doctor who – The Orbital

Doctor Who’s regenerating – in more ways than one…

21Jul

By Beth CarrNo Comments

Doctor Who’s regenerating – in more ways than one…

The casting of a new Doctor is actually a reflection of the intended audience, writes Beth Carr. Months of speculation and waiting ended at the weekend: not only did Federer win Wimbledon in straight sets but the identity of the next Doctor in Doctor Who was revealed. A hood was dropped and the secret of Jodie Whittaker’s casting was out. You might know her from Broadchurch, working with Doctor Who’s new showrunner Chris Chibnall, or from playing ditsy Beverley in St Trinian’s. She’s also no stranger to sci-fi after starring in 2011 film Attack the Block. Despite this success under her belt, Whittaker’s casting has caused a tsunami of response from both fans and non-fans of the show. The reason? She is a woman taking over a role traditionally and exclusively played by men, a Time Lor...

Is audio killing the TV star?

Beth Carr discusses the new Doctor Who spin off content that is for your ears only. ‘Torchwood Series 5 confirmed!’, ‘Billie Piper returns to Doctor Who’ and ‘Fourth Doctor gains new companion’ are just some of the headlines that have graced the websites of TV news providers CultBox and Digital Spy over the last month. Add in a new series on BBC One full of twists and turns and it is enough to make any Doctor Who fan faint with joy - or is it? The headlines, above all, relate to new audio adventures released by Big Finish, a production company which began its life creating audio dramas based on Doctor Who novels while the show was off air in the 1990s. And it seems that, with the rich television content that fans are enjoying now, audio has vastly fallen in favour. Take the anno...

Doctor Who?

Ruby Rogers discusses the decline of BBC’s ‘Doctor Who’ and ‘Sherlock’ “Doctor who?” – the famous question, that has been asked by almost every character on the BBC’s favourite family sci-fi drama, has suddenly gained new meaning for me. I, like many other people my age, remember vividly when the Doctor returned to our screens in 2005, in the form of the leather-jacket-wearing, more-intense-less-eccentric Christopher Eccleston. My brother and I watched it every week without fail for years, and, when it wasn’t on, we’d spend countless hours re-watching previous episodes, playing with my brother’s TARDIS set or running around the garden pretending to be aliens. Then, the question “Doctor who?” was nothing more than a plot device, a question to which the answer was simply ‘the (italics) ...