Who next?

I seem to remember posting something similar as a title in 2009/10 when David Tennent announced that he was stepping out of the Tardis.

I was also one of those who having watched Party Animals when the answer was finally revealed knew that Matt Smith knew that the new choice then would be a good addition to the eclectic fusion of the 10 previous TV incarnations of the Doctor.

So the question is who next?

Could it be a Ginger Actor?

After all there have been post regeneration comments about 'still not ginger' in the rebooted franchise. So maybe a ginger actor.

Could it be a woman?

When David regenerated into Will, one of the first reactions to the new hair was 'I'm a woman!' before further checks proved otherwise. So there is a clearly now defined the possibility that the gender of a Time Lord is not predetermined to remain continuous for each regeneration.

Now obviously there is one ginger woman who has an intimate knowledge of the Doctor. So could Alex Kingston be the next Doctor? Is there another twist in the River Pond/Melody Pond saga that we do not know yet. Don't forget there are pages in River's diary that The Doctor has yet to know about. So what if River is actually The Doctor in an future form, who merely took on the name of Amelia Pond's daughter in a way to interact with a predecessor.

Maybe too far fetched even for the Moff.

But I'm going to throw some names out there:

Andrew Lincoln - Egg in  This Life and Simon Casey in Teachers. However as he is currently appearing as Rick Grimes in the US series The Walking Dead which was announced as being renewed for a fourth season at the end of last year, so prying the star away, even at the end of that to start shooting might be too big a hiatus for Doctor Who fans who will be wanting new stories by spring of next year.

Russell Tovey - Of course Russell was last seen in the Doctor Who episode The End of Time when Midshipman Alonso Frame (previously seen on the Starship Titanic) was being chatted up by Captain Jack Sparrow. Of course Doctor Who have used actresses who have appeared elsewhere as companions, both Freeya Agyeman and Jenna-Louise Coleman (?) seemed to have appeared as another character before they became the companion. But it is rather out of character for the same to apply for the Doctor him/herself. Update: Overnight a friend did point out the exception to prove the rule Colin Baker had appeared as Commander Maxil in Arc of Infinity during his predecessor Peter Davison's stint in the Tardis.

Paterson Joseph - was in the frame last time and the Peep Show and William and Mary actor was then widely tipped as being the first non-white Doctor. He has of course already appeared in Doctor Who as Roderick in the Bad Wolf and Parting of the Ways episodes so has the same issue as Tovey above of no Doctor has previously appeared elsewhere in the cannon.

Rupert Grint - well he is ginger. The former Harry Potter Actor may be two years younger than Matt Smith was when he was announced as the eleventh Doctor but he has spent ten of the last twelve years in front of some very big cinema audiences while doing other work.

Tim Minchin - not an obvious choice but the comedian and musician does live here (after been born in Northampton to Australian parents). He's another ginger option and could bring a comic turn to the Doctor once again.

Finally if the Alex Kingston option is too far fetched and incestuous, there is another ginger actress who has been appearing a lot in BBC produced series who might fit the bill - Gillian Anderson. She appeared in the Crimson Petal and the White, Great Expectations and currently The Fall. However, while another series of The Fall has been commissioned she is also signed up for an upcoming US TV action/thriller series Crisis which is due to debut in January 2014. So there would be further contractual and scheduling issues to get the former X-Files actress to become The Doctor.
 

Look Who's Snogging the Boy

Sorry must stop ogling. Oh yeah there is a reason why I have the pictures of two gorgeous men on my blog this evening.

Matt Smith on the left is now easily recognisable to all Doctor Who fans but the young man on the left is Douglas Booth, who you may have seen earlier this week in Worried About the Boy playing the lead Boy George. Well they are currently shooting a drama in Belfast about the gay author Christopher Isherwood (played by Smith) who wrote A Single Man there is to be some tonsil tennis going on apparently. Based on his memoires of the same name the drama Christopher and his Kind tells of his escape from his suffocating mother to pre-war Nazi Germany.

Booth is playing is playing a street cleaner who Isherwood has a brief relationship with, best not remind the real Boy George of this chapter of his life story.

My Tuppence Worth: The Who Debate

Wow what a backlash there has been to the decision to make Matt Smith the next Doctor, as I blogged yesterday the Internet was abuzz before, during and especially after the reveal finally happened. Firstly having jokingly suggested that LibDemBlogs should have been renamed yesterday evening due to the Whovian throughput I'm shocked that so many Lib Dem friends* hadn't seen him in the excellent Party Animals but maybe that is shaded by the fact that some of the rest seem to be equally political drama and sci-fi geeks.


There appear to be three main bones of contention age, race and gender. Oh boy let's address all three.


First on the point of age why is this such an issue. Some have argued that this will cause the Doctor issues with authority figures (my Lib Dem Friends had better now whisper this too loudly near Jo Swinson, Julia Goldsworthy or Jenny Willott that) well if we could find a 900 year old actor they may not also have been totally satisfied either. The fact is in the previous 10 regenerations of the Doctor there have been juvenile and serious portrayals. In my opinion two of the must juvenile takes on it were carried out my Sylvester McCoy and Patrick Troughton, Peter Davidson though youthful in looks was quite a serious vision of the time lord. However, it can be a useful narrative devise look at the way Douglas Adams uses Ford Prefect's distance from his home world to instill a sense of unease in others. So I'm sure can Moffat et al over come the youthful appearance of the 900 year old persona, indeed there will be some quite comedic and possibly dramatic possibilities to come out of this casting.

I'd therefore argue that the age of the actor is an irrelevance if that actor can act. Yeah sure for the first time since I sat down to watch Jon Pertwee this will be the first time that the actor playing the Doctor is younger than me. So what? I'll be in my forties before he appears on the screen.

We move on to race. Like many when I heard rumours of Paterson Joseph or Kulvinder Ghir taking the role I was kind of excited about the possibility, especially of the former. Of course when Freema Agyeman became the first companion of an ethnic minority Doctor who was taking a well overdue step. The rules of sci-fi and indeed the regeneration of a Time Lord would not (as hinted before by the production team) inhibit a colourful outcome of a regeneration scene.

Sure it would have been good for racial equality reasons but rather than making the casting decision solely on those grounds it has to be made on acting ability. Which while these two fine gentleman are not lacking in as said last night there was a stand out performance that the team kept coming back to.

The final option and complaint related to gender. Sure in the worlds of Sci-fi there should be no inhibition of the Doctor changing gender. Although from history, if memory serves, male time lords have always regenerated as males and the females as females of those we have seen in more than one regeneration. Of course all that may well be able to throw itself out the window if we are down to the last time lord, something that was left a little ambiguous in the final scene of The Last of the Time Lords, all things may well be possible, including changing to the correct gender for reproduction purposes to maintain the race. So could some like say Jennifer Saunders or Billie Piper have taken over the role? Possibly, and it is something that cannot be ruled out for the future.

Seeing as both Billie Piper and Paterson Joseph have already appeared in other persona's in the series I'm surprised that nobody has pointed this out as a reason for not selection them as the next Doctor. Sure Freema came back as a companion and different character from her first appearance, but that was explained away in the storyline by genetics. Would it be right for the Doctor to regenerate assuming the appearance of someone from his past. He does after all appear to have no idea what appearance he will regenerate into. Look at the early look into the mirror, feeling or face or teeth of each new version of our favourite time lord. So maybe there is some part of the genetics that when this process goes ahead inhibits imitation of another being already encountered for although it will not result in the actuality of meeting oneself when traveling through the dimensions of time and space you may well re-encounter such a person and it may well cause fatal shock.

In the end the thing that has to be first and foremost in the production teams mind is can our chosen one act, can he portray the Doctor and will he hold the audience and give our writers and directors something to work with. As it emerged on Doctor Who Confidential last night Matt Smith was one of if not the first auditionee for the part, comment like 'in the first hour of the audition process'. Being first is possibly one of the hardest positions to fill as as more and more get seen you may easily be forgotten if great performances follow. Yet Matt had stuck in the production team's mind through all the others.

So true Doctor Who fans must ask themselves how can that me. Steven Moffat and the others are like Russell T. Davies before are well versed in the lore of the Doctor. These people seemed to have been so taken by Matt Smith's audition that they kept thinking back to it no matter who else they viewed. Surely that is enough for any of us to know that after he spends 6 months working out his particular take on the role that there will be something really special to look forward to once the face of David Tennent morphs into that of Matt Smith.

*Pity I can't link to all the others' Facebook up dates

The Water 'WHO'-ler Moment

Well I'm sure most people were merely content watching the announcement of Matt Smith's taking over the controls of and keys to the Tardis on Doctor Who Confidential but I know, cause I was one of them, that many of use were Tweeting, posting on forums, blogging, hitting websites and looking it up all at the same time.

The fact that my reveal of the name Tweet posted as soon as Matt Smith's face appeared on the screen is actually ahead of the BBC Breaking News Tweet was something I quite enjoyed. The fact that like a good Agatha Christie novel I'd already worked out the clues before hand and live blogged the final piece as looking certain before that even, even more. And now Twitter has gone down being over capacity. Yeah all us geeks are Tweeting to each other about the event and have brought down one site. Next.

Doctor Who where are you?

No must get away from the vision of Scrappy Doo as the second canine companion. I bite my thumb at you Wesley Crusher.

Watching it solely on TV you wouldn't have picked up the full excitement. This was a truly 21st Century water cooler moment. The thing is the watercooler was accessible through you own laptop. Every one from across the country and with Wil Wheaton a established Hollywooder we can say around the world was discussing it as it was being revealed without having to be sat on (not behind) the same sofa.

Matt Smith it is to be that is the answer. With all this hype on the net Steven Moffat and the rest of the team are going to have to deliver a superb 5th (or do these specials make it 6th) series of the revived series. However, having seen their work up to know I'm pretty sure we won't be let down.

Although Wil did raise and interesting question. Who will be the next companion(s)? I add in the plural as maybe it is time to return to having more than one companion again. I know the youngsters aren't used to it but having had Rose, Martha, Donna and Sarah Jane (plus the rest)all coming to the the Doctor's aid at the end of the last season, maybe we've weaned them in to the possibility.

Update: Whoops in all my excitemet I got Northern Irish news presenter Stephen Nolan mixed up with the sucessor of Mr RTD Steven Moffat