That the Doctor might at last be played by someone other than a white male seemed likely from the moment previous Doctor Peter Capaldi announced his retirement from the role in 2017 - Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Olivia Colman and Idris Elba were among the names oddsmakers threw around.
( The possibility of a female Bond, or at least a 007, has been in the air as well.) Like Bond, the Doctor has been played by many actors over the years - the character periodically “regenerates” into a new, yet dramatically identical, person - and is currently played by a woman, Jodie Whittaker, starting her second season.
#Doctor who specials day of the doctor full#
Titled “Spyfall,” in an obvious echo of the 2012 Bond entry “Skyfall,” it comes with School of John Barry music cues, exotic locations, black-tie formal wear, casino gambling, cases full of gadgets, a chase scene, a tech billionaire villain (Lenny Henry), a “Bond, James Bond” joke and Stephen Fry as M16 head “C.” (I don’t know if there’s a reference I’m missing in that “C” maybe it stands for Chris Chibnall, the current showrunner.) Spies of many nations are being attacked, in ways that defy terrestrial science and tradecraft. Those cultural worlds collide Wednesday on BBC America in the Season 12 premiere of the revived series - there was a long hiatus, from 1989 to 2005 - which does double duty as a New Year’s Day special. But each series went on to create one of the United Kingdom’s great, global icons of world-saving heroism - which in the case of “Doctor Who” extends to saving the galaxy, the universe and reality itself. It was likely mere coincidence that the BBC premiered “Doctor Who” just a year after the arrival of the first James Bond film, the similarly titled “Dr.