HOT TAKE: Doctor Who Gets A Facelift

When Jodie Whittaker was first announced as the new Doctor Who, I’ll admit I was skeptical.

It felt like a ratings ploy. An obvious and rather desperate bone thrown towards the #MeToo movement and feminism or something – and about as heartfelt.

It felt, frankly, political.

My objections went something like this (in no particular order):

It’s a ratings stunt. It’s a gesture.
Moffat & Co. have been using women as props, motivators and/or mythical beings – this casting might flatten the Doctor
As a straight woman, you are now robbing me of a swoon-worthy Time Lord. (I know, it’s shallow. Sue me. But then also look at David Tennant and Matt Smith and tell me I’m wrong).
The change isn’t story driven. Why does the Doctor need to be a woman? What stories will that tell? See the above point: are you capable of telling those stories?
I was personally so disappointed by Capaldi’s turn as the Doctor…do they even know how to write Dr. Who anymore?
And lastly: can a woman have the same brio and confidence as a guy?

Now, I’m rather ashamed of myself as a woman who writes roles for women that I wasn’t sure another woman could convey brio and confidence, since of course personality traits transcend gender. And it’s perhaps this last element which is most important to me in any Doctor: the optimistic, fast-talking, slightly cocky, gonzo Time Lord (or Lady) who simply does whatever’s necessary in any given situation. And it’s just this personality trait that Jodie Whittaker has in spades.

The Woman Who Fell To Earth

Warning: Spoilers

So just how does Jodie Whittaker’s Doctor hold up? Good news: really, really well.

Gone is the curmudgeon that we get from Capaldi, Eccleston and others (my least favorite flavor of Doctor Who), and instead we have an incarnation that reminds me of the grounded frothiness of Tennant, Smith, and others. In fact, this regeneration reminded me the most of Tennant’s season opener, with Whittaker’s joyful delight at discovering she’s a woman now – merely taking it in stride when she asks why she’s being called Madam – as well as her attempting dizzily to sort out who she is while also stopping what’s going on.

New showrunner, Chris Chibnall (Broadchurch) makes a wise decision to separate the Time Lord from her TARDIS: giving us a possible season arc to search for the famous blue box, and also separating us from Moffat’s wibbily-wobbily-timey-wimey-ness and need for convoluted plot twists. The score for the show is much more murder mystery, as is the cinematography and the building of the team. This is a Doctor Who with her feet on the ground – although her head stays firmly in the stratosphere.

I’ll admit a certain thrill watching the Thirteenth Doctor forge her own sonic screwdriver – heightened because it was a woman in goggles, wielding blowtorches, etc. – without the need to comment textually on how badass that is. Similarly, I love how no one challenged Whittaker’s doctor as an authority figure because of her outward appearance. She came on with all the authority and charm her male counterparts naturally possessed, and showed us – showed even this old dog – the beauty of just letting women take center stage without the need for remarking on it.

As for the episode itself, it marked a new feel for this season, and I’m totally here for it. The monster of the week was perhaps a little weak – but regeneration episodes are never about the monster of the week; they’re about establishing a new Doctor. And that this episode did in spades. The new companions are interesting and diverse, and I’m sure that to English audiences having so many Northern accents is as surprising as having a female doctor. Yet, rather like The Force Awakens, this first episode manages to assure us that we’re in good hands even as we transition into a new chapter in the Doctor’s life.

Should you watch it? Absolutely. I suspect that these characters hearts are, like the best of all things, bigger on the inside.

Image courtesy of BBC America.