I think having a fat Doctor would open the show up to too many jokes along the following lines:
“It’s bigger on the inside. And it’s a damn good thing, too.”
I really doubt that it is on the list of must haves for a casting director that the Doctor is sexy. I’d go further and say that in the case of Matt Smith, it was as if antisexy was one of the check boxes. 
Don’t get me wrong, I think he’s absolutely great as The Doctor, but sexy? Really?
I don’t watch Eastenders, so I don’t know him, I’m afraid. I see the Tennant-esque about him, though, even from those photos.
I agree. There used to be an Indian reporter on CNN that made me absolutely weak in the knees.
IMHO he’s no Sendhil Ramamurthy, but ain’t no way they’d give the role to a guy who grew up in San Antonio.
And what makes you think any of us know what she’s going on about?
I wouldn’t like a female doctor but I would love a spin-off show of the Doctors’ daughter. They could make it more kid friendly and light-hearted but still all sci-fi and cool.
Really? Damn. I guess I’m not a person then.
Here’s just the first four or so that I can think of, not counting Indians (Sendhil Ramamurthy isn’t sexy enough for you? Damn you’re picky! ) and I’m in the middle of white-bread southeast USA and don’t even watch TV.
Sexy? Fuck (and I use that adjective advisedly) Yes.
Lasciel - I would add Tim Kang, who plays Agent Cho on the TV show 'The Mentalist", to your list. So many hot Asian men, so little time. But to be a Timelord, he’ll have to have a British accent.
Yowza. He’s very nice.
As for accents, if Tennant can hide that burr of his for as long and as well as he did, I have faith that an American or Asian import with a vocal coach can do likewise.
Mmmm. I don’t think so. While the actor playing the Doctor doesn’t have to be English, he does need to be UKian. The show is so very strongly identified with the UK that it would be considered a slap in the face to have an American in the “title” role.
Hell, they had references to it in the London Olympics. Yeah, it’s very much part of the national identity.
Well, you can’t ask me darling, I’ve been with a man of Chinese descent for sixteen years and love Asian men. Indian men, there’s a lot of baggage, since I am Indian, but that doesn’t mean some aren’t gorgeous.
I was talking more things I’ve read in polls and such about the average American viewer.
I love all of the Asian men you list. But, yes, I don’t think Sendhil is that hot. Familiarity breeds contempt and all that, I guess.
The first part was a reference to Toni Morrison’s quip about Bill Clinton being the first black president - Jon Pertwee’s Doctor dressed up in a green velvet jacket, he drove around in a fancy car and had Jo Grant hanging from his arm. And he did kung-fu. He was the living embodiment of the blaxploitation stereotype. Also, he did scuba diving, just like a black person. This was in radical contrast to the other doctors, who were either sickeningly white - Peter Davison was the whitest man on television at the time - or in the case of Tom Baker they had something of the night about them if you know what I mean hint hint.
The second part was a reference to the old British practice of referring to female doctors as “lady doctors” - although it hasn’t died out, e.g. this news story from Pakistan circa July this year, which has the intriguing headline “Lady doctor commits suicide; 4 others dead”.
The question of Actors of Other Ethnic Origins (AOEs, I’ll call them) is an interesting one and not new. The government and by extension the BBC generally doesn’t feel a need to care about them. Trash Fiction has a good precis of the issue here, with reference to The Chinese Detective, a British television cop show from 1981:
“It’s long been a cliché that ethnic minorities are not properly represented in British TV drama, and the excluded groups that are normally cited tend to be Caribbean and African people and those from the Indian sub-continent. Which is true, but the list could also be extended to include Slavs and other Eastern Europeans, Turks, Arabs, Persians and Chinese. The latter is a particularly odd omission. Chinese people have been part of British society for many generations - witness the ‘yellow peril’ potboilers of the 1920s - but have seldom been represented in the broadcast media. The chief exceptions are the chef Ken Hom and David Yip, the actor who portrayed The Chinese Detective.”
Nothing much has changed since that was written, in the early 200s, or indeed since 1981. All the aforementioned groups are basically invisible on British TV, or trotted out every so often as a special effect; there’s always been a sense that it’s okay to belittle and abuse them, whereas black people are special and shouldn’t be touched.
You have to bear in mind that the BBC is predominantly white, and that its commitment to racial equality is a construction; as far as the BBC is concerned “Eastern Europeans, Turks, Arabs, Persians and Chinese” are basically human beings from different places, which is boring, whereas black people are aliens from space. Which is ironic, because Doctor Who is indeed an alien from space.
I have long assumed that the Doctor is in fact immortal, and that literally every living creature in the universe is one of his incarnations, at a different point in his timeline. As such he will eventually be played by every actor on Earth including giraffes and bumble bees.
Oooh, Ramamurthy is definitely a looker, in a Rick Fox way.
Would be interested in seeing (a character played by) him and Captain Jack get into a “No, I’m the handsomest guy in the room” contest…that would be hilarious.
But he’s way too good-looking to be the Doctor.
Um, I’m afraid I really don’t know what you mean.
That’s the problem with posting on these boards in the colonies, you know. You end up having to explain your explanations.
At the risk of actually encouraging you any further, can I just say that this might be one of the single most peculiar things I’ve seen written down in many a long year.
I’m afraid it would really rather change the character of the show if the Doctor took up orchids in the attic and refused to leave the TARDIS. (Until someone pointed out to him that the TARDIS is, in many ways, rather like a car, or, heaven forfend, an aeroplane… ;))
No matter what ethnicity or whatever, the Doctor should hail from the British section of time and space.
Although if a Johnny Depp movie is made I’d probably grudgingly accept it. But I’d insist on doing at least a little grudging about it.
See, that’s the beauty of Fat Doctor, he would switch things up and use his brain instead of his feet.
It’s like the kung fu master, where his opponents exhaust themselves in furious attacks while he fends them off with the slightest of moves, making them look like amateurs.
Stop doing things the hard way, make everyone else do the running.
I like it. Rory Goodwin will be his personal secretary and do most of his legwork, and hel’ll occasionally hire Harry Panzer, Brigadier Lethridge-Durkin and Mickey Cather as operatives.
Rick Fox looks like he was built out of a kit.
I think Oded Fehr would be a good Time Lord, though not the Doctor. You could call him the Nomad.
Nah, he looks way too polished to be the doctor, who needs to have a touch of the batshit about him.