‘Everyone’s Doctor… was a white man’: ‘Doctor Who’s Jodie Whittaker opens up about backlash to the first female Doctor
When Jodie Whittaker was announced as the first ever female Doctor, the reaction was unfortunately mixed. For every person who was delighted to see the long-running sci-fi show diversify, there was another bitterly moaning about “political correctness.” The sexist jokes directed towards Whittaker were ridiculous.
When Whittaker’s first Doctor Who season came out in 2018, the actress was under a lot of pressure to be perfect. She had to represent not just herself but her entire gender. It wasn’t fair, and to this day, she knows it. “Everyone’s Doctor until then was a white man,” she said to The Times in a recent interview. “They are very different actors, but they all fit a specific mold — and I didn’t.”
She then went on to say “If Peter [Capaldi] hadn’t been good as the Doctor, it would only have reflected on him, whereas I felt that if I wasn’t very good at this, I’ve f***ed it for other actors. I think it’s completely unacceptable if that was the case, but that’s how I felt.”
Unfortunately, the people who were against Whittaker’s Doctor only got louder and louder as the show went along. Poor writing choices let the characters down, old plotlines were twisted into something new and unpopular, and disgruntled, sexist fans blamed the nearest available woman.
Luckily, Whittaker didn’t actually see a lot of the hatred leveled at her. “I’m sure people wrote, ‘I hated your Doctor,’ but because I go ‘la la la’, I’ve got such a false sense of who I am,” she told the Times.
The Doctor doesn’t always have to be a man, actually
One thing Whittaker particularly didn’t like was being blamed for boys losing a role model when the Doctor changed from male to female. Even previous Doctor Who actor Peter Davison subscribed to that mindset, telling the Press Association, “If I feel any doubts, it’s the loss of a role model for boys, who I think Doctor Who is vitally important for.” That caused a minor schism in the fandom for a bit, with another Doctor, Colin Baker, accusing Davison of “talking rubbish.”
That wasn’t all—a Conservative MP even went so far as to claim that Whittaker’s winning of the Doctor Who role was linked to teenage boys committing crimes. MP Nick Fletcher inanely asked “is there any wonder we are seeing so many young men committing crime? ” He also claimed that “There seems to be a call from a tiny, but very vocal, minority that every male character or good role model must have a female replacement.”
Whittaker never stood for such rhetoric. “It’s never been questioned that I had to look up to men,” she said in the interview. “So it was fascinating that for some, we [women] could not be role models. The Doctor is still the Doctor. But also, I was playing an alien! My gender was not the issue.”
She’s right, and it remains a stain on Doctor Who fandom that so many people tried to make her gender the issue. We can only hope things will be better for the next woman to play the Doctor. She’s out there, I know it.
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