Doctor Who?

OK, I'm sure you'll all have heard the news by now, and I know you'll all be deeply disappointed. Sadly,I'm not the new Doctor Who. I know I didn't audition and that I'm not actually an actor, but those are minor points. Damn it,I've watched the programme for so bloody long and know so much about it that the BBC should have been calling me,begging me to replace David Tennant. It's obvious that I'm the ideal candidate, and not this Matt Smith person they've given the part to! This is the end of Doctor Who as we know it! Mark my words! At least, this was the gist of many of the 'opinions' being offered on message boards after the casting of Matt Smith was announced. It was bloody frightening! Truly, the knob heads have taken over the web! My favourite comment was 'Who the fuck is Matt Smith? Why no black Doctor? Russell T Davies is a racist!' It's difficult to know where to start with such idiocy, quite apart from the obvious fact that, as outgoing executive producer and head writer, Russell T Davies had bugger all to do with the casting of the new Doctor. But hell, why let the facts get in the way of a good rant? Damn it, why no female Doctor, or homosexual Doctor, for that matter? Quite clearly Russell T Davies is a big fat gay misogynistic homophobe.

Actually, I really don't understand the hatred frequently directed toward Mr Davies. The opposite should be true - without him as the driving creative force, it is highly unlikely that Doctor Who would ever have made it back on to our screens. Or, if it had, it certainly wouldn't have been the success that it has. The reality is that he has achieved the near-impossible, taking a classic TV series and updating it completely to conform with current audience expectations and TV scheduling requirements, whilst retaining its essence. Believe me, as someone who can remember as far back as Patrick Troughton, the second Doctor, this current version is still, most definitely, Doctor Who. Behind all the modern trappings, it is still quite recognisably the same programme that started in 1963. Indeed, I'd go as far as to say that it is now pretty much the programme that many of us wanted it to be when we watched it as kids back in the 1970s and 1980s.

However, we're straying from the original point of this post - the new Doctor, Matt Smith. A lot of the hostile comments seem to focus on three factors: his age, the fact he isn't black(!) and the fact that he isn't well known. Well, by the time we see him on air in 2010, he actually won't be much younger than Peter Davison was when he took over from Tom Baker, and he worked out OK, didn't he? As for the race issue, this is totally irrelevant - I'm sure the producers cast on the basis of acting ability and suitability for the role. On the issue of his level of fame, I remember when Tom Baker was cast, people were asking 'Tom who?'. Yet he turned out to be one of the most popular, not to mention the longest serving, actors in the role. Personally, I'll reserve judgement on Matt Smith until I've actually seen him in the role. That said, based on what I have seen of his work in Ruby in the Smoke and Shadow in the North, I think he'll be pretty good. I somehow doubt he'd have been cast by a bunch of level-headed professional TV producers if they weren't sure he would be.