Ever since Jodie Whittaker was announced as the Thirteenth Doctor in Doctor Who, we’ve seen the actors who played previous incarnations of the character pitch in with their opinions on the casting.
Most of them have been overwhelmingly supportive, though Fifth Doctor Peter Davison famously commented that he was worried that Whittaker’s Doctor meant that there was a “loss of a role model for boys,” The Sixth Doctor, Colin Baker, quickly strangled that argument though, hitting back by saying “you don’t have to be of a gender of someone to be a role model.”
Now, the Seventh Doctor, Sylvester McCoy, has joined the debate, admitting that he was a bit “perturbed” about the casting. In an interview with Mirror Online at the London Comic-Con, McCoy said:
“I was a bit perturbed at first. I thought, ‘Hmm I wonder if that will work’, but then I started to get used to it and then when Jodie arrived I sent a message to her saying, ‘One small step for woman, and one giant step for womankind’. Because that’s what it was. But when I watched, I was still slightly apprehensive and I thought, ‘Oh, I hope I like this’. And I did.
After a few minutes, you forgot it was a female or a male or whatever really, it was the Doctor, and she sold it, she was the Doctor.
There aren’t any rules, and what a brilliant idea for whoever came up with it.”
Good to hear. As the first Doctor I can (very vaguely) remember in the role, I’ve always had a soft spot for Sylvester McCoy. I even enjoyed him in the otherwise terrible Hobbit films as Radagast – yes, even with the rabbit sled thing. Like most previous Doctors, McCoy has continued playing the role across many, many audio dramas, with the most recent World Apart finding him on an alien planet undergoing therapy that will bring you closer to your ‘shadow self.’ So that sounds fun.
In the meantime, the next season of Doctor Who is currently shooting, with the first photos of the reunited cast causing a storm on social media. The new run won’t arrive until early 2020 though, so why not use the break to explore some classic Seventh Doctor stories?
