Casting
spoilers, obviously. Don’t read if you
don’t want to know.
Not long
ago, the main cast for series 11 of new Who
was announced, with the promise of the TARDIS getting more crowded than it has
on any regular basis in the new series.
Mandip Gill, Bradley Walsh, and Tosin Cole have been cast as the
Thirteenth Doctor’s three companions,
playing Yasmin, Graham, and Ryan respectively.
I don’t
have much familiarity with any of the three actors, although none of them are
unknowns. Gill and Cole have both been a
part of the long-running U.K. soap Hollyoaks,
and although Walsh has a decent amount of acting experience (as it turns out,
he has a Whoniverse connection, having played Odd Bob on The Sarah Jane Adventures,) it seems he’s better known as a TV
presenter in Britain. That’s kind of an
interesting collection of credits, and it could be argued, especially with
Walsh, that the BBC is banking on familiar faces in kind of a kitschy way, but
I’m fully prepared to withhold judgment until I see him and the others in
action. After all, before Who, Billie Piper was mainly known as a
pop star, and she was fantastic.
Likewise, Catherine Tate was best known for broad sketch comedy, but as
Donna, she brought humor, heart, and pathos in equal measure. For me, there really aren’t any significant
instances of Who casting letting me
down, so I’m ready to see what Walsh and co. can do.
I’m
excited for a fuller TARDIS, hearkening back to the One and Five eras. Since we have yet to see anything like this
in the new series, at least long-term (there are the occasional episodes with
the Ponds plus River, or adding the Paternoster gang to the proceedings, but
they were never around full-time,) I’m curious to see how well the show will
juggle the bigger cast. It may or may
not have a tricky time of it – even though the classic-series episodes were
only half as long as they are in the new series, the serialized format gave
them quite a bit more time per adventure, which allowed space for the assorted
characters/relationships to develop. I’m
hopeful, though. More companions mean a
range of possible interactions, and you can play with all kinds of fun combos.
I’m also
intrigued by the fact that Walsh is so much older than Gill and Cole (and Jodie
Whittaker, for that matter,) and what that will mean for the companions’
relationships with one another. Is this
going to be an Ian-Barbara-Susan kind of situation, where Graham is a teacher
and Yasmin and Ryan are two of his students, and they all get caught up together
with the Doctor? Do they know each some
other way, or are they strangers who all happen to be in the same wrong place
at the wrong time when something crazy and sci-fi happens (or maybe Yasmin and
Ryan know each other but not Graham)?
Will they even all come from the same time/place or will the Doctor pick
them up separately over the course of a few episodes?
And just
generally, I’m happy that, between the Doctor and her three companions, we’ll
have two women and two PoC in the mix.
After Whittaker was announced as the Thirteenth Doctor, there was a lot
of speculation as to who her companion might be. Another woman? A solo male?
One of each? Given the continued
whiteness of the Doctor him- and herself, maybe a PoC? The answer, it turns out, is “all of the
above.” In addition to that, Ryan is
going to be the first full-time Black male companion – despite Mickey’s place
as the first PoC companion in the series, he only traveled in the TARDIS for a
very short time and was always a bit more Rose’s companion than the Doctor’s
(similar to Bill last season being the first full-time LGBTQ companion, since
Jack was only around briefly.) Not to
mention, Yasmin is going to be the show’s first non-Black PoC companion; it’s
high time the series had a British Asian character in a major role.
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