What The New Doctor Who Cast Tells Us About Season 11

Written by Mark Halyday & Cristian Stanic

WHAT TO EXPECT

Recently, the BBC announced the all-new cast for Doctor Who in 2018, and it’s been met with mixed reception. The politics behind the casting have already been discussed at length, but if there’s one thing to take away from the BBC’s decision, it’s that season 11 may signal a return to form for the show.

We’ve had inklings of a modern TARDIS ‘crew’ before, with Rose, Mickey, and Jack, and more recently with Amy, Rory, and River, however, the last time we saw a TARDIS team proper was way back in the classic era of Doctor Who, in Peter Davison’s run as the Fifth Doctor. The OG Jovan Jackson Doctor had Susan, Barbara, and Chesterton… Chatterton? Number Three got around with big UNIT posse at his back, including his roadster Bessie, and his hovercar. Ten points if you remember the Whomobile. Doctors Four and Five had their revolving door team of companions, with Nyssa, Adric, Turlough, their shapeshifting robot Kamelion, and best companion ever Tegan Jovanka.

Perhaps Chris Chibnall’s choice to fill up the TARDIS once more with an eclectic gang of misfits is to placate the fans who the fans who say the show has drifted too far from its roots? We won’t know until the “autumn of 2018,” as current showrunner Stephen Moffat says. The current Doctor-companion dynamic on the show, a very personal, one-on-one affair, has brought us some great stories, but we think most can agree it’s gone a bit stale. Nardole’s inclusion in season 10 was a refreshing change from the formula, but there’s only so much Matt Lucas can’t do everything.

One thing we personally would love to see is more aliens, or people from other times in the TARDIS. Almost every companion for the past decade has been a regular human from the present, with one or two exceptions. We need more people from the distant past and future, and we need more aliens. More importantly, we need aliens that look like aliens too. With a team of makeup and special effects artists as talented as the ones on Doctor Who, it’s a shame we aren’t seeing more crazy creatures or space-age robots trading banter with the Doctor. Also, bring back Bessie already.

WHERE DID THEY COME FROM?

Jodie Whittacker – The Doctor

The Thirteenth incarnation of our beloved Gallifreyan got her first acting credit in 2006 on a television show that did theatre, called The Afternoon Play, and ironically the soap opera Doctors. The same year she was nominated for British Independent Film Award for Most Promising Newcomer for limited release Venus opposite Peter O’Toole, and has worked consistently ever since.

She appeared in St Trinian’s and its sequel, as well cult flick Attack The Block with Star Wars‘ John Boyega, DC’s Legends of Tomorrow’s Franz Drameh and Shaun Of The Dead‘s Nick Frost.

In 2011, she appeared in the Black Mirror season one finale, which has since been optioned by Robert Downey Jr to become a feature film. All this led to Broadchurch: a superb crime trilogy set in the tiny town of Dorset, starring ex-Doctor David Tennant and ex-companion Arthur Darvill. In 2016 it was announced Broadchurch showrunner Chris Chibnall would replace Doctor Who‘s show runner Steven Moffat, and Chibnall encouraged his friend Whittacker to audition. As they say, the rest is history.

Bradley Walsh – Graham

Australians might be scratching their head at the sight of game show host Bradley Walsh being handed the keys to the TARDIS, but he does have some chops to back it up.

After a professional football career he began to host the national lottery, then briefly Wheel Of Fortune and eventually the internationally syndicated The Chase. He’s a bit of a Grant Denyer type in the UK, the kind of go-to host if the network is throwing any kind of special.

So it might shock Whovians to know that Bradley Walsh has already been indoctrinated into the fandom on spinoff The Sarah Jane Adventures as the villainous Pied Piper. Will this affect his tenure on the show? Unlikely, as everybody from Twelfth Doctor Peter Capaldi to Sixth Doctor Colin Baker to companions Karen Gillian and Freema Agyeman have all appeared in one form or another.

Elsewhere, Walsh has a few years of decades-old soap Coronation Street and eight seasons of Law And Order: UK, as well as dozens of Disney theatre productions. A varied and odd list for the new companion.

Tosin Cole – Ryan

Tosin Cole spent his early days in teenage dramas such as BBC’s The Cut and the Eastenders web spinoff Eastenders: E20. In 2011, he joined another long-running soap Hollyoaks and participated in their annual adult-themed Hollyoaks Later.

Earlier this year, Cole starred in Netflix original film Burning Sands, debuting at the Sundance International Film Festival and co-starring Luke Cage‘s Alfre Woodard. He also featured in a minor role as a X-wing pilot Lt Bastian in Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

MANDIP GILL – YASMIN

While Tosin only stayed on Hollyoaks for a year, Mandip Gill occupied a spot in the fictional town for a little over three years before eventually getting killed by the Glove Handed Killer! Since then, she swung by Doctors – something to chat to Jodie Whittacker about and the precursor to ER and Grey’s Anatomy, Casualty. She also did an episode of the oddball Cuckoo, starring Brooklyn Nine-Nine‘s Andy Samberg and Twilight‘s Taylor Lautner.

As well as Doctor Who, 2018 will see Gill star in drama The Flood – a film about a ‘hardened man’ that decides whether an asylum seeker is telling the truth or not.

What do you think? Are you going to seek out some earlier work or view their stay on the TARDIS with fresh eyes?

Pictures via BBC