Jodie Whittaker didn’t pick up on any of the hate for her version of the Doctor

This past weekend, David Tennant returned as the Doctor on Doctor Who, beginning yet another new era for a show that has been regenerating itself over and over for 60 years. Before that, the role of the Doctor was played for three seasons by Jodie Whittaker, who was the first woman to ever play the role.

“I’m the 13th – I mean, it should have been the seventh,” Whittaker told the Independent in a new interview. “You know, at some point it should have come earlier – but it didn’t. And so for it to be me, I’m forever riddled with pride.”

"It is my happiest time. That show gave me so many opportunities outside of it. I now meet a whole fandom of people that are possibly the most creative and diverse group of people, that love this show that I now love, because I never understood it before and didn’t watch it, and now I’m like ‘oh my gaddd’, and I get its impact. I understand its relevance. And I understand its joy. And it’s a f***ing gig and a half. It just is. Three seasons was definitely enough. But I will be forever grief-ridden that I’m not playing the Doctor."

Whittaker’s time as the Thirteenth Doctor was perhaps the most divisive in the show’s history, certainly since it was revived 2005. A lot of that has to do with the storylines, which many fans felt weren’t up to par, but a lot of it also had to do with Whittaker being a woman. Even a 2017, after Whittaker’s casting was revealed but a year before her first episode aired, plenty of fans were vowing never to watch the show again.

Happily, pretty much none of that made it to Whittaker, since she made the genius-level decision to not engage with social media, which is where a lot of the most virulent hate spreads. If someone wanted to tell her she was awful, they’d have to do it to her face. “No one’s told me they’ve hated me,” she said. “I think it takes a lot to queue up and stand and say to someone, ‘I hated your version of the Doctor.’ So you only have smoke blown up your arse. So that means I only ever have positive experiences. I’m sure if I was on Twitter, I’d have a very different version. But I’m not. So I go ‘la la la!’”

Doctor Who showrunner talks trans storyline in “The Star Beast”

In 2017, the idea of a female Doctor was unheard of and clearly got a lot of people bent out of shape. I think fewer people would freak out today. After all, we had a female Doctor and the world didn’t end.

And there are new things to get freaked out about. For instance, the first of the new Doctor Who specials includes a trans character named Rose, played by trans actor Yasmin Finney. There’s a scene where Rose is deadnamed, a scene where her grandmother struggles with her pronouns, and a plot twist where Rose’s gender identity becomes metaphysically important to the story. So the fact that Rose isn’t just an incidental detail; returning showrunner Russell T Davies makes it an integral part of the plot.

Predictably, this has upset some fans, who are currently review bombing the episode on Rotten Tomatoes with a lot of thinly veiled complaints about having to watch a TV show with a trans person. “Another of our cherished series infected with THE MESSAGE…..” reads one review. “It’s only about the freaking MESSAGE,” reads a completely different one. What, did they coordinate?

Personally, I thought the episode was pretty fun; I especially enjoyed the villain, a cuddly homicidal maniac known as the Meep. As for Rose’s part, I don’t see it as meaningfully different than any other time Doctor Who has worked a social issue into its story, which is often. “It becomes a vital part of the plot that Rose contains the ‘he’ and the ‘she’ and the neither and the both, and that’s a new future. Rose goes beyond words, beyond definitions,” Davies said on the companion show Doctor Who: Unleashed. “Homophobia and transphobia happens when it’s something you’ve never seen before. You can temper that reaction and change it when you introduce these images to people happily and normally and calmly when they’re young. Then it just becomes normal.”

Hopefully, a few years down the road, featuring a trans character on Doctor Who won’t seem more or less radical than having a woman play the Doctor. I’m glad the show is doing what little it can to move these kinds of conversations forward.

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h/t Independent