Gender Bending Doctor

A new doctor has arrived!

This Sunday, the world got to know the latest in a succession of Doctors, to be more precise in a succession of "the" doctors.

Well, enough with the pronoun game (doctor game in this case), Jodie Whittaker will take the mantle of the Doctor.

For those not familiar with the series, first of all, what are you doing, go binge watch it right now! But the Doctor from Doctor Who changes quite a bit. In a similar fashion to what happens to James Bond, you can watch GoldenEye followed by Casino Royal and understand that both Brosnan and Craig are in fact playing the same guy.

Well in the Doctor Who Universe, this is a bit different. You see, there is a plot explanation for the change of actor. The Doctor, albeit looking human, is in fact from the alien planet of Gallifrey, where the Gallifrenians(?) are human like — well humans are the ones that look like Gallifrenians. As in the lore, the race is far older than ours and Gallifrenians don't die conventionally. You see, they have a sort of immortality where upon their death, they transform (there is more to it but that is not the point of this post), and upon that transformation, they maintain their memories while changing personality and physical appearance.

From a lore point of view, there is a lot more to be explained alongside a tonne of rules that off course exist, from a "real" point of view this is an excellent way of keeping the series running and having the opportunity to change lead actor.

For example, when the series began back in 1963, the Doctor was portrayed by William Hartnell, that was already in his fifties. Without this plot explanation, the series would not be able to survive until 2017. Poor William Hartnell would be around 109 years old (well not to mention that he died in 1975 leaving BBC stranded with casting a corpse for a few years).

With every element of change there comes people that don't agree, and this transformation, this passing of the mantle, when a Doctor regenerates bringing in a new actor, has always created a certain climate of turmoil within the community, to the point there is something called "The Regeneration Cycle," a five step circle that explains the process of liking/disliking a new Doctor:

• Step One: Current Doctor announces that he/she is leaving, "No way he/she can be replaced!"
• Step Two: Regeneration
• Step Three: New Doctor appears, "Humpft I hate this guy/gal!"
• Step Four: First episode/first half-season takes place, "I still prefer the previous one but *insert name here* is not half bad."
• Step Five: BEST.DOCTOR.EVER

Being this a circular cycle, right after step five you eventually will stumble back to step one. And we are in the first days of step one.

But this is where things get a bit complicated. You see, so far we have had 13 different male Doctors (well 12 1/2, because John Hurt's doctor is a "special doctor but that is not here nor there") and no female Doctors. So Jodie's Doctor was viewed and received a bit differently than her successors. As television and media become bigger and better stages for representation, there is a bigger drive to bring unlikely actors to play certain roles.

Okay, this is the part of the text where things potentially get dicey. There has been a trend in media to bring more and more varied actors to both the big and small screen. Take, for example, the two taken from this post, Dr. Who and James Bond. So far both franchises have their lead portrayed by a white man. And if you look at today's top series and blockbuster movies, there has been an effort to deviate from that paradigm. More and more roles are being attributed to minorities. What I really want to say is that more and more roles are being given to non-white males. So far, so good, and to be honest in most cases, I have absolutely no problem with it, if the story/circumstances, calls for it. But in many cases, the result is more along the lines of "we didn't want to cast a white man to have an [insert minority/unconventional choice] because we want to be edgy and different."

When it comes to Doctor Who...I ask, Is there any reason for the character to be a man? Not really, and to be honest, I believe that when the Doctor's antagonist, The Master, regenerated into Missy, it served as a test drive to study the fan base reaction to a "transgender" Time Lord. So I'm not here to judge Jodie Whittaker's Doctor, but rather some things that I hope that they decide not to include. Don't make it too girly for girly sake, don't give a complete personality shift, don't make the other characters objectify the Doctor, and don't make any "just because" changes.

But in the end, I just want what every other Whovian wants, a good series. And I'm sure that Jodie Whittaker will have to pay her dues as a doctor when she faces the "regeneration" cycle. I kinda hated Peter Capaldi's Doctor when he first arrived in 2014, but if we are being honest he was one of my favorite Doctors, even with the weird iffy episodes he has been in. The moon being a giant egg and what not. Oh well!

All of this to welcome Jodie to an impressive roster of actors. From Hartnell, Troughton, Pertwee, the iconic scarfed Tom Baker, to more recent names like the Internet's sweethearts Tennent and Smith and of course, the aforementioned John Hurt.

The Infamous Regeneration Cycle