Yes!
Bloody working class people everywhere now!
Not like the good old days when all the Doctors had posh middle class backgrounds. Like...er...William Hartnell...Tom Baker...Christopher Eccleston... ahem...
Do we honestly think the series would be improved by having an all white male middle class cast?
Perhaps some of us should look out the window occasionally.
The world is bigger on the outside.
Quote: Rood Eye @ 21st October 2018, 9:11 PMNow I go chasing monsters to earn an honest bob.
In a left-wing liberal universe, I'm ideal for the job.Now it's a job that just suits me.
I represent diversity
and that just suits the BBC
so I'm chasing monsters.I'm just a simple Yorkshire lass,
A million miles from middle class.
If you don't like it, kiss my ass.
I'm off chasing monsters.As the Doctor, I'll go far
and I'll never stop.
with Bradley Walsh, a young black lad
and a female Asian cop.Etc . . . .etc . . . etc.
She's from Lancashire, not Yorkshire. Change Yorkshire to Blackpool?
Jodie Whittaker IS from Yorkshire. George Formby was from Lancashire though.
Quote: Chris Hallam @ 22nd October 2018, 6:38 AMYes!
Bloody working class people everywhere now!
Not like the good old days when all the Doctors had posh middle class backgrounds. Like...er...William Hartnell...Tom Baker...Christopher Eccleston... ahem...Do we honestly think the series would be improved by having an all white male middle class cast?
Perhaps some of us should look out the window occasionally.
The world is bigger on the outside.
I knew I liked this guy.
Fascinating musings upon class and Doctor Who. Tom Baker, of course, was born in Liverpool and joined a monastery at age 10 but was expelled a year later for sabotaging masturbation rituals (it's all in his gleeful autobiography, Freedom in Exile: The Doctor Declares). He was then famously "adopted" by Sid James, who spent a lot of time giving him elocution lessons to lose his Liverpudlian accent. Thanks to this assistance, he graduated to treading the boards and occasional film roles, such as Rasputin (to Terry-Thomas's Tsar Nicholas II) in the Amicus horror version of The Canterbury Tales. He was even selected for a small role in Carry On Up the Scaffolding. but got lost on the way to Pinewood and ended up at a real building site, where a passing Barry Letts discovered him mixing concrete. Letts was so impressed by his technique that he offered him the role of Doctor Who on the spot. We are all the luckier for this.
In the third episode of the current series, Jodie and her motley crew are whisked back to Alabama in the 1950s where they witness some racism.
Interestingly, the episode was co-written by a black woman whose name is Blackman.
Why is that interesting?
Quote: Chris Hallam @ 22nd October 2018, 12:54 PMWhy is that interesting?
If you have to ask the question, you're not going to understand the answer. 
Oh. It isn't interesting.
People who are racist on forums are never interesting.
It's the writing I don't like.
Her gender and perceived class (by those who get hung up on that sort of nonsense) has nothing to do with it.
I thought the last one was shit as well, and he was old, white male, a bit posh and Scottish.
Not everything's about politics.
It's just poor quality.
And hiding behind some sort of 'victory for working-class women' smokescreen doesn't change the fact.
I don't mind that. Nobody likes everything and everyone's entitled to their view.
A few other people here are clearly objecting primarily because she's a woman, or working class or northern though.
Which is just daft.
Quote: Lazzard @ 22nd October 2018, 3:29 PMHer gender and perceived class (by those who get hung up on that sort of nonsense) has nothing to do with it.
I agree entirely.
Tom Baker was born into a working-class family in a working-class city but abandoned his Liverpool accent in favour of a posh accent which has no doubt served him well.
Christopher Ecclestone was born into a working-class family in a working-class city but chose to keep his Salford accent. His decision appears to have done his career no harm whatever.
Both actors were, in my view, entirely credible in the role of Doctor Who.
As far as gender is concerned, I can think of several women suitable for the role.
Unfortunately, Jodie Whittaker isn't among them.
Sounds great. What was your point about Malorie Blackman then? And all the whingeing about black and Asian people being cast?
In the days when the adjective "black" wasn't almost a swearword when uttered by anybody to whom the adjective not apply, I think it might have been quite amusing to ask somebody in the world of writing "Which British writer is a black woman and also a black man?"
The person you're talking to might then ask whether you're talking about a transgender person, or someone who uses a pseudonym, or some other sort of person to whom the description might apply.
When they give up, you say "Malorie Blackman".
They will quickly grasp the fact that she is a black woman who is also a 'Blackman' because she is in the Blackman family.
They might groan a bit but, if they know anything about verbal humour, they'll acknowledge (if only to themselves) that it's a reasonably clever joke and an entirely appropriate joke to tell given that she is currently in the news for writing the latest episode of Doctor Who.
With regard to the non-white characters in the first episode of the current series of Doctor Who, I would applaud their casting if they had been cast in numbers that accurately reflected ethnic diversity in Britain rather than in hugely improbable numbers in the BBC's campaign of unremitting diversity designed to atone for its long and some would say shameful history of "whiteness".
Quote: Chris Hallam @ 22nd October 2018, 3:55 PMall the whingeing about black and Asian people being cast?
Good point well made and brief. The BBC sells to a world audience and China, India and America are big markets. Dr Who has to regenerate for the current viewers, or it would die slowly with its audience. I though Capaldi was a hark back to the past, but that didn't work.