It's About Time

When I was around seven or eight I would play Doctor Who in the playground at school. I would play the Doctor and my friend Louise Griffiths would play Mel. We'd make up adventures in which we'd run away from imaginary alien monsters and pretend to fall off cliffs. I'd like to think I was being clever and wise beyond my years but I can't manage that now, so I doubt I did it when I was seven.

The programme was more or less cancelled a year or so after that and didn't reappear until 2005 by which time I was twenty-five so I sort of missed that window in which I could have told the careers adviser that I wanted to be an actor, director, or writer so that I could work on Doctor Who.

I mean that; if the programme existed during those formative years I probably would have tried to get involved in it somehow. Oh well.

That's not a problem the youth of today have. Children watching it when it came back in 2005 are now going to be making their way in the world as young adults and I'm sure there are a few who have decided to become actors or writers or props people or composers because of their love of the programme, and that's brilliant.

What's not so brilliant is that the girls and young women who love Doctor Who and want to be actors because of it will never get to play the main role.

Oh, hang on.

I think the only thing I've seen Jodie Whittaker in is Attack the Block and I remember thinking she was good in that. Well, everyone and everything is good in that; it's ace, but that's beside the point.

I'm sure she'll be good in the role and I'm keen to see what this new Doctor Who will be like, but it doesn't matter what I think. What matters is that now is that a door has opened and non-male fans of the programme know that they can not only write for it, or direct it, or act in it, but they can also play the lead part.

That is, as the Ninth Doctor used to say, fantastic.