Former showrunner Russell T. Davies has returned to the world of Doctor Who to adapt the first episode of his era of the series into a novel.
For those who don’t know, Davies is responsible for bringing the sci-fi icon back in 2005 and kickstarted its enormously successful 21st century run. And it all began with the pilot episode, titled “Rose,” which introduced us to Christopher Eccleston’s Ninth Doctor and Billie Piper’s companion.
In his new book based on the storyline, Davies has tweaked how things played out on TV in order to factor in what’s happened since on the show…. as well as predict what form the future might take. Specifically, one scene in the TV episode saw Rose meet Clive, an obsessive “fan” of the Doctor’s who’s collected pictures of Eccleston’s Time Lord throughout history. In the novel, however, Davies reimagines the photos as featuring future incarnations of the Doctor.
Check out the relevant passage below:
“Rose saw a photo of a man with a fantastic jaw, dressed in a tweed jacket and bow tie. Then Clive kept the sequence going; an older, angry man in a brown caretaker’s coat, holding a mop; a blonde woman in braces running away from a giant frog in front of Buckingham Palace; a tall, bald black woman wielding a flaming sword; a young girl or boy in a hi-tech wheelchair with what looked like a robot dog at their side”
You should be able to recognize the first three through those descriptions. The one with the “fantastic jaw” is obviously Matt Smith’s Eleventh Doctor, while the “older, angry man” has to be Peter Capaldi’s Number Twelve and the “blonde woman” is Jodie Whittaker’s upcoming Thirteenth incarnation.
The next two are where things get really interesting, however. Davies has taken it upon himself to predict who the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Doctors might be. First off, Number Fourteen sounds epic, with her flaming sword. Something tells us Davies has a wish to see Black Panther‘s Danai Gurira play the Time Lord. The Fifteenth, meanwhile, seems to be a gadget-loving child who needs the use of a wheelchair and is accompanied by K-9!
Obviously, as Davies isn’t an active voice on the series anymore, this is just him having fun as a fan. Still, we wonder if his predictions will turn out to be anywhere near the truth. We’d certainly be up for a black actress or a disabled actor taking on the role at some point.
In the present, though, we’re right at the start of the Thirteenth Doctor’s time in the TARDIS, as Jodie Whittaker makes her full debut when Doctor Who returns in October.
