Bradley Walsh is best known as a quiz presenter, presenting shows like The Chase (nothing to do with the 60s dalek story) and more recently Cash Trapped. But that's not to say he's no actor as he has had long roles in Coronation Street and Law and Order: UK (alongside Who's Freema Agyeman) and guest acting roles in a range of shows, including The Sarah Jane Adventures as Oddbob the Clown and his alternate personalities.
Now it's unclear if there is any truth to this story. The paper reported that Kris Marshall has been cast as the Thirteenth Doctor so there's so guarantee it's accurate whatsoever. That story seemed to come mainly from the fact that Marshall coincidentally left Death in Paradise around the same time Peter Capaldi announced he was leaving. But there's no obvious source for this story and Walsh has worked with new showrunner Chris Chibnall before (on Law and Order: UK). It's one of those stories where we can't say with any degree of certainty either way.
All this got me thinking about the type of companion Chris Chibnall will want. I haven't got a very good track record on predicting Chibnall's decisions so far having concluded he properly wouldn't cast a woman as the new Doctor. Oops.
Now for the most part New Who has stuck with a single female companions, sometimes with their romantic partner. But with a female Doctor this would mean that the entire TARDIS crew would be female. Now I don't have any problems with this as such but I think some parts of the audience would. Apart from the obvious misogynists, having an all woman crew could leave some young boys starting to think that Doctor Who is for girls. There is a potential for audience figures to be affected by this choice so I would guess that the Who team would want to have a male companion either instead of or alongside a female one.
Maybe there will be a complete switch and we'll have a female Doctor and a male companion. There are two obvious dangers with this in my mind. One is that it leads to the potential for some form of relationship between the Doctor and the companion. As much as that worked well between Rose and the Ninth/Tenth Doctors it is starting to feel a stale idea. Then there's the problem that writers could end up making a male companion fill in parts of the Doctor's role. I'm not saying that would happen but it's certainly a possibility that should be avoided.
My bet is that we'll get more than one companion, more akin to the classic series. Quite what form this will take, I'm not sure. Maybe we'll go down a 60s route and have two friends who clearly have feelings for each other but haven't yet done anything about it. I could see that working on the modern show, a slow burning romance with the 13th Doctor trying to make it happen. Alternatively they could already be in a relationship. We've had that fairly recently with Amy and Rory but Chibnall was great when focusing on their domestic life in Pond Life and The Power of Three.
The other option is for the new Doctor to gradually pick up several new companions over a series of episodes. Personally, this is what I'd like to see. It would mean that the companions have to get to know each other as well as the Doctor (imagine if we had two companions who didn't get on) and it allows for more possibilities in splitting the team up (e.g. the Doctor and one companion together, both companions together, all character separated from each other etc). It would also give an opportunity to have at least one companion that is from a different period in time, something that the new series has not really explored yet.
I'm really intrigued to see what form the new companion(s) will take but I'm excited for whatever Chris Chibnall comes up with.
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