Reactions to New Companion Announcement

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.