When Jodie Whittaker was announced as the latest British actor to take over the role as the Doctor in Doctor Who in 2017, the public reaction to a woman playing the iconic sci-fi hero was mixed, with many “old school” fans bucking against the idea of the character seeming to switch gender. However, much of the negative reaction simply bounced off the actor, who says she avoids social media.
“No one can hide behind a nasty tweet because I’ll never read it,” she says. “I’m sure people wrote, ‘I hated your Doctor’ but because I go ‘la la la,’” she trilled, putting her fingers in her ears, “I’ve got such a false sense of who I am,” Whittaker explained to The Times.
The BBC series Doctor Who had been on the air for over 50 years before it cast its first female in the lead role, despite the fact the titular alien character had regenerated over 12 times. Casting of the lead role had fallen in line with accepted culture, with a succession of white male actors in the role since the 1960s. So it wasn’t until the reboot in 2006 that the idea of a female playing the role truly began to feel like a real possibility, and when 12th incarnation Peter Capaldi announced he was departing the series, the producers finally changed things up.
Whittaker had already been a household name in the UK due to her starring roles in the dramas Broadchurch and Trust Me when she was cast as the Doctor and was thrust fully into the glare of the spotlight. Although she understands some of the reaction to her casting, she rails against the idea that a female cast in the role meant the character could no longer be looked up to by boys.
"It’s part of all our vocabularies — the Tardis, Daleks, exterminate! And everyone’s Doctor until then was a white man. They are very different actors, but they all fit a specific mould — and I didn’t. It’s never been questioned that I had to look up to men. So it was fascinating that for some, we [women] could not be role models. The Doctor is still the Doctor. But also, I was playing an alien! My gender was not the issue."
Thankfully, the negative reaction to her time as the Doctor has not marred her enjoyment of the role, nor her feelings towards the enormous fanbase which she often meets at cons.
“I’m like, ‘Don’t forget about me.’ It’s nice for me if people are still massive fans, because it means I didn’t kill it. If someone stops me and starts talking [about Doctor Who], I’ll go on and on, and I can sense them trying to leave," she said, although she admitted she manages to avoid recognition much of the time.
Not killing the show, or ruining the role for any further non-male actors, was Whittaker’s main fear during her five-year-run in the TARDIS. “If Peter [Capaldi] hadn’t been good as the Doctor, it would only have reflected on him. Whereas I felt that if I wasn’t very good at this, I’ve f***ed it for other actors. I think it’s completely unacceptable if that was the case, but that’s how I felt.”
Whittaker absolutely did not kill the franchise; during her run, another female actor was introduced as a different incarnation of The Doctor. Jo Martin became the first person of color to take on the role, appearing as a guest star in the episode “Fugitive of the Judoon.” She initially appears to be a human, but over time it is revealed that she was a previous regeneration of the Doctor whose memory of who she was was wiped. Whittaker’s 13th Doctor encounters her and neither Doctor remembers the other, causing uncertainty as to when this regeneration took place in the character’s long life. Martin appeared in a further three episodes.
Following Whittaker’s decision to depart the role of the Doctor (she was pregnant when filming her final scenes), previous star David Tennant returned to the role for a special 60th birthday storyline before passing the sonic screwdriver on to Sex Education star Ncuti Gatwa. Tennant played the 14th incarnation of the Doctor, who remains alive and — in a controversial twist on the regeneration storyline — split in two, with Gatwa playing the 15th incarnation.
Whittaker revealed that her main line of advice to Gatwa when he took over as The Doctor was to let him know how quickly the time goes by, and hope that he was better at learning the complex sci-fi gobbledygook lines than she was.
Gatwa took the helm for the 14th season of the reboot, which was also dubbed “season 1” of a new era, as it was the first season to be a co-production between the BBC and Disney. The 15th/second season will debut internationally on April 12, 2025, with Gatwa returning as interstellar time traveller, with new companion Belinda, played by Verada Sethu.
Meanwhile, Jodie Whittaker is riding high in the Netflix charts as she stars in Toxic Town, the true life drama about a group of English mothers who try to get justice for their children who are born with multiple congenital issues due to toxic waste in the ground. Ncuti Gatwa’s Sex Education co-star and BAFTA award-winner Aimee Lou Woods costars with Whittaker as a mother whose daughter dies from the effects of the steel mining fallout which permeates the land in the English town of Corby.
To stay up to date on everything fantasy, science fiction, and WiC, follow our all-encompassing Facebook page and Twitter account, sign up for our exclusive newsletter and check out our YouTube channel.