View source for Tennant's Doctor Who return begs questions

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| publication = Evening Herald
| file = 2022-10-25 Evening Herald.jpg
| px = 450
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| date = 2022-10-25
| author = Pat Stacey
| pages = 15
| language = English 
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| text = On the box

TALKING POINT IS IT A PLOY TO BOOST RATINGS?


Well, nobody saw that surprise coming at the end of Sundays Doctor Who special, not even us TV critics, whose preview copies were missing the final crucial moments of the climactic regeneration scene. Now we know why.

In case you're unaware of what happened, in a twist that blindsided everyone watching Jodie Whittaker's departing Doctor didn't regenerate, as expected, into her successor Ncuti Gatwa, but into David Tennant. This means that not only is Tennant the 10th Doctor, he's now officially the 14th too. 

GOBSMACKED

Viewers were gobsmacked, to put it mildly. Twitter lit up. Past Doctors have reappeared at various times throughout the series' long run, usually in anniversary specials, but never like this.

We'd known already that both Tennant and Catherine Tate as his companion Donna Noble would be reprising their roles for next year's 60th anniversary. Once the episode had aired, it was announced that, rather than filling guest spots, they'll be starring in three full specials, due to be shown in November of next year. At least one of these will also feature the late, much-loved Bernard Cribbins as another popular character, Wilfred Mott.

It's not clear yet how Gatwa - who at a stroke has become the 15th Doctor rather than the 14th - will fit into all this, but it's been confirmed he won't be making his Doctor Who debut proper until Christmas 2023.

The reaction to Tennant's reappearance was ecstatic. Polls over the years have consistently named the Scottish actor as the most popular Doctor of all, a tide formerly held by Tom Baker, so you can understand why so many Who fans are delighted that he's coming back, if only for three episodes.

And yet. I can't help feeling that Jodie Whittaker has been more than a little short-changed. She% been an excellent Doctor, even when lumbered with poor scripts and enduring a backlash from the misogynist halfwits sci-fi and fantasy attract like dog turds attract flies.

There was a lot to like about Whittaker's feature-length farewell to the Tardis. But the parade of former Doctors and former companions, along with numerous other callbacks to the programme's history that littered the 90 minutes, sometimes threatened to push her to margins of her own story.

The ultimate act of fan service, of course, was bringing Tennant back. As soon as he appeared on screen, the attention shifted away from Whittaker and everything else that had happened in the episode and entirely onto him.

This was Whittaker's final appearance in the role, her grand farewell The conversation should have been all about her. Instead, it became all about Tennant - although this is hardly the actor's fault.

And what about Ncuti Gatwa? The casting of the 30-year-old Rwandan-born Scottish star of Neflix's Sex Education was hailed as a watershed moment as significant as that of Jodie Whittaker. Now it's effectively been pushed out of the spotlight for a year.

So, what's the reasoning behind having David Tennant return to the role he left in 2010? The fact that Russell T Davies, who chose Tennant as Christopher Ecclestone's successor, has returned fora second stint as Doctor Who showrunner, is obviously a factor. But it's still not an explanation.

There's no compelling evidence that Tennant's iteration of the Doctor has unfinished business to take care of. His extended, highly emotional departure 12 years ago felt pretty final.

Could it be an attempt to boost the viewing figures, which have been on a gentle (and sometimes less than gentle) downward slope for a number of years?

If you wanted to be really cynical, you might interpret having Tennant's second coming seguing into Gatwa's debut, with the two Doctors possibly coming face to face on screen, as a way of softening-up potential resistance to the idea of a black Doctor.

Let's face it, we know the young actor is going to be abused by racists. It happened to John Boyega in the third Star Wars trilogy, Moses Ingrain in Obi-Wan Kenobi and all the actors of colour in The Rings of Posver.

If this is the rationale, it's a bad one. Fan service is one thing, but making even the tiniest concession to racist morons who haunt social media and newspaper comments sections is something else again.


Caption: The return to Doctor Who of David Tennant, who's now not just the 10th Doctor but also the 14th, blindsided everyone

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