Jodie Whittaker confirmed as new Doctor Who

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Fantastic news, I think.

There'd been plenty of rumours that the 13th Doctor was going to be female and it's now confirmed with the appointment of Jodie Whittaker. She's a great choice IMO having starred in Broadchurch and Attack the Block in the past.

It'll be really intriguing to see the new direction they take now. I hope Bill Potts is staying as well - the two of them together are going to be a kick-ass female pair!

Maybe they can become a couple if Bill is Single. Still have a season and a half to finish. I would love for the fourteenth Doctor to be Female or Transgender, at least bisexual and a minority.

I'm so excited for the new season! I think she will be amazing

I am particularly excited about this as an autistic woman. One reason I gravitated towards the character of the Doctor, especially the Twelfth, was that he reminded me more of myself than any autistic portrayals of women I've seen in media. The prospect of a female incarnation who can have her own eccentricities and struggle to relate to others is thus a reason for hope for me -- to see a female character who may not be autistic but dovetails with my experiences, even if mine don't involve Daleks or what have you.

I agree with you 100%. I wonder if this is part of why I love the show so much too. I first saw Jodie on Broadchurch and her acting is incredible, I think she will be a really interesting doctor and I really hope to see what you described

I just don't see the big deal its 2017, seems odd that people are shocked by a woman having a lead role in a science fiction series...not like its a first.

It's because she's a woman. Women need to be naked, pregnant, and in the kitchen.

Not all three things at the same time, I should hope!

But in all seriousness, I think it's a great move. I do think it's a powerful statement to make, having an iconic character of British sci-fi who has been portrayed by men for decades, and cast an actress in the role. The whole point of regeneration is that the Doctor should come back in a wholly different form, so there's no reason why they couldn't manifest as female. I would think a Timelord has very different concepts on gender, sex, and ethnicity from humans to begin with.

I really, really don't care. If anything it feels patronizing.

I put this in the news thread:

"I don't have an issue with making the Doctor female, it's long been established it could happen, and then along came Missy (with no fanfare iirc, it was a surprise sprung on us) and I thought that was really well done. In some ways, Missy was able to be more impactful than The Master because it's so jarring to see a woman be so gleefully, sadistically evil, we're desensitised to seeing really evil male villains. She was just as evil and just as frightening as The Master and retained his personality. She played that role very well.

But I am very concerned about why they're doing it now. Virtue signalling from the rooftops that the Doctor is female. Look at that article. The actor says it's great because she's a feminist. The BBC person is going on about the BBC's horrible diversity drive in a BBC article. A hell of a lot of strong cringe-inducing regressive virtue signalling BS was in the first half or so of this season, and while it dropped off toward the end, the episodes were still substandard compared to previous seasons.

If this was done for creative reasons, we would be learning of it in the episode it happened, then all the talk afterwards would be about how the time was right, how they had great ideas about how this would break new ground, new creative possibilities, and how it was going to shape and impact the Doctor's personality going forward, that would make me excited and make me think it was being done for all the right reasons. This makes me think they're using the platform of Doctor Who as a vehicle, as SJWs try to with everything they try to co-opt, comics, video games, etc. To push an agenda. Doctor Who is visibly being corrupted."

Speaking of the BBC's diversity drive, they're now being hoisted on their own petard because they left their throat exposed to the SJWs and "feminists" by giving credence to the gender pay gap fallacy.

Please tell me you're not saying that unironically.

If you care about the truth, you need to do some research into the reasons Who fans have for being concerned about this and not be fooled by this simplistic, easy mischaracterisation the agenda pushers are peddling. The Doctor's companions have nearly always been female, as much of a main character as The Doctor himself, and not there to be naked or pregnant or making food. Who fans are not anti-woman. No one calls for the companions to be sexualised or replaced with males.

As Godfrey Elfwick has pointed out, I await with interest to see when Wonder Woman is to be played by a man.

Tsk. Next thing you know they'll be letting a woman record the theme tune.

If you have a problem with Doctor Who being a woman I feel sad for you. I am sickened by the people who are outraged that a fictional character is a woman. Grow up and shut up.

I'm not so sure this is entirely the case, and I don't agree that Who is corrupted. Perhaps the BBC article gives that impression, but journalistic articles are always going to try and tease these zeitgeists and buzzwords for clicks. In fact, I think a female doctor who has been a long time coming and is way overdue. I was surprised they didn't do it last time. Besides, the new actor is never revealed in the episode of regeneration, there's always an announcement of this kind, and the reveal itself was tastefully, artistically done.

The reverse of this thinking is that Doctor Who has always been corrupted by a narrowness of vision which pushed womanhood out of the role. A role of a regenerating alien who should not be beholden to any one gender. Or race, or age, or even species (!) for that matter. The wonderful heart of the Doctor is their innate ability to become practically anything within the sphere of humanoid figuration so this move is indeed long overdue having been stifled by a male-dominated culture thus far. And this is a powerful moment to move the Doctor to female, given the backlash against feminism and SJWs (although I have so far failed to see how being a warrior for social justice is fundamentally a bad thing, since social justice is fundamentally a good thing...).

If I was going to be cynical for a moment, I might say that the BBC have picked now to change things up because ratings have slipped with Capaldi and this is pretty much guaranteed to rocket them back up again. But, whatever the reasoning for the decision, this can only ever be an absolutely excellent thing.

Aside from everything else, I thought this last season gone was really very good with only a couple of duds. Capaldi had some cracking speeches and Bill Potts has proved an exciting companion so far. Maybe could've done without Nardole, but he grew on me as the season went on, especially in the last ep

Well, we shall see when Whittaker gets her first outing. I fully expect a few quips about it and then she'll get cracking and we'll all love her. Or at least, we can hope...

You talk as if there is someone in this thread who has a problem with The Doctor becoming female. There isn't.