The Fourteenth Doctor is on the Way!

*Spoilers for the Fourteenth Doctor’s casting. If you don’t want to know, leave now and best of luck to you!*

This was a wild one for me. By the time I got into Who, Matt Smith was already the Doctor, so my experience of new Doctor announcements was as an event. There was an entire live TV special to announce Peter Capaldi, and they shot a special teaser to reveal Jodie Whittaker. It’s always been A Thing, a big moment that’s gotten plenty of buildup.

So imagine my surprise when I woke up this morning, logged onto my favorite movie/TV forum, and opened a Doctor Who thread to discover that the BBC made their announcement with a tweet and an accompanying article. No fanfare, but definitely a surprise! Our next Doctor is none other than Ncuti Gatwa, a 29-year-old actor best known for his supporting role in the Netflix series Sex Education.

I wasn’t familiar with Gatwa before, which is obviously no problem—I’d never heard of Matt Smith either, and he was an absolutely stellar Doctor. Not a ton of prior credits, which is also fine. Just gives me less scrambling to do to watch as much of his filmography as I can get my hands on before his debut. On that note, I’ve got 6 episodes left to review for season 1 of DuckTales, so I’ll wrap up that season for Other Doctor Lives while I start banking some write-ups for Gatwa’s work. Sex Education, here I come!

Since Gatwa’s a pretty unknown quantity for me at this point, I don’t have a ton of thoughts right now, other than excitement. In my opinion, Doctor Who’s casting department hasn’t steered us wrong yet, so I have every confidence in him. He’ll be a young Doctor, which is a neat way to do it if the actor can still make you feel the age of the character. As with Jodie Whittaker, it’s critical that the writing backs him up and everyone brings their A-game. I feel a lot more assured about that since we know RTD is coming back; while his era of Who had its own issues, it also soared to greater heights than the Chibnall era.

But yes, RTD and the other writers—really hoping to get some Black voices in there—need to deliver. Of course, there are already naysayers over the casting of the first full-time Black Doctor (plenty of love to Jo Martin, who deserves her flowers, but extra Doctors who’ve been inserted into the canon don’t carry the same weight as the numbered one.) And no doubt, a lot of them will continue to dismiss Gatwa no matter what, but any faults of the show are going to be falling on his shoulders now, so it’s vital that nobody lets him down. Give him space to be the Doctor, write amazing adventures for him, and let him have awesome companion(s). In other words, just give him the means to shine.

We don’t know yet when Thirteen’s final episode, which will give us our first official glimpse of Fourteen, will air. But I trust that the character is going to be in good hands. Here’s to more thrilling adventures in store!