It's an ongoing discussion within the Doctor Who universe that the show should "get with the times" and cast its first female Doctor (hell, even the reputable likes of Dame Helen Mirren has added fuel to the fire!) but these campaigns didn't just come hand in hand with the show's 21st century return back in 2005 (but, admittedly, since then they have got a lot louder!). In fact, it was always the intention of the show's original creator, Sydney Newman, to eventually regenerate the Doctor into a woman, against the BBC's wishes, and he even wrote an angry letter to them during the show's popularity decline in the 1980s to affirm that changing the titular Time Lord's gender would ensure a return to its former ratings glory. Alas, they didn't take him on the advice and the closest that fans have got to seeing a female at the helm of the TARDIS was in the 1999 Comic Relief sketch, Doctor Who and the Curse of Fatal Death, in which Joanne Lumley - above - took her turn as our hero's unofficial thirteenth incarnation. Some have taken Michelle Gomez's reveal as the first female Master to suggest that Steven Moffat is "testing the waters" for a female Doctor, so perhaps the show is now even closer to welcome its first female Doctor than ever before. As always, only time will tell...
Dan Butler is the Doctor Who Editor at WhatCulture.com. When he isn't writing his own articles or editing other people's, he can be found trawling the internet for gifs of Steven Moffat laughing. Contact him via dan.butler@whatculture.co.uk.
