Black in Time

I almost missed the fact that a new Dr Who had been cast yesterday, so low key was the announcement.  Even the BBC News homepage, - where you'd think they'd want to highlight it - had it tucked away in the second row of stories.  It's interesting that after having that special little continuity break film to announce Jodie Whittaker's casting, for the casting of the first non-white actor in the role they kept it so low key.  Perhaps it is merely a reflection of the way their main target audience now consumes its news that they chose to put the announcement out on social media first.  Anyway, one of the great things about Ncuti Gatwa's casting as the Doctor is that it has really flushed out the racists on social media and various Who-related message boards.  Of course, many of them fall into the 'I'm not a racist, but' category, which means of course that they are white middle class bigots who don't like to offend other white middle class people who might not be bigoted.  You know the sort: 'I have nothing against them, but I wouldn't want one marrying my son/daughter'.  A lot of their pronouncements are clearly what they think is subtle probing to find out if other members of the community are like minded.  They're the same people who complain about soap operas having plots about right-wing extremists when 'they should be focusing on things like Islamic terrorism or Asian grooming gangs'.  

What's surprised me most about the reaction to Gatwa's casting, though, has been the number of homophobic comments it has provoked.  Obviously, I'm not surprised that there are homophobes out there, or that they are often also racists, but simply that in this case it based purely upon a character that the actor has played.  I have no idea as to Gatwa's real-life sexual orientation and, quite frankly, I don't care, that's his business, but the key thing here is that the people posting this stuff don't seem to grasp the concept of acting: that it is pretending to be something that you aren't.  I mean, I knew that these bigots were ignorant, but not utterly stupid.  Speaking personally, I can't say that I'm familiar with Ncuti Gatwa's work - I don't have Netflix, so I've never seen Sex Education, for which he is currently best known - but I'm sure that he'll be fine as the Doctor, having cast in the role by Russell T Davies, who has an excellent track recording for spotting and casting talented actors.  Of course, what will ultimately make or beak him in the role will be the standard of the writing.  As we've seen over the past few series, lackluster scripts will completely scupper a Doctor's tenure.  OK, Jodie Whittaker's one note characterisation didn't help (I hated it), but with the sort of scripts she was being given, she didn't stand a chance.  I'll admit that I never liked the whole gender-switch thing and felt that Whittaker was miscast, but I tried to give her a chance - but the writing was just so poor.  Which is why I think that Gatwa has a much better chance of establishing himself - Russell T Davies is back as show-runner and has an excellent track record as a script writer, which, hopefully, will make all the difference.