David Williamson

On Sunday night, Jodie Whittaker concluded her tenure as The Doctor in the popular BBC series Doctor Who, as a part of the Centenary celebrations for the broadcaster. The special, which was full of fun call-backs and Easter eggs, culminated in a moment that people have been clamouring for since 2010: the return of David Tennant to the role that launched his career, The Doctor.

(Image from *Doctor Who* Season 13, Episode 11)

Peter Capaldi (the 12th Doctor) has previously said that the show has a very prominent death motif, wherein the main character dies and is reborn, to be played by a new actor. Capaldi believes that this is why it has stayed around for so long. Jodie Whittaker was the 13th person and the first woman to play the character. However, like with every actor playing the role, viewers knew that the time would come when this death motif of regeneration would repeat, and they would be forced to say goodbye.

Jodie Whittaker’s time on the show outlived three Prime Ministers, and she brought with her the strongest opening viewing numbers that the show has seen since the heady days of David Tennant. Doctor Who was also one of the few shows with its scale of production that was shot and released during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic. However, her era on the show had its fair share of controversy, as it could not sustain the initial massive audience of 10 million. Both critics and the general audience laid much of this blame on increasingly poor writing. Perhaps the most egregious example of sloppy writing had Whittaker’s Doctor weaponise the race of Sasha Dhawan’s incarnation of The Master by handing him over to the Nazis. Despite the failings of the storytelling, a sentiment shared by many is that Whittaker did her very best with very weak material.

It is clear from the immediate coverage after Whittaker’s final episode that her time on the show may be overshadowed by David Tennant’s return. This is unfortunately nothing new for her time on the show as one-off cameos or alternate versions of characters have often been given more interesting things to do and say by the scripts. This continued through to the final episode where four previous incarnations of the Timelord were given crowd-pleasing moments in what should have been Whittaker’s swansong. As time goes on it is crucial that viewers remember just how much she embodied the role both off and on screen. Whittaker was The Doctor during the pandemic and delivered an incredibly powerful impromptu speech on social media to reassure everyone that they would be safe as the world shut down. She regenerated as she lived, with a massive smile on her face and optimism for the future.

David Tennant, the actor who played The Doctor as the show sailed to heights it had not seen since Tom Baker’s tenure, has now returned to lead the show. David Tennant often jokes that upon taking the role the first time he had prewritten the first few lines of his obituary. This legacy is now surely set in stone as he is the marquee of the 60th-anniversary series starting next year. He will be joined by Catherine Tate reprising her role as Donna Noble. Fans eagerly await the return of both of these characters, especially since their original separation was so traumatic. Tennant and Tate’s return to the show has already been met with a wave of enthusiasm as the brief teaser for their new season has reached more than 640 000 views on YouTube in only 24 hours.

Arguably, a more important change has occurred behind the scenes. As Russell T Davies (Doctor Who 2005 - 2010, Years and Years & It’s a Sin) returns as showrunner to write three specials with this dynamic duo in 2023 and the next Doctor - Ncuti Gatwa’s next series. Regrettably, Whittaker missed Davies’ truly inspired writing which often pulls at the heartstrings, by one episode. Davies has expressed his desire to make Doctor Who into the watercooler show that it was during his first tenure, elevating it to rival the output of Marvel shows on Disney +.

At its heart Doctor Who is about change, however, that should not mean forgetting what came before. Whittaker was unlucky to be paired with a showrunner who could not live up to the quality of his predecessors. As well as immediately being followed by the return of the most famous incarnation of the character, her legacy may not be as great as it otherwise should have been. It is important that her contribution and hard work should not be forgotten as the show heads into its 60th anniversary and beyond.

David Williamson is Deputy Comment Editor at The Scoop and a Politics, Philosophy and Economics student at Queen’s University Belfast

"Tag, you're it": Jodie Whittaker bows out as David Tennant returns to Doctor Who