10 More What Ifs About Doctor Who

1. What If Doctor Who Had Been Played By A Woman?

Question answered: the Doctor has been played by a woman. We all saw it. And at one point, we even heard it. But let's back up and talk about why that happened to begin with. Tom Baker decided to mess with an interviewer when asked who would be replacing him by saying something along the lines of 'You're assuming it'll be a man.' Producer John Nathan-Turner encouraged the speculation since it meant more press for the show. But the decision to cast a female Doctor has not happened. The reason Joanna Lumley appeared in The Curse of Fatal Death as the female Doctor is because for years her name had appeared at the top of the list of actresses fans would have loved in the role. More recently, Dame Helen Mirren said she'd be up for playing the role, though Steven Moffat said he decided against casting a woman because so many people were against it - and many of them were women. But what if a woman had been cast? And let's imagine that it was John Nathan-Turner and not Steven Moffat who took that major step? As with the casting of Paterson Joseph, there would be some ruckus at first, from the usual anti-feminist crowd who would see the casting as political correctness gone mad. But would it have changed the narrative of the series itself? Apart from the Doctor herself getting some of the attention from leering villains for a change rather than, say, Peri, probably not - the Doctor in the classic series, you might have noticed, is fairly sex-less, meaning that changing him to a woman wouldn't have made the character more of a sexual object. In the stories, anyway - among viewers, however, it's likely to have been a very different thing. Joanna Lumley was also on the top of those lists because she was (and still is) an amazingly attractive woman in addition to being a fine actress. For all the fans who decided they'd never watch an episode again, there would probably be twice as many new viewers tuning in to see as much of a female Doctor as they could. If JNT had cast (and this is really using our imaginations) Joanna Lumley back in 1981, would it even be an issue now whether the Doctor was a man or a woman, even with the new series' emphasis on flirting? Flirting is off the table now that Capaldi is the Doctor, but that's more to do with the show redefining its focus than because he's not fanciable. Is it time? Or should the Doctor never be a woman because, as no less than Peter Davison put it, that would be as odd as making James Bond a female? Let us hear some of your What Ifs about Doctor Who in the comments below!