View source for Who's the boss now ... Jodie off to flying start

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| publication = Metro (England)
| file = 2018-10-08 Metro.jpg
| px = 650
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| date = 2018-10-08
| author = Keith Watson
| pages = 9
| language = English 
| type = 
| description = A reader [[A Very Timely Addition to the Tardis|responds]].
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REVIEW

Doctor Who BBC1 {{stars|5|5}}


THE arrival of Jodie Whittaker as the latest incarnation of Britain's most celebrated TV fictional character - go on, pitch another contender - has been hyped for so long it felt tike time had osmosed into another dimension. 

OK, so it is a big deal that finally we have a woman playing Doctor Who. But the mere fact that such a deal has been made of it is surely indicative of how far we have to go before we reach the promised galaxy of gender blindness when it comes to casting. Let's not even get started on whether James Bond could be black. Is Whittaker worth the wait? Absolutely. She nails her own effervescent take on the Time Lord in opening episode The Woman Who Fell To Earth which allows her to set out her stall without losing sight that Doctor Who has to be as much about the story as it is about its star turn. But the big deal here is not the change of Doctor, but the change of the power behind the scenes, Chris Chibnall coming in as showrunner to replace Steven Moffat.

It's a subtle shift but on opening evidence Chibnall, the man behind Broadchurch, is intent on foregrounding human stories at the expense of the full throttle caper that Who had become under Moffat. It's a sharp move: Doctor Who can't compete with big bucks Hollywood FX but it can give extra-terrestrial antics an emotional undertow.

And so it proved here as Whittaker's Doctor rebooted her brain - and her wardrobe - and enlisted the aid of a brand new gang of companions in a Humans vs

Aliens tale that nodded back to Who's hide-behind-the settee roots. It wasn't without teeth, the episode's baddie alien just nasty enough to seed nightmares, but with Chibnall's script peppered with sly humour (if your name is Tim Shaw, maybe today's the day to throw a sickiej the balance between thrills and knockabout spills was right on point.

The Whittaker era is off to a flying start.



Caption: Who's company: Jodie Whittaker as the Doctor with Grace (Sharon D Clarke) and Ryan (Tosin Cole) in the opening episode
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