Posted in: BBC, Current News, Doctor Who, TV | Tagged: doctor who

Why are Doctor Who Fans So Resistant to Billie Piper as The Doctor?

Why are Doctor Who fans resistant to Billie Piper as the next Doctor? Other actors have played other roles before becoming a Doctor/companion.

When there's no Doctor Who, that means maximum Doctor Who Fan Drama. Everyone's wringing their hands, fretting that the show might get cancelled despite the BBC repeatedly saying the show isn't cancelled and they're going to keep making it, no matter what budget. One storm in a teacup is fans arguing about why or how The Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa) regenerated into Billie Piper. Their common argument? She can't be the new Doctor! She was or is Rose Tyler! That's the weirdest bit of fandom prejudice out of all kinds of biased and prejudiced arguments about new Doctors.

"Billie Piper can't be the next Doctor!" Why not? Piper is the rare actor who has played multiple roles during her time on Doctor Who. Apart from Rose Tyler, she's played Cassandra, the Last Living Human of the Far Future, when they were body swapped. She played The Moment, the interface of an ethical Gallifreyan time bomb whose function is to talk the user out of detonating it. That's two more roles on the show on a show where actors have come back in different roles – Colin Baker played a fascistic Gallifreyan officer who shot the Doctor (Peter Davison) before coming back as the next Doctor. Peter Capaldi guest-starred as a Pompeian in "The Fires of Pompeii" before coming back as the Doctor. Karen Gillen played an oracle in the same episode with a few lines before coming back to become one of the most popular companions, Amy Pond. Why can't an actor who used to play a popular companion come back and be The Doctor?

"But how?" cried fans when the answer was already answered by Steven Moffat and Capaldi's Doctor. The Twelfth Doctor picked the face of the Pompeian father he rescued to remind himself of his mission to save people. Why can't The Doctor, consciously or otherwise, pick the face of… one of the companions he loved most? Rose was the companion who made him feel alive again and pulled him out of his survivor's guilt and self-hatred from The Time War. It makes perfect sense for The Doctor to pick that face during regeneration in a moment where he remembered joy. It's emotionally and thematically resonant, yet fans are so obsessed with their own prejudices and biases that they can't accept it. Russell T Davies writes with a preference for emotional logic over plot logic, and this is totally consistent for him. The lore is already there for this to happen. The reason is emotional.

Tellingly, Davies has refused to confirm that it's Rose Tyler who came out of that regeneration and not a new Doctor. For all we know, he might be the one who "leaked" the plot rumour that The Doctor somehow morphed into Rose Tyler to stop the MetaCrisis Doctor from taking over his body. Nobody trolls the fans better than Davies. Perhaps the reason fans are resistant is deep down, they all really want The Doctor to be Daddy Who Makes Things Okay. Davies might be as aware of that as any of them.

So keep calm and carry on. We'll find out at Christmas. Trust nothing but an official reveal by Davies or the BBC; both are basically the same thing. You're getting nice things. You just have to wait a little longer. But then the UNIT Headquarters section of the official Doctor Who website has started posting memos about Rose Tyler, which seems to tease that she's back in this universe, so maybe it's Rose Tyler after all. Or it's The Doctor, but everyone thinks she's Rose Tyler.

And this is my last work for Bleeding Cool. I'm off for my own adventures, travelling the world across Space and Time. No, I have not regenerated into Billie Piper, nor do I plan to. [Ed. Note: Geronimo! Allons-y!]

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