SFF Chronicles News
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12th October 2010 05:23 PM
Darren Allan
The BBC’s famous Time Lord has been through many incarnations, but never through a sex change.
Yet according to an article in the Telegraph, it seems that in the 1980s when the show was lurching through a bad patch with Colin Baker’s brightly clad Doctor at the helm, the Beeb considered the prospect of a female lead to replace him.
The Time Lady in question came as a suggestion from Sydney Newman when he was asked how best to stimulate viewing figures back on an upwards track. Newman was the original architect of the show as head of BBC Drama back in the sixties.
In terms of the female Doctor’s character, Newman envisaged a feisty and flawed non-Hollywood type woman, with actresses who could have potentially been the first Time Lady including Joanna Lumley (we can see that), Frances de la Tour (at a push) and Dawn French (maybe not).
However, as we know Newman’s advice wasn’t heeded, and they decided to bring in Sylvester McCoy (come back Dawn French, all is forgiven). And the rest was history, as they say.
Still, it’s probably just as well that the series crashed and burned at the tail end of the eighties, because we might not have had the current revival run of Ecclestone, Tenant and Smith otherwise.
The first female Doctor may well still happen, in fact who knows, she could be the next one after Smith. Given the current Doc Who script writers’ love of humorous scenes and asides, the regeneration scene would certainly be very different, and not just a simple “Oh I can’t get used to these teeth.”
Darren Allan
The BBC’s famous Time Lord has been through many incarnations, but never through a sex change.
Yet according to an article in the Telegraph, it seems that in the 1980s when the show was lurching through a bad patch with Colin Baker’s brightly clad Doctor at the helm, the Beeb considered the prospect of a female lead to replace him.
The Time Lady in question came as a suggestion from Sydney Newman when he was asked how best to stimulate viewing figures back on an upwards track. Newman was the original architect of the show as head of BBC Drama back in the sixties.
In terms of the female Doctor’s character, Newman envisaged a feisty and flawed non-Hollywood type woman, with actresses who could have potentially been the first Time Lady including Joanna Lumley (we can see that), Frances de la Tour (at a push) and Dawn French (maybe not).
However, as we know Newman’s advice wasn’t heeded, and they decided to bring in Sylvester McCoy (come back Dawn French, all is forgiven). And the rest was history, as they say.
Still, it’s probably just as well that the series crashed and burned at the tail end of the eighties, because we might not have had the current revival run of Ecclestone, Tenant and Smith otherwise.
The first female Doctor may well still happen, in fact who knows, she could be the next one after Smith. Given the current Doc Who script writers’ love of humorous scenes and asides, the regeneration scene would certainly be very different, and not just a simple “Oh I can’t get used to these teeth.”
