Yasmin, Ryan and Graham

This evening the BBC unexpectedly revealed the companions for Series 11 of Doctor Who. Here I am taking a quick look at them and how they might form the series.

First up is Yasmin, played by Mandip Gill. Over the last few years Gill has appeared in various British TV shows like Casualty, Doctors and The Good Karma Hospital. She is best known though for her role in Hollyoaks playing Phoebe Jackson between 2012-2015. She's a relatively unknown actress to most of the UK so this is a big step up for her.

The same could be said of Tosin Cole who plays Ryan. He too appeared in Hollyoaks, between 2011 and 2012 as well as the Eastenders spin-off E20. Doctor Who is not his first sci-fi role though as he did appear in Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

The most famous of the actors here is Bradley Walsh who will play Graham. He is probably best known as the host of teatime quiz show The Chase but has plenty of acting roles including Coronation Street and Law & Order: UK, the latter of which new showrunner Chris Chibnall wrote for. He also appeared in The Sarah Jane Adventures story Day of the Clown as the titular creepy clown.

As I speculated in a recent post, it looks like Chris Chibnall is going for the classic style of a TARDIS crew of four. It seems unlikely that Chibnall will introduce a new Doctor and three new companions in the same episode so could we be seeing them gradually introduced? There is the possibility that the three characters know each other though they make an unlikely group- might Graham be Yasmin and Ryan's teacher?

The other thing to note about this announcement is that production of the series must be about to begin. The cast aren't in costume here so they having reached the filming stage yet but the photo is probably from an early read-through.

It's great to finally have some new information on the next series and I look forward to more news soon.

Series 11 Rumours

We still know very little about Series 11 of Doctor Who beyond the fact that it will star Jodie Whittaker as the Doctor and Chris Chibnall will be the showrunner and lead writer.

This week though the Daily Mirror is reporting a few minor details about the series. They are not confirmed but seem plausible, if not likely.

Firstly they are saying there will be a new TARDIS, both inside and out. Presumably the outside would not be a great change but the control room would be. The current control room has been in use since The Snowmen and the control room was changed at the change of showrunner.

It's nigh on impossible to guess quite how they might design a new control room but I suspect they will aim for a more feminine/ more friendly design to suit Whittaker's Doctor.

They are also reporting a new sonic screwdriver will be designed. Again this is not a great surprise though the current sonic has only served for a single series.

The more surprising change would be that the series would become ten episodes which are each an hour in length. The last series was twelve episodes, eleven of which were 45 minutes with an extended finale. We'd get pretty much the same amount of Who just spread over fewer episodes.

It's an interesting choice if true. For a start  cutting out two episodes reduces costs. All the sets, costumes and guest cast of two episodes is cut. But from a writing point of view it allows more wriggle room- so many 45 minute episodes feel like they have a rushed ending and an extra 15 minutes could really make a difference.

All or none of this may actually turn out to be true but it does seem convincing. It shouldn't be too long now before we get some official news about Series 11 and I for one can't wait!

Trust Me- Episode 4

It's the final episode of Jodie Whittaker's fake Doctor drama- but is she going to be found out? Beware, spoilers for all four episodes lie ahead.

After three largely slow paced episodes we get a speedy finale. Cath's lie is so very close to being exposed with the aftermath of the patient from the previous episode and sticking together with Bridget and ex-partner Carl on this way up to Edinburgh. 

I think that this episode is perhaps the one which paints Cath in the best light. As an audience we can never feel comfortable with her deception but it's sort of become more acceptable as we've discovered how good a Doctor she can be. Andy tells her to essentially throw Bridget under the bus, let her take the blame and then Cath can carry on as Doctor Ally. But she's a good person and Bridget is her friend, despite the mistakes she has made, and Cath can't bring herself to do it. Instead she completely takes the blame. 

As if this stress wasn't enough she's now got not one but two challenging medical procedures to perform. One is a repeat of the procedure from the night before and though initially in panic Cath eventually sorts it out. I was thinking that it's irrelevant that Cath isn't a real doctor here and this must be what real doctors go through when having to repeat a procedure that went so wrong the time before. Then her friend Mona is in the department and suffers a cardiac arrest, with poor Cath having to try and save her life. Again, so many doctors must struggle when people they know are in the hospital. 

After all this Cath decides she can't take anymore so she picks up Molly and heads to leave forever. But then she bumps into Molly's dad Carl who can sense her turmoil. It's not entirely clear whether Cath actually means her promise that the three of them can go back to Sheffield and live together but either way it allows her to escape from danger. But soon Andy and Carl come to blows, fighting over Cath, and then poor Carl finds himself hit by a car. 

The title of the series gets a new twist when it's Andy we have to trust rather than Cath. Did he kill Carl? It would be the only surefire way of ensuring Cath's secret was kept safe and therefore the relationship being kept safe too. I don't think he probably did go that far, he is a doctor after all, but the fact that Cath suspects him shows how shaky their relationship really is. 

The series ends with Bridget taking long-term leave and Cath taking over as lead of the department. It's not how I thought the series would inevitably end with her being found out. As a viewer I feel conflicted as I do feel for Cath and in reality she makes a great doctor. But I can't help but feel that what she is doing is wrong and she really ought to be found out. 

It's unclear whether there was ever any plans for a second series but it is certainly left open for one. With Whittaker now committed to Doctor Who this seems unlikely though I suppose she might just be able to squeeze in one episode to round things off. Frankly I think the ending was noncommittal as sooner or later she will be found out and I want to see how that happens. 

All in all, I enjoyed the series. It perhaps could have condensed things down a little but good writing and great acting from the cast, especially Jodie Whittaker, it was a great little drama.

[Click here for all my Trust Me episode discussions]

The Next Companion(s)

On Monday British tabloid newspaper the Daily Mirror announced they had a scoop about the next series of Doctor Who. They reported that Bradley Walsh would be the companion to Jodie Whittaker's Thirteenth Doctor.

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.

The Thirteenth Doctor

Peter Capaldi has announced that he is leaving his role as the Twelfth Doctor. He's been a fantastic Doctor and I'll be sad to see him go. What it does mean though is that at some point in the not too distant future the Thirteenth Doctor will be cast.

Lots of people are making lists of possible Doctors but many are not very likely. It's extremely unlikely that a major Hollywood actor is going to take the role. Even very big actors who have appeared in short series are unlikely to commit to a role as big as the Doctor. It's also very unlikely they will cast someone who has had a major Who role before- a guest part in one episode maybe, but not a returning actor like Alex Kingston or Maisie Williams. And I also think they are unlikely to choose an actor of a similar age-range to Peter Capaldi.

There's lots of talk that the new Doctor could be a woman. It's certainly a lot more likely now than it was when Peter Capaldi was cast. The Master's latest regeneration is a woman and we even saw a Time Lord regenerate from male to female in Hell Bent.

Whether the Thirteenth Doctor will be a woman is largely down to new showrunner Chris Chibnall. He is the man who will probably have the major say on the new Doctor. Personally I feel it would be ambitious for a new showrunner to come along and cast a woman as the Doctor- it's a change in the character dynamic which a new showrunner may not want to make straight away.

If they do choose a female Doctor Hayley Atwell would be my top tip. She's a great actor, demonstrated a fairly Doctor-ish role in Agent Carter and has no long-term commitments (it looks like her current TV series Conviction will not be renewed). Another highly possible one is Gemma Chan, who has become more successful in recent years and has played a Synth in sci-fi series Humans.

Hayley Atwell (as Peggy Carter)

I do think it's quite likely that the next Doctor will be a different race. It's well known that a black actor turned down the role a few years ago (it's thought to have been Chiwetel Ejiofor by many). A lot of people seem to be talking about Richard Ayoade taking the role. As much as I like him it's hard to imagine him doing the serious drama parts of the role, and he's pretty busy in the near future hosting The Crystal Maze. There's talk of Game Of Thrones' Alexander Siddig taking the role but at 52 he is probably too old. My preferred non-white Doctor would be Sacha Dhawan- Doctor Who fans might know his for his role as Waris Hussein in An Adventure in Space and Time. He's a superb actor who I can really picture in the role.

Sacha Dhawan

The bookmaker's favourites for the role include Ben Whishaw and Rory Kinnear, both best known for their roles in the James Bond franchise. I like Kinnear but I fear he's a little old for the role and might Ben Whishaw be too big for the Doctor?

Rory Kinnear

A likely BBC favourite would be James Norton. He shone in Happy Valley and War and Peace and seems to be an actor in favour with the beeb at the moment. He is busy for much of the year in ITV's Grantchester at the moment but he is certainly a possible.

James Norton (as Sidney Chambers in Grantchester)

I have a couple of lesser known ideas for the role. Bertie Carvel played Jonathan Strange in Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell and I really feel would make a great Doctor. Then there's Damien Maloney, who played vampire Hal in two series of Being Human. He's a fantastic actor who I really feel ought to have a big role in something.

Damien Maloney (as Hal in Being Human)

Could we maybe have someone Chris Chibnall has worked with before? I couldn't find many people in the Broadchurch cast list who I could imagine as the Doctor but one was James D'Arcy. He played Lee Ashworth in Broadchurch, a very non-Doctor-y role. But in Agent Carter he was the butler Edwin Jarvis who was closer to the Doctor- the variation in roles really shows how good an actor he is.

James D'Arcy (as Edwin Jarvis in Agent Carter)

I also think there's a strong chance we'll get a fairly unknown actor. Hardly anyone knew who Matt Smith was when he was cast and the same could be said for the last three companions. It would be great if the show finds another amazing actor we'd never even heard of before.

I guess we'll just have to wait and see...