When Catherine Tate became the Doctor-Donna for those few brief, glorious minutes in Journey’s End, a lot of people’s fears that a female actor couldn’t play the lead in Doctor Who were assuaged — she was quick, intelligent and just a little bit mad. A true Doctor, in other words. However, when it has come to discussing women who could take the role, bloggers, journalists and fans alike seem to have become stuck on a rather limited range of names.
Billie Piper still gets a regular name-check, though that would need some seriously inventive plotting, and Joanna Lumley, perhaps because of her time in the freaky ITV sci-fi show Sapphire and Steel, has been frequently connected with the role. In fact, she had already played the Doctor in a Comic Relief skit, written by none other than the new Doctor Who lead writer and executive producer Steven Moffat.
But for me, there is one actress perfect for the role who is being overlooked: may I offer for your consideration Ms. Julia Davis…
One atttibute that many of us Whovians love about the Doctor is his positioning on the fine line between light and dark. On one hand he’s exuberant, gregarious, and full of life and passion, and on the other he’s unspeakably sad, an almost tragic figure. As such, when considering who the next Doctor might be, we have a tendency to gravitate towards actors who have experience in both straight drama and comedy. On this count, Julia Davis scores highly.
Davis came to (relative, I suppose) prominence with long-time collaborator Rob Brydon in the critically adored comedy Human Remains, which she co-wrote as well as starred in. The series followed the lives of a different couple each week, all of whom were deeply unhappy, and its hugely dark tone has become something of a trend in Davis’s work.
She is now most famous for creating one of the few BBC3 success stories, Nighty Night, and its outrageous central character Jill, whom TV critic Gareth McLean described as “quite possibly, the most monstrous female character to appear on television ever”. The show dealt with disability and terminal illness on a weekly basis — she doesn’t go in for easy themes, our Julia.
Away from comedy, Davis again earned the plaudits of TV critics and viewers for her portrayal of the formidable TV chef Fanny Cradock in BBC Four’s Fear of Fanny, and she also appeared in The Alan Clark Diaries and ITV’s adaptation of Austen’s Persuasion. Comedy, drama, and the many shades of grey which lie in between, Davis has done it all.
The wonderful thing about Davis is that she always throws herself 100% into her roles — whether that means becoming the most hideously selfish woman alive in Nighty Night or allowing her appearance to be changed completely for Fear of Fanny — and that is a great quality in a potential Doctor. She also often brings a certain oddness to her characters which would fit right in with the Doctor’s otherness, and she isn’t so well-known that audiences (especially children) would immediately associate her with a particular role.
As for how realistic a choice she is for the part, there is one big positive: Davis is currently working with Mark Gatiss. The Doctor Who writer (and actor, comedian, novelist and all-round Renaissance Man) was her co-star in Fear of Fanny, and now they are putting together a sitcom for Tony Jordan’s production company Red Planet Pictures. Now, we all know how incestuous the Doctor Who family can get, so this close association with Gatiss is a real plus.
There is, of course, the complicating factor that Davis may not actually want the part. She has very young twins with long-term partner Julian Barratt (he of The Mighty Boosh, meaning they are surely the coolest couple in TV) and is doing very nicely thank you in cultish shows without being exposed to an intrusive level of fame. Putting those niggling issues aside, though, I genuinely believe that Julia Davis could be a great Doctor — so let’s start those rumours right here and now.
How did I not know she was with Julian? God, I wish I was their neighbour.
I'm actually not against this.
Think she'd be a really interesting choice, ticks a lot of boxes.
Altho to say "one of the few BBC 3 success stories" belies an opinion of BBC3s output with which one could argue. That is, BBC 3 has had more than "a few" successes.
Hmm, Julia Davis is great, but she's a bit "harsh" if you ask me. She's bound to turn up as a villain very soon, I'd say. Anyway, I don't think there will ever be a female Doctor -- even most female fans don't actually want that.
one valid objection to the Doctor being able to change into a woman is that he/she would therefore be TOO knowing; if he could only be male, there would be a veritable universe of possibility and experience forever beyond his ken (not counting species with more than two sexes).
I initially feared for the casting of David Tennant because he was rather flavour-of-the-month at the time because of CASANOVA; my misgivings were proved false, but there is a danger in casting someone so familiar that the characterisation might be based on more-of-the-same. It might be argued that a Doctor-actor shoudn't be cast if the general public actually know his name, as opposed to being able to identify him as Thingy from That Thing. Perceived (or self-styled) 'comic' actors are dangerous; too many younger (and by now middle-aged) ones act as though they're bestowing themselves on their audience. NO close friends of Ben Elton; they were already screwing things up with ego before the end of the 1980s.
A non-white Doctor is really the way to go - in fact, it should really have happened, more than once, by now. A British thespian of any ethic identity that could be cast as a terrorist or generic action movie villain without blacking up? One already suggested name that makes a lot of sense would be Colin Salmon (first black Doctor and first bald Doctor?), partly because he'd already appeared in the series as a problem-solving doctor figure in an artificial reality; turning that character retrospectively into an echo of the future would jollify the mythos in general.
Why do we have to consider black/white? male/female? The Doctor has always been a white male - not for any reason other than that is the way the character was originally written. I do not recall any scenes from Galifrey with non-white time lords. Why do you have to change things just for the sake of it? The tardis is still a police box after all these years, it is familiar to all fans. It is part of the whole Dr Who legend that he changes from time to time but only into a slightly different incarnation of the same character.