One day I'll make a stupid gimmick list without overthinking it to a stupid degree, but today isn't that day.
You Were Expecting Someone Else?
List of Actors to play Doctor Who:
1. William Hartnell (1963-1966)
2. Peter Cushing (1966-1970)
3. Geoffrey Bayldon (1970-1973)
4. Richard Hurndall (1973-1975)
5. John Hurt (1975-1982)
6. Michael Jayston (1982-1986)
>The Valeyard: Trevor Martin
7. David Warner (1986-1989)
8. Rowan Atkinson (TV movie) (1993)
9. Richard E. Grant (2005-2006)
10. David Morrissey (2006-2011)
11. David Bradley (2011-2014)
>The War Who: Tom Baker
12. Toby Jones (2014-2017)
13. Jo Martin (2017-present)
>The Fugitive Who: Arabella Weir
Just Who Is Who?
How Season 12 is trying to expand the definition of what Doctor Who can be--in both cases of the word
SyFy Reviewer--05/02/2017
Picture, in your head, the character Doctor Who. The image you see will, of course, depending on your age, vary from a babyfaced bowtie wearer to a grandfatherly chap in glasses to maybe even the man from Blackadder looking like he wants to fire his agent. However, plenty of those details will remain constant. Those aspects that remain the same all derive from the performance of William Hartnell. Since he came onto the screen over 50 years ago, Doctor Who has, despite changing face, remained in his image--a paternal scientist-grandfather, the old wizard who knows what's best for you.
This can largely be attributed to the BBC's decision to cast Peter Cushing as Hartnell's replacement. In the short-term, this was a genius move, as with the two Hammer Dalek movies (fans still argue about their precise placement in canon to this day) under his belt, Cushing was the only other actor to have experience playing Doctor Who. Over the long run, however, the closeness of Cushing's character to Hartnell's meant that the show--once a byword for infinite possibility--began to stagnate, offering up the same manic pepper-pots, the same medieval romps, the same bases under siege, again and again. Just as these problems with the show had been created by fidelity to one version of character, another version of the character was needed to fix them. After "Hartnell but more energetic", "Hartnell but more posh", and "Hartnell but more Hartnell", the young Hurt was a radical breath of fresh air. It wasn't to last.
The stories under Hurt were just as fresh-faced as the actor himself, but some of their content was just too distressing for public opinion. After a suggestion in a cliffhanger that Doctor Who was about to suffer an alien monster growing to full size in his chest, producer George Gallachio was forced to step down. This began a slow downward slide for the show, with popular controversy and criticism beginning to have a knock-on effect on quality. Indeed, Doctor Who himself was placed on trial by his peers, the Time Variance Agency serving as a clumsy stand-in for Mary Whitehouse and Brian Tesler, and the prosecutor an idealised image of Doctor Who from the past revealed as a cackling madman. The modern show has been more subtle about airing out-of-universe drama metaphorically in the show.
The revived BBC show initially tried to synthesise the two eras by combining the youth of Hurt with the attitude of Hartnell, but cracks in this approach were there from the beginning, and a gothic Grant gave way to a metrosexual Morrissey. The advent of David Bradley in many ways represented a complete reversal from earlier--a show as odd as Hurt with a protagonist as unsexy as Hartnell, a pattern that continued with Jones. Somehow, though, the controversy over any of these has been completely dwarfed by the casting of Jo Martin, whose firm school-teacher style would be completely unremarkable--even somewhat of a throwback--if it weren't for the face that it came out of. The appearance of a black woman as Doctor Who is somehow more remarkable than any of the changes and retcons of the Gatiss era.
In a lot of ways, Martin represents yet another front in the eternal war to get the character built on an eternal regeneration of the self to change from their beginnings. That's why Weir's appearance in the latest episode is so important. While fan debates fly over the Watsonian reason for this incarnation--a War incarnation? A forgotten pre-Hartnell face? A regeneration of the movie version?--the Doylist reasoning is clear. The idea of the Fugitive Who is the same as with all retconned Doctor Whos (Doctors Who?). Just as Baker's War Who introduced darker shadows into Doctor Who's past, Weir's incarnation is meant to warm the audience up to the idea that Doctor Who has been female before. This is an important step for the show to take.
The picture in your head of Doctor Who has been out of date for a while. Time moves on for those of us not possessed of T.A.R.D.I.S, and the old white man dictating terms to the universe has been an anachronism for decades. It worked very well in the past. But maybe the man from the 49th century should get up to date with the 21st.