This feature was published by the i in December 2019

Before Jodie Whittaker’s first series of Doctor Who last year, she was anxious. Upon the announcement that she would take up the mantle from Peter Capaldi, and become the first female Doctor, there was trepidation, excitement, and debate. Some argued, for instance, that the idea of a woman playing a time-travelling alien with two hearts was simply too far-fetched. Others wondered what effect the casting would have on the show – “nobody wants a TARDIS full of bras”, wrote one online commenter. 

“The pressure is: if people hate this choice, it doesn’t just have a knock-off on my casting.” she recalls. “It’s going to be, “See? Women can’t do it” And that felt like a very unfair pressure. No one was saying to [new showrunner Chris Chibnall], you are representing loads of people. I was somehow representing all women ever in playing this part.”

All of it was nonsense, of course: Whittaker’s first run was a welcome regeneration for the show, and she fast embodied everything the Doctor should be – alien yet human, tough but kind, impossibly smart but ridiculously silly. It’s bizarre to think anyone could ever have questioned her casting.

The second series opens on New Year’s Day, and the mood is different: relaxed, relieved. “I feel like I can enjoy it a bit more,” Whittaker says, sitting next to Chris Chibnall in a London hotel. She is 37 years-old, is wearing a casual white t-shirt, and often talks so fast it feels like her words are tumbling down stairs. Meanwhile Chibnall, 49, who Whittaker first met through his ITV drama Broadchurch, is an infectiously cheery man in a turquoise suit. He offers me a biscuit and says, “The big difference is people now know our version of the show. Which gives us a chance to develop, to progress, to evolve.”

This evolution is a return to the modern show’s roots. Whittaker and Chibnall’s first series was notable for being an accessible string of relatively self-contained stories, which in a bold move, featured no returning monsters. All of which has changed. The new series’ opening episode, Spyfall, is a huge James Bond-style romp that Chibnall has described as the show’s “most ambitious, most action packed” episode yet, and sets up an arc that will run all series. And as for the monsters? Following on from the return of the Daleks in 2019 New Year’s Day special Resolution, this year will see the Doctor come face-to-face with the Judoon, and classic foes the Cybermen. 

“It was always the plan to bring those monsters back,” explains Chibnall. “In the first season, I wanted to make sure that people who came to the show had their own set of monsters…”

“Tim Shaw!” Whittaker cuts in – he was last year’s biggest villain, an alien with a face covered in teeth.

“…But now it’s about taking those new people who are onboard the show and going, ‘Look at everything we’ve got in the Doctor Who toybox.’” 

Perhaps the most profound difference, though, is how the show will approach the main character herself. Chibnall first introduced the Doctor almost as if she was an entirely new character; divorced from her past mythology, and accessible to anyone, even if they hadn’t seen the show before. But now her companions Yaz (Mandip Gill), Ryan (Tosin Cole) and Graham (Bradley Walsh) are beginning to ask questions. “Their discovery of who she is forms the backbone of this series,” explains Chibnall. “She didn’t use the words ‘Time Lord’ last year, or ‘Gallifrey’. She uses them this year.”  

The beauty of the Doctor as a role is that it allows actors channel their own personality. Whittaker’s Doctor, much like she is in person, crackles with a sense of wit, warmth and righteous fury; all enhanced by her no-nonsense Yorkshire accent, which was shaped by her upbringing in Huddersfield. (She currently lives in London with actor husband Christian Contreras and their daughter, who was born in 2015).

But a common thread running through criticism of Doctor Who last year was that her Doctor was hamstrung by scripts that portrayed her as passive and insecure. At its best, this approach could portray a Doctor who was flawed and human. At its worst, it resulted in the character feeling ineffective. Are we going to see a more decisive Doctor this year, one who is now more sure of herself? 

“I don’t know if it was indecisiveness,” Whittaker disagrees. “I think I saw it slightly differently. I feel that my Doctor had the ability to change their mind and ask for help. Also, the way Chris writes it, a lot of my thought processes are spoken out loud. If you just heard the conclusion, and not the inner monologue, you’d have a decisive Doctor.”

“The essence of the 13th Doctor is still the same,” says Chibnall. “But there’s probably a greater range of flavours within her this year. And lots of different scenes that Jodie gets to play that we haven’t done before.”

One of the less valid, but most persistent criticisms of the last series is that thanks to its female lead, its diverse TARDIS team, and its engagement with topics like the Partition of India and the American Civil Rights movement – both written by the show’s first ever BAME writers – Doctor Who is now “too politically correct”. To quote the Daily Mail, in an article titled “Exterminate! Fans’ backlash over Doctor Who’s latest transformation into TV’s most PC show”: “Next we’ll be told we did bad things in India”.

I ask how they feel about this “backlash”. Whittaker lets out a bitter laugh. “What’s interesting to me,” she says, “is we did this episode about Rosa Parks. And it highlighted Rosa Parks’ heroic moment in history, but it also highlighted that our modern society is still suffering from a lack of progress in people’s certain attitudes towards different people.” She pauses for a moment, and raises her hands into a shrug. “I just don’t understand what’s politically correct about saying there is still racism within our current society. I just don’t understand!”

“The Doctor and the show are beacons of compassion and empathy,” adds Chibnall. “That has always been true. We haven’t done anything that Doctor Who hasn’t done in the past. I don’t think Doctor Who has changed. I think the world has changed.”

Both Chibnall and Whittaker agree that working on Doctor Who is – for reasons both good and bad – a job like no other. 

Chibnall says before taking on the role he was told by both former showrunners Russell T Davies and Steven Moffat to remember to enjoy it. “You have to be quite mindful about it because there is so much to do,” he says. “It’s like a television series with three other television series on top.” Whittaker, meanwhile, was warned by former Doctors David Tennant and Matt Smith about the quantity and complexity of the lines. “The line-learning is really hard. I probably make guest artists feel incredibly confident because they come in and I’m like, ‘what’s my line?’”

The most famous piece of advice from any Doctor was Patrick Troughton, whose famous maxim was to never stay in the role for more than three years. 2020 is year two for Whittaker. Has she considered life beyond Doctor Who? “I absolutely want to come back for another season,” she says. “And you are!”, replies Chibnall. Work on the next series has already begun. 

“OK!,” she says, laughing. “I’m not done. It is hard and I am a bit grumpy at four o’clock in the morning when it’s dark in Cardiff and we’re on some hill and I’m like ‘oh God’. But I genuinely love it and it’s a moment in your life that lasts forever because I’m always the Doctor. No matter what. I’m always in that family. And that’s extraordinary.”

Doctor Who airs on New Year’s Day at XPM on BBC1