On Monday SilverHammerMan asked (while I was busy photoshopping horrible things and so am only getting to it now):
Since some other people have mentioned the next Doctor now, I was wondering how you felt about the possibility of a female or non-white Doctor? It seems like every time we enter that stage between Doctors the internet gets whipped into a lather either declaring it a great idea or a terrible one, and I wondered where you stand.
I’m very much on board the train of thought that the next Doctor shouldn’t be just another white dude, yes.
I’m all in for a Doctor of colour – last time around I remember Andrew Wheeler suggested Chiwetel Ejiofor and I thought that was a splendid idea. Paterson Joseph wouldn’t be bad either, although I suspect he might be too manic as the Doctor. Adrian Lester would work, I think, as would Ashley Walters (although I am personally of the opinion that the next Doctor should not be Matt Smith-level young, we need a bit of a change-up and Walters is accordingly not the right fit at this time). Lennie James would be awesome. I don’t think Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje would be right for the role. Idris Elba is probably not attainable unless he really really wants to be the Doctor; the people who said Richard Ayoade are amusing trolls. Getting away from black men, I would love to see Alexander Siddig or Jimi Mistry or Naveen Andrews take a crack at the role, and I would break my “no young Doctor” rule for Dev Patel (although I think he would be better suited as a companion for a female Doctor).
I’m a little more leery about a female Doctor, but I have to admit that this is mostly because as a dude I identify with the Doctor on a gender basis. My way for dealing with this is to say “what if Helen Mirren played the Doctor” and then I have to admit “holy shit that would be balls-out amazing” even though she’s not going to do it because come on, she has better things to do with her time both in terms of art and money because she is Helen Mirren. Joanna Lumley is an interesting idea but would be getting into William Hartnell levels of Doctor age and I think is therefore unlikely. (Helen Mirren is ageless and therefore gets around this rule.) Kelly MacDonald is interesting, assuming people can tolerate the Doctor suddenly being Scottish (which I think would be more controversial than the Doctor being female, honestly). Emma Thompson would be amazing. Julie Walters would likely add an interesting “the Doctor is your kooky but tough grandmother” vibe to the character that I think would work really well. I think a lot of people would balk at Elizabeth Hurley but I’ve always thought she’s a great dramedy actress and would surprise people. Joely Richardson would be a badass Doctor, I think. And if we want to go full-diversity and have a female Doctor of color, there’s always Gugu Mbatha-Raw, who in addition to being lovely and awesome has a fantastic name.
Of course, practically all of these people are Names, which is why they are unlikely to be cast; they command bigger salaries and the BBC is still the BBC, even if it is one of their flagship shows. Unless they’re willing to take a pay cut, the next Doctor will probably be like Tennant or Smith – a relative unknown. Eccleston was an outlier in that regard.
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FWIW, the top vote-getter in a recent Guardian poll was Zowe Ashton from Fresh Meat. Haven’t seen the show, but going by this clip (NSFW, language), I think she could do it.
Mos Def?
Naveen Andrews is my top pick too. David Harewood’s name has been thrown around too, he could work.
Mos Def isn’t British.
David Tennant: Bathgate, West Lothian, Scotland, UK
“Kelly MacDonald is interesting, assuming people can tolerate the Doctor suddenly being Scottish (which I think would be more controversial than the Doctor being female, honestly)”
David Tennant’s Estuary accent took the occasional wander north of Gretna. To say nothing of Sylvester McCoy
Nathan Stewart-Jarrett (Curtis on Misfits) has just about the right pedigree as far as previous low-key acting jobs, but I don’t know if he has the acting range. I’d love to see Iwan Rheon (Simon, ibid) in the role, but I gather he’s been on Game Of Gratuituousness so he’s now probably too much of a Name for DW.
Of all the actresses who could play the Doctor, I’m surprised you didn’t mention Tilda Swinton. She has an ethereal sort of beauty that already makes her look somewhat alien. Her demeanor as the Doctor would strike me as cool, in control, fiercely intellectual, and just crazy enough to still be the Doctor.
My fiance suggested Helena Bonham Carter. But she’s both A Name and possibly one of the few working actors too excessively strange to play the doctor (see also Richard Ayoade).
In the same vein I pointed out that Emma Watson, while also A Name, is within 18 months of the age Matt Smith was when Tennant was announced to be leaving. We’ll probably never get Young Female Doctor, Old Male Companion, but that’s certainly a thought.
Swinton would be excellent, yes. No question. I don’t think she takes the gig in a million years, though.
David Tennant may be Scottish, as above posters have noted, but I will note that he was forced to deliberately change his accent for the role.
Check out any interview he’s in where he uses his natural voice. The man has an accent you could bounce rocks off of, and he had to dial it way way way back for the role.
Re: female Doctors, no honorable mention for Dame Judi Dench? She is, of course, getting on in years now, and she’s even huger a name than Helen Mirren, but she was always my pick for female Doctor.
Oh, and as for Helen Mirren having better things artistically to do with her time… the woman appeared in RED, for god’s sake. She really doesn’t.
Judi Dench is going blind and she’s more or less retired from acting..it’s why they killed off her M.
I’m gonna say let’s keep with the Billie Piper and Kylie Minogue trend, and have Kimberly Walsh as the next Doctor!
Which is of course why I said “honorable mention.”
I recall that Romana chose to regenerate to look like somebody they’d met, so what if the Doctor regenerates into Catherine Tate, or Freema Agyeman? Imagine the hilarity that could ensue!!
[Edited BECAUSE I CAN DO THAT NOW]
As much as a female or non-white Doctor would rule, if I had my choice the next one would be Bill Bailey.
I think the obvious choice for the next the Doctor is the dog from “Dog With a Blog.” Specifically, the original star, Kuma, who was fired.
I think they might break the “unknown actor” trend if they decide to go with a woman, because they’ll want the star power to back up a risky decision. Probably less so if they go with an actor of color.
And I really hope they do. I’ll be sorely disappointed if they pass this opportunity up yet again.
It’s sad that casting a woman or a person of color is still regarded as “risky.”
Re: olfactory_ninja and MGK’s comments above. Tilda Swinton would be fantastic as the Doctor, but as you say, there are several reasons that won’t be happening.
Tilda Swinton as the Master, on the other hand…
I should have specified “risky according to the perceptions of TV executives.” I think there’d be a few delicious tears from loud morons, but overall the show would get a ratings boost.
TV execs on either side of the ocean are a superstitious and cowardly lot, though.
Rumor mill has it that Ben Daniels has already been cast, which would make him the first openly gay actor to portray the Doctor, so that’s a plus.
co-sign on both Naveen Andrews and Gugu Mbatha-Raw.
Helen Mirren as the Doctor, Siân Phillips as the Master.
On a somewhat more plausible note, I think Zawe Ashton or Rebecca Front could be pretty great.
What if they go crazy and the next Doctor is played by John Hurt?
What if they go crazier and the next Doctor is played by Jenna-Louise Coleman?
If we’re going to speculate let’s at least cover ALL the possibilities.
Now my favorite choice for the next Doctor is Richard Coyle. Yeah you all forgot about him didn’t you?
Muhahaha.
I’ve made my pitch for Who replacements. Personally I think having the Doctor cross-gender to female is the way to go (especially given the Corsair backstory that Gaiman provided)
Chiwetel Ejiofor would get me to watch Doctor Who no questions, but I doff my hat to you for suggesting Alexander Siddig who is also an excellent choice and one I hadn’t considered at all.
These lists tend to swing a little bit towards established actors and really, the only time they’ve actually done that is All Creatures Great And Small Guy and maaaaaaaaaaaaybe Pertwee if you’re going to be incredibly generous about Wurzel Gummidge. It’s going to be someone you’ve never really heard of unless you’re british and then he’s going to be oh yeah, him off the thing.
My own take on Black or Female Doctor is the same way I feel about Black James Bond. Yes, I know I should be in favour of it and I am in the general sense. But in the actual particulars of it, it’s something that I’d just find kind of gratuitous.
I’ m also going to suggest there’s something kind of horrible about people picking Idris Elba. Not only is he practically a character actor given his fairly limited range and not only does it verge on the nerdery of wanting to cast Nathan Fillon in everything, he keeps being listed because people can’t name more than 3 english black people.
Yeah, Alexander Siddig is definitely a “slap your forehead and go OF COURSE” choice. And while he’s a Name he wouldn’t be unattainable for the show’s budget, would he? (I guess I haven’t seen him in anything post-DS9 except Doomsday, so I’m assuming he doesn’t have a red-hot career, but then I’m Canadian so I’m probably missing huge swathes of British pop culture.)
Hmm. Tangent: everyone and their mother has been calling for Naveen Andrews to play Oberyn Martell on the next season of Game of Thrones, but I just realized that Siddig is a much, much better choice.
Anyway, someone needs to explain to me why Richard Ayoade is off the table as The Doctor. I mean, if you picture “black guy who can play the same character as Tennant and Smith” he’s pretty much exactly what pops to mind.
As much as I love Chiwetel Ejiofor, he’s not really very Doctor-ish. Plus he needs to keep his schedule open so he can play Black Panther.
Leaving aside he has his whole own successful thing thing going on, Ayoade is off the table precisely because of that reason. There’s very little difference between his comic approach and general Doctor Who Whimsy.
We’d effectively have a very long and prolonged several season long sketch about Doctor Who where the joke is Richard Ayoade is the Doctor.
“As much as I love Chiwetel Ejiofor, he’s not really very Doctor-ish. Plus he needs to keep his schedule open so he can play Black Panther.”
Ejiofor can be both!
(Seriously Marvel, Black Panther movie. Get crackin’ on that, okay? Yeah yeah, space raccoon, whatever, Blade showed you that audiences won’t recoil in horror from an action franchise with a non-Caucasian leading actor, time to put that lesson to work.)
seems to me there should be some limit on what regeneration can do.
Why?
Tommy Wiseau is my pick.
*ducks*
I would like to point out that while Helen Mirren has “Bigger things to do”, she has said two years ago that she’d like to play Doctor Who. Sooooo I’d say she’s a possibility just for that.
The thing is, throwing around ideas like this is inevitably going to come up with people who are Names to some degree, because nobody here has heard of the non-Names.
Elba is not a bad choice at all, I’d say. Whoever said he’s a limited character actor – no, he’s got presence and authority and gravitas seeping out of every pore. His Doctor would be quite imposing. But he’s also probably too big of a name, especially if he’s still doing LUTHER.
My number one choice is Tamsin Greig. She’s been in some stuff but is by no means a “name,” I wouldn’t think. Can you think of anyone better suited to play a massively awkward newly-female Doctor who would have to have the basics of female clothing explained to her?
My own take on Black or Female Doctor is the same way I feel about Black James Bond. Yes, I know I should be in favour of it and I am in the general sense.
Here, I’d like to note that a character should be believable in the sense of being possible.
Dr. Who can be literally anyone, but in my sense, the actor should not be too young, because a person little over 20 playing an ageless character can hardly do as good a job in projecting this ageless wisdom than an actor with some grey in their hair. So, if you cast a woman, you should cast a middle-aged person to the role.
James Bond, on the other hand, is supposed to be the product of English public school system, Cambridge and some not-too-specific officer training, combined with a lower-upper-class family background. It is difficult to pull these traits off with a woman, because a woman with the similar social and educational background is expected and brought up to behave with a completely different set of mannerisms. For a person of colour, the problem is the social background. The institutions we are talking about still have preciously few coloured people, so you need to do some explaining on how a black or Asian guy is a scion of some Scottish upper-class family.
The best you could do would be to cast Bond as a son of wealthy Indian Brahmin family which emigrated to UK in the 1950s and has made their fortune there already in 1980s, or as a son of a similar Hong Kong Chinese family. Casting a black man for the role would stretch the suspension of disbelief a lot, because of the social reality.
Sylvester McCoy is Scottish, and played, if I remember correctly, a fairly Scottish doctor.
Not his fault the show was in the doldrums and got shut down on his run, I always thought he made a decent fist of the role.
My pick for a female doctor: Michelle Fairley. She can act, she’s dignified and beautiful without being super young, she’s an attainable, mid-tier British/Irish character actor, and she can swing between intense and calm and vulnerable and badass on a dime.
And she’s free now.
Everyone keeps throwing out Idris Elba, but I really don’t like the idea of the Doctor being that HUGE. I never really like it when the Doctor is written as a physical threat.
@Lurker: On the other hand James Bond canon is hardly the most robust thing in the world, given that the movies never really give a straight answer as to how James Bond has apparently been an active field agent for something like 50 or 60 years now yet he never gets any older, pay no attention to the fact that he was dark-haired and now he’s blonde or that he was Scottish at one point and what’s up with Judi Dench as M when she starts out in Goldeneye and then all at once she’s M in Casino Royale which is supposed to be like an origin story except she wasn’t M to start with…
I guess what I’m trying to say is that I think your argument overemphasizes the importance of James Bond’s socioeconomic background way, way more than the movies ever really have, and the movies themselves pretty much completely gloss over matters of canon and continuity with a wink and a shrug and a sweet car chase, so given all of that I don’t actually think that casting a non-Caucasian would stretch credibility all that much.
I’d say you might have a stronger argument that it would be harder to pitch a lady as James Bond because one of Bond’s traits that does come through more tangibly than his background is the fact that Bond himself is kind of a sexist womanizing user, and one could argue that’s a trait that doesn’t genderflip very easily without running into a whole host of problematic issues that would probably need to be handled with more care than they would actually receive.
And of course while I generally think that lending legitimacy to fan-theories is more trouble than it’s worth there is always the “James Bond is a code name adopted by whichever MI6 agent is 007 at the time,” so you could always run with that one if you wanted to. There are ways to go about doing it if you felt like it, is what I’m saying.
Everyone keeps throwing out Idris Elba, but I really don’t like the idea of the Doctor being that HUGE. I never really like it when the Doctor is written as a physical threat.
I second this. Some person of color would be awesome, but, honestly, I though Eccleston was a little bit too much of a threatening presence as the Doctor. Lots of Doctor Who plots revolve around him or her being someone you might write off as being not a threat until, holy crap, s/he is. The Doctor is a trickster archetype, really, so he, or she, needs to look that part. Personally, I’d like to see a woman in the role. How awesome would it be to see a woman Doctor constantly subverting expectations in history?
On Paterson Joseph – I recently saw him as Brutus in Julius Caesar, and he played Brutus far more energetically than any production I’d seen before. But he did well to weave in darkness and sorrow into his performance, even as he was manic and quipping. I think he’d be a marvelous Doctor, with a brightness and levity, and his mania barely masking his pain.
Paterson Joseph would be a GREAT doctor.
I was just watching an episode of A Bit of Fry and Laurie this weekend, which featured Imelda Staunton, and I thought, “Huh, she’d make a great doctor.” I thought she nailed Dolores Umbridge’s gleeful evil/evil glee so well she could probably bring a great deal to the Doctor character.
That said, I’d love to see Hugh Laurie combine Bertie Wooster and Gregory House as the next Doctor. House without the addiction and grumpiness. Sophisticated Bertie.
I mean, I know he’s another white guy. I’m just considering all the possibilities.
Perfect world? Mirren.
Oh my god, how has no one mentioned Diana Rigg yet?
Thanks for answering my question!
One thing I’d like to say about the Doctor’s age is that I think it would be interesting to see the Doctor get younger with each generation. From what I can tell there’s been a general downward trend in terms of the age of the various actors, so it would be interesting to so the Doctor come back as say, a moody teenager, or an adorable moppet. I mean, that would fit if BBC were still going with the Doctor having only a limited number of regenerations, which I don’t think they are anymore, but it would have been interesting to see, if harder to produce with child actors.
Just give it to Tom Hiddleston.
Verne Troyer.
I wonder how long it’ll take before I get yelled at for that suggestion.
BTW, you’ll want to get rid of a spammer in the London’s Burning post asap.
I would love to see Lenny Henry as the Doctor.
I like how Lurker basically laid out the background for Rucka’s Tara Chace from Queen & Country in explaining why a woman couldn’t be James Bond…
So if all Time Lords have 12 regenerations and most of them lead dull, non-interfering lives free of massive physical trauma and/or deadly radiation bursts etc., does that mean most of them are 6,000 years old?
I have no doubt that at some point they will handwave their way around the regeneration limit (assuming they didn’t already with the “infusion of River Song’s regeneration energy” thing)
Part of me echoes Neil Gaiman’s recent comments and would like to see an unknown wow us all again.
That said, if I had to pick someone known…jeez, it would be crazy awesome if it was Hugh Laurie, Paterson Joseph, or Dev Patel. That’s my big three in term of picks.
I’m going to go with Sophia Myles as my pick, personally.
Anyway.
seems to me there should be some limit on what regeneration can do.
Well, sure, it shouldn’t be able to make the Doctor into a billion Doctors, or turn him into a galaxy. But it’s already established that it can change a Time Lord’s gender.
Lenny Henry has already played the Doctor:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=60shMyabeMo
Joanna Lumley has, too, actually (and she made quite a good one, too):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Do-wDPoC6GM
Not to mention Rowan Atkinson taking the first half of the gig and totally running with it, as well as playing off of Jonathan Pryce as the Master…