13th Doctor announcement, part 1:
13th Doctor announcement, part 2:
One fan’s reaction to watching part 2:
My daughter watching the #DoctorWho announcement. #doctor13 #DoctorWho13 pic.twitter.com/eX0w1rW4E9
— 🏳️🌈Jenny Trout (@Jenny_Trout) July 16, 2017
Is this anti-canon?
It’s canon for the revived show. That regeneration can switch genders was strongly implied in “The End of Time” (2010), and was confirmed in such episodes as “The Doctor’s Wife” (2011 — The Corsair), “Dark Water” (2014 — The Master/Missy), and “Hell Bent” (2015 — The General). The most recent season finale focused on the male and female versions of The Master meeting each other. And of course the Doctor’s own gender switch was first dramatised in 1999’s “Curse of Fatal Death” by later-to-be-showrunner Steven Moffat, a comedy sketch that ended up being in many respects a good predictor of where the revived show would be going.
But is this a wise move given that the ratings are slipping?
Well, surely a lot of new viewers will tune in at least for the first few episodes, just out of curiosity. So Whittaker has to shoulder a big burden of keeping them there. I’ve never seen her in anything, so I can’t predict how she’ll do. (“We can only hope.”)
And a lot of hetero male viewers may tune in just because she’s young and attractive, just as many hetero female viewers tuned in because Tennant and Smith were young and attractive (they’re some of the folks who stopped watching recently because Capaldi was too old to excite their libido).
Of course there are plenty of fans who say they’ll never watch again, out of protest. But I think most of them are lying. The fans obsessive enough to complain so vociferously about this will mostly keep watching so as to grouse. And a lot of them represent an older, dying demographic anyway.
Das Alles von Heute – das fällt, das verfällt: wer wollte es halten! Aber ich – ich will es noch stossen!