Yes, I agree with this. There would be national outcry is they cast an American. It would be like casting an American Bond. The fuss was bad enough when they cast Zellweger as Bridget Jones, and Bridget Jones is nowhere near a British Institution like Doctor Who.
Great, now I have Dame Judi Bench in my head saying things like “I used to have so much mercy.”, “I’m so, so sorry.”, and “Rule number one: the Doctor lies.”
My brain hurts.
If Judi Dench ever became the Doctor, she would need some heavyweight opposition. Isabella Rossolini as the Master perhaps?
Isn’t there some evil lady he has to regenerate into in the future? If so, having a non-evil lady would be weird.
The thing is, having him be a Time Lady changes the dynamic too much. Having him be another race really doesn’t, as long as they don’t take it into diversity PSA mode.
But, even then, it kinda messes with the British-ness of the show. People just don’t think of black people when they think of British people. This isn’t an issue in the UK, but the show is now an international one. A black person with a British accent is thought to be from Africa or something.
Cat fight, rrow!
If you want to really shake things up, let an evil incarnation happen. A full season of good guys and bad guys teaming up in various ways to try to actually kill MadDoctor would be interesting.
That would be brilliant.*
*I’m practicing my British.
Nah, there’ve been loads* of black folks on NuWho. Martha Jones, of course, and Mickey Smith are the most important, but there have also been prominent black characters in single/double episodes: that wierd guy and his daughter from the last Tennant episodes, the girl with the drawing ability and her mum, Martha’s whole family, the first girl to get Cyberconverted at Canary Wharf, Donna’s fiance, Ianto’s girlfriend over at Torchwood, the captain from the ship in Impossible Planet, etc etc etc. The Whoniverse (at least since the reboot) is definitely not nearly as pale as, say Buffy or Firefly.
*also practicing my British.
There was a low-budget sort of like fan-fic Dr. Who episode where the doctor was played by Barbara Benedetti, around 1984. It ran from time to time (:eek:) on the public access channel around here.
But the problem with using Dame Judy Dench should be quite obvious: with every regeneration, the doctor’s appearance becomes somewhat more youthful. Sylvester McCoy, Colin Baker and Paul McGann kind of muddle the pro(re-)gression, but it is still fairly linear. If there is a next doctor, he (or she) will have to look younger than Matt Smith. Even Emma Watson might be too old to pull it off at this point.
Surprised no one got to this already, but no, there is no evil woman he is supposed to regenerate into, AFAIK. I think you might have confused two separate things from the Whoniverse. The Sixth Doctor had a season-long story arc called “Trial of a Time Lord” in which the Doctor was put on trial in Gallifrey and was prosecuted by someone called the Valeyard. The Valeyard turned out to be evil and was revealed to be “an amalgamation of the darker sides of your [the Doctor’s] nature, somewhere between your twelfth and final reincarnations,” whatever that means. (It’s implied that the Valeyard could have been created by either the Master or the Time Lords rather than being a regeneration of the Doctor. There was also a timey-wimey projection of the Doctor who was somehow “between” the Fourth and Fifth Doctors in the episode Logopolis, but that was never explained.) In any event, the character I just described was definitely male.
There was also a classic spoof of Doctor Who done as a BBC special for their annual Comic Relief fundraiser in which the Doctor regenerated several times, finally into Joanna Lumley, who is definitely a woman. She wasn’t necessarily evil, but she was less interested in her beautiful young female companion. It was called “Doctor Who and the Curse of the Fatal Death,” and it’s worth watching on YouTube. It was produced by Russell T. Davies, the first showrunner for nuWho, and was shown on the BBC, so it has semi-official status, but it’s still just a spoof.
I think it’s clear they can’t keep making the Doctor younger, but that’s not a problem. First of all, it’s not necessarily a rule (and if it is, hasn’t been kept to strictly anyway). Second of all, it would be easy to fix with a single line of dialog such as “Hmm…older than expected, but that does happen. At least I have a head, and . . . ooh, those are new!”
Well, I think Matt Smith is number eleven, right? Has the doctor himself not said he has twelve regenerations? It would not be too much of a stretch to have some kind of incredible event that refreshes the doctor’s cycle, starting him out at old again. Perhaps some odd encounter with the Key again.
Didn’t they do that already with the Doctor rebooting the universe after the Pandorica?
Twelve regenerations, which presumably would mean 13 incarnations. But it was never clear if that was a natural thing or an imposition of the Time Lords, who were often shown to have the ability to increase, reduce, or even transfer to others the set of regenerations a Time Lord had left. Plus, there’s Rule #1.
In “Mark of the Assassin,” the Tom Baker companion-less one, it is stated the The Master had used up his twelve Regenerations. However, in “The Five Doctors,” the Time Lord council offers The Master more regenerations.
So there is a limit, except when there isn’t.
Look! Monsters! Run!
The Master also stole a set IIRC (go easy on me - it’s been a long-ass time since I watched the classic stuff).
So, already established between classic and NuWho we have:
12 Regens (leaving 13 incarnations) is the “basic set” but we don’t know if that’s an imposed or physical limitation.
That limitation, however it works, can be overcome by (at least some) Time Lords (in at least some situations).
Extra regenerations can be gifted or imparted.
Extra regenerations can be stolen.
Time and the Universe itself were supposedly “reset” during the Pandorica, so that might make Smith into Doctor 11/2 instead.
Finally, Rule 1.
Also, I truly hope that they switch away from the trend of making the Doctor younger each regen. I live in fear that they’re going to end up with the British version of Justin Beiber and I’m going to have to jump off a balcony rather than live in this horrific world.
Yeah, but they’re not the main character. I actually thought about Martha, but I realized that she worked because, even though she was as main character, she wasn’t that important. She was written as “the companion who wasn’t Rose,” really. As soon as she became more than that, she got booted off.
But even if she had been a strong companion in her own right, I’m not sure it’s the same thing. The Doctor is the icon, not the companion. I’m just not sure making the icon black works without implying a different ethnicity for the show. Then again, perhaps the large number of black people we now see on British TV has made people less likely to jump to conclusions. Or maybe initial conclusions just don’t matter as much as I think. Or maybe the Doctor is popular enough that this is no longer an issue. I’m not married to the idea that it would necessarily be a problem.
But throw in the tendency of shows with black main characters being about the blackness of the same character, and you are definitely dealing with a new dynamic. Do we want that? I sure don’t in the female case. And that one special is actually part of the reason I feel that way–it changed the relationship with the Master into a sort of love triangle with the companion.
I think someone needs to do a youtube mash-up where Philip Seymour Hoffman is the Doctor Who) Master
River Song, who wasn’t a Time Lord but as a child of the TARDIS had certain Gallifreyan abilities, “used up her remaining regenerations” when she saved the Doctor in Let’s Kill Hitler.
Which, incidentally, is what I think was going on when the Doctor healed River’s wrist. He couldn’t do that with just anybody, they now share a (limited) regenerative bond.
I was just thinking about him too.
Just think of the educational possibility then.