Posts tagged: Doctor Who

As we do regularly, we’re approaching the end of an era with Doctor Who. Stephen Moffat’s departure is being celebrated by some and mourned by others. Likewise Chris Chibnall’s appointment as his replacement. Inevitably, at a time like this, fantasy casting is everywhere. But, as I said in the sister article to this one (see here), we have another unique opportunity here.

Time Lords are now canonically gender and ethnicity fluid. And, with that in mind, the next question is obvious; why does the Doctor Who showrunner have to be a white man?

The answer is of, course, “He doesn’t.” Or at the very least, “He doesn’t have to be one of the same five names that always come in discussions about potential Who showrunners.”

So, that’s what we’ve decided to examine here. No disrespect to Chris Chibnall who we’re sure will do a great job but in the spirit of the calls for diversity that are sweeping the entertainment industry at the moment here are some prospective show runners who aren’t white males. None of them are the usual suspects and they’d all bring new, different, great perspectives to the show.

This isn’t a demand for positive discrimination. All discrimination is bad. Neither is it tokenism. We’re not being “social justice warriors” just “social justice devil’s advocates”. It’s a way of showing that when you’re forced to think outside the obvious, the not-so-obvious doesn’t seem quite so not-so-obvious after all.

Some of them may not want the gig. Some of them might not be quite ready in terns of relevant experience yet. But it’d be nice to think that one of them, or somebody like them, might be in the running next time.

Emma Frost

No, not the White Queen from X-Men. Emma Frost has written for Jamaica Inn, The White Queen, Casualty and many others. By itself that’s impressive but two other credits on her resume put her solidly in the frame for Doctor Who. The first is her longstanding work as showrunner for Shameless, a TV show that, like Doctor Who, has made a virtue of near constant change. The second is her work as a consulting producer on The Man In The High Castle. The highest-rated TV show Amazon has produced to date it’s an excellent adaptation of a near unadaptable book. Frost’s work there is especially great and shows just what she could do if given control of Doctor Who.

Kate Brooke

Brooke is another candidate whose work is defined by long-running shows. Her work on Mr Selfridge has spanned years and shows she’s comfortable working with large scale, prestige shows. She’s also excellent at small scale, character-driven suspense as shown by her award winning Secret Smile, which featured a memorably horrific turn from David Tennant. That eye for character and logistical experience combines to make her a great potential showrunner for Doctor Who.

Catherine Tregenna

Tregenna wrote four of the best episodes of the early, often wildly uneven seasons of Torchwood. “Adam” and “Out Of Time” in particular stand with the best hours that show produced. Recently she wrote “The Woman Who Lived”. In doing so she played a vital part in cementing Lady Me as a part of the show’s continuity. 

Wouldn’t it be great if she got to do more? Tregenna’s comfortable with the Who production, has worked with both the outgoing showrunners and has a unique perspective on the source material that ensures her episodes are always interesting and often brilliant. Showrunner seems the next logical step for her.

Debbie Moon

The creator and lead writer of the excellent Wolfblood, Moon is perfectly positioned to take the role. Wolfblood is a justifiably acclaimed CBBC series that’s done what so few series manage; be a long-running, popular and respected British genre show. It’s also very inventive, character-driven and has adapted to cast changes with ease. Moon continues to do excellent with it and that, along with her work for S4C, makes her a strong contender.

Michaela Coel

Coel is just as comfortable in front of the camera as well as behind it. She was seen recently in London Spy but is best-known for her excellent turn in Top Boy as well as her work in Chewing Gum, the E4 sitcom based on her first play, Chewing Gum Dreams. That play won the Alfred Fagon Award for Best Playwright of African or Caribbean Descent in 2012 and has gone on to be produced numerous times by various theatres across the country. That, combined with both her experience working as an actor and the different dramatic perspective writing for theatre demands makes her a perfect potential showrunner.

Rebecca Levene

Rebecca Levene has been working with Doctor Who for years. She was the line editor on Virgin’s acclaimed run of New Adventures novels and the Bernice Summerfield novel Where Angels Fear as well as several short stories. More recently she’s started in on The Hollow Gods, a four-book fantasy series beginning with Smiler’s Fair. She also worked on the storyline and script for the excellent Zombies! Run app.

She’s a logical choice for the showrunner role not just because of this pedigree but because of how it combines with her TV work. Like Samuell Benta, Levene is comfortable working digitally as well as for the screen and her willingness to embrace new media, as well as her vast experience, makes her one of the strongest candidates for showrunner.

Abi Morgan

An immensely successful and prolific playwright, Morgan is also one of the most interesting TV screenwriters in the UK. The Hour, her 1960s set news show was excellent, won an Emmy and was cancelled far too early. However her most recent work, River, is what shows just how good she’d be as Who showrunner.

Starring Stellan Skarsgård it’s a gentle, brutal series that uses detective fiction as a means of exploring personal loss and mental health. It does this by having the lead conduct conversations with the dead and, through that, begin to doubt his own sanity.

Sounds grim, yeah?

Well it both is and isn’t. It’s a very funny, very sad show about a troubled, brilliant man who cares too much. It plays with fantasy elements, is endlessly clever and marks Morgan out as a unique talent with sensibilities that would fit Doctor Who like a glove.

Jo Ho

Jo Ho is best known as the creator and writer of Spirit Warriors. Broadcast on CBBC and BBC Two it followed Bo, her sister Jen and their friends. Transported to a spirit world, the kids discovered they had special powers and were destined to race Li, an evil warlord, to twelve Spirit pieces. It was a great show, mixing martial arts with fantasy and, like Wolfblood, is a high point in CBBC’s drama output.

Since then, Ho has written several movies, written for BBC supernatural series Bishaash and is developing two TV series. She’s got a keen eye for character and subtlety and combines that with a clear love of genre and a tremendously wide range. Like many other people on this list, she’s very busy but, like everyone on this list, she’d be a great showrunner for Doctor Who.

Lenny Henry

No don’t laugh. Although that’s what you normally do with Lenny. Henry is one of the titans of modern British TV and he’s far more versatile than anyone whose only ever seen his standup routines might think. A producer and screenwriter as well as multifaceted actor Henry both produced and helped devise the TV version of Neverwhere. He’s also a fiercely articulate advocate for greater diversity in British TV, all of which combines to make him a strong contender for the role of showrunner, or, indeed, the Doctor himself.

Samuell Benta

An increasing number of screenwriters and producers are getting their start digitally through Vimeo and youtube. Benta is one of them. His sitcom, All About The Mackenzies is a perfect example of what can be done outside the traditional production system; it’s clever, really funny and has a style all its own. It also establishes Benta as a major, self-starting producer whose unique approach would bring something very different, and welcome, to Doctor Who.

We’re in limbo with Doctor Who again. It’s always a strange place to be and the fact the show is in this position every few years doesn’t make it any more comfortable. With a single episode due this year, Moffat stepping down next year and Chris Chibnall coming aboard, there are nothing but questions. Will Capaldi stay? If not, who will Chibnall get in to replace him?

And, most interestingly, will this Doctor be male? Or white?

Missy and the first on-screen male-to-female regeneration in “Hell Bent” seemed to be easing us into the idea of a female Doctor. River’s regeneration in “Let’s Kill Hitler” proved that changing ethnicity is no barrier for Time Lords. It opens the door not just to some fascinating new takes on the character but to an incredible range of some of the best actors and actresses on the planet. We don’t know if a non-white, female Doctor is being looked at as the next incumbent of the TARDIS but we do hope so. After all, this is a show defined by change and those are two changes that when they finally arrive will not be a moment too soon.

So, join us for a look at our dream shortlist. The next Doctors will see you now…

Dame Helen Mirren

Let Me Dream A Moment, God, Part One… Mirren was one of the instigators of the original female Doctor conversation and at the time hinted she’d like the role. She’s since rowed back from that, instead stating her desire to be a Bond villain which would also be amazing.

However, the thought of a Mirren-commanded TARDIS is a truly wondrous one. Her wit and presence are perfect for the role and even better, she’d open the door for other actresses of similar reputation to be on the show. A Dame Judi Dench Missy would be the stuff of magnificent, artful nightmares. So, not going to happen, but lovely if it did.

Hayley Attwell

Let Me Dream A Moment, God, Part One… Attwell has said she’d like the role and she’d knock it out of the park. As Peggy Carter she’s shown immense grit, determination, compassion and physical presence. She’s also got a bone dry, laconic approach with a light seasoning of “Tally ho!” flamboyance that would suit the Doctor to a tee. I don’t rate the chances of getting her as particularly high but if we did…

Olivia Colman

I’m calling it now, if Chibnall casts a female Doctor, and he should, it will be Olivia Colman. Here’s why; firstly she’s amazing. If you’ve only seen her in Peep Show then you’ve seen a third, at most, of what she’s capable of. She’s naturally very funny and can play multiple tones within that. Witness the gradated levels of social embarrassment in Peep Show versus her magnificently crude turn in Hot Fuzz.

But that’s just the start. Her work on movies like the crushing Tyrannosaur and shows like Broadchurch coupled that humour with presence, intelligence and raw emotional honesty. Her work on Broadchurch also means she has a strong, previously-established relationship with Chibnall and Tennant. Capaldi’s talked a lot about how having a mentor of sorts in Matt Smith helped him adjust to the role and if she wants it, Colman clearly already has that in place. In other words, if a female Doctor is being looked at, and it should be, then it’s Colman’s role to lose.

Naomie Harris

Harris’s take on Moneypenny in the current Bond series is excellent, in some cases despite the scripts. She, like Archie Panjabi who we’ll get to in a minute, can project threat very easily. Her work on 28 Days Later was an early indicator of just how physically capable, and intimidating, she can be when needed. That, coupled with her intelligence and subtlety as a performer would make for a very interesting, very different, kind of Doctor.

Lenora Crichlow

Crichlow has geek cred for miles thanks to her excellent work in Being Human, Black Mirror and, like Meera Syal below, a memorable guest turn on Doctor Who. She’s naturally charming in a way that’s a lot more open than many of the other performers here but also excels when she’s allowed to work from a position of authority. Plus, as with Syal, there are interesting thematic reasons for the Doctor to choose this particular face.

Archie Panjabi

One of the biggest names on this list, Panjabi is best known for her starmaking turn as Kalinda Sharma on The Good Wife. She excels at nuanced performances, able to play a character clearly thinking and reacting on multiple levels at once. She’s also naturally very funny as shown in East Is East and, when called upon to be, one of the most intimidating performers on this list.

Ramon Tikaram

Ramon Tikaram is one of those actors who improves whatever he’s cast in. He was excellent in Fortitude, had a memorable supporting turn in Primeval and stole Dragon Age: Inquisition as the charmingly snippy Dorian.
He’d be a perfect Doctor because, like so many other performers on this list, he has huge natural charisma and authority. Tikaram commands your attention, always gives the impression he’s thinking three or four steps ahead and has arguably the most mellifluous voice since Tom Baker’s. For those reasons in particular, he makes the list.

Naveen Andrews

The first of the two Sense8 cast members on this list, Andrews is best known for his role as Sayid in Lost but his turn in Sense8 is a hint of what his Doctor would be like. In fact Jonas is basically an audition reel for the Doctor; a more than slightly otherworldly, compassionate genius whose polite reticence may cover a very dark past. It’s a great role, one that plays to Andrews’ numerous strengths and sets him up as another Doctor-in-waiting.

Meera Syal

There are three things that make Meera Syal perfect for The Doctor. The first is her wonderfully long-suffering comic timing and delivery. The second is her natural presence, a vital factor in a character who has to own every scene without visibly stealing them. The third, weirdly, is canonical. Now we know the Doctor can choose faces of people he’s met, there’s some interesting emotional baggage attached to Syal. Dr Nasreen Chaudhry, the character she played in “Cold Blood” and “The Hungry Earth”, sacrificed everything to join her not-quite boyfriend a thousand years in the future. She was brave, compassionate and selfless. In other words, exactly what the Doctor tries to be.

Lenny Henry

Henry has been writing, producing and starring in TV for decades. He’s a weirdly underrated performer too, a man who has huge intelligence and authority as well as bringing a captive audience of sorts with him to the role. He’s also firmly in the Capaldi zone; an endlessly respected character actor known for other work who could bring his own unique stamp to an iconic role.

David Oyelowo

Oyelowo’s had a really interesting career. Excellent, if on occasion chronically underused, in Spooks he graduated to Hollywood and worked his way up to a starring role in the incredible Selma as Martin Luther King. The determination, strength and compassion he showed there demonstrated just how talented a performer he is. Those qualities are what the Doctor aspires to and, sometimes, doesn’t reach and Oyelowo could show every inch of that struggle in a way the role hasn’t seen since Peter Davison.

Aml Ameen

Ameen doesn’t quite have the experience of some of the others on this list but he makes up for it with talent and sheer presence. He’s amazing as Capheus in Sense8, balancing incredible compassion and serenity with a huge amount of natural humour and exuberance. Sound like anyone we know?

Art Malik

One of the finest actors of his generation, Malik is a man so talented he even found some measure of depth as the world’s most stereotypical terrorist leader in True Lies. He is, like so many other people on this list, the total package. He’s got intelligence by the bucket load, incredible presence, excellent comic timing and is the perfect age to continue the intense feel the Capaldian era has had.