watching Doctor Who for 50 years, there’s a line or an image that you’ll understand the resonance of. We’ve got all of that this year."

Another possibility (probably one for later, but still): Doctor Who reunion specials. Past episodes have let multiple iterations of the Doctor appear in the same episode, so which ones would Whittaker be keen to work with? “I’d say David [Tennant], because I’ve worked with him before and he’s brilliant,” she told Radio Times. “And Chris [Eccleston] – that’s what I’d like, because having worked with them both previously, I know that it would be an amazing time.”

Something to think about come season 13, perhaps.

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h/t The Guardian