by Si_Crewe » Thu Feb 02, 2017 7:13 am
The problem is, the entire show is in a precarious situation IMO.
Moffat has been pissing people off for years and over the last couple of years, in particular, he seems to just not give a fuck about the show's credibility at all.
And now I understand he's quitting at the end of the year, at the same time as Capaldi.
I dunno who's lined up to replace Moffat.
Maybe they'll be superb at the job; creating intriguing, thoughtful and nuanced characters and episodes and return the show to it's glory days.
It that case, it'd probably be fine to hire a woman for the role. Most of the fans would be so happy at the improvement that they wouldn't care either way.
But maybe the new show-runner won't be particularly good.
In that case, if the rest of the show is weak, casting a woman is just going to give a lot of fans an extra excuse to stop watching.
And, of course, it puts that actor in the position of being the Doctor who "killed the franchise", which is never a good thing to have on your CV.
Ideally, they should have either signed Capaldi or Moffat up for another year so that the show could transition to a new era more smoothly.
We'd either be able to judge whether Capaldi's Doctor became a less absurd character under the new management or we'd be able to judge whether the new actor gave Moffat's often ridiculous show more credibility.
Personally, I always thought Gillian Anderson would make a superb Doctor.
She's a terrific actor, she's got heaps of credibility within the sci-fi community, she's great at making wacky technobabble sound plausible and her tenure on The X-Files proved that she's capable of sticking with a project for the long-term, so she's not just going to get itchy feet and piss off after a year or two.