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New Doctor Who Companion Announced

Posted by samzenpus on from the hanging-out-with-the-doctor dept.

eternaldoctorwho writes "Jenna-Louise Coleman will be the newest companion to the Doctor (Matt Smith) on the hit series Doctor Who. The announcement came earlier today on the BBC's Twitter page devoted to the program, along with some other details about the upcoming season of the show. Miss Coleman is also known for her previous roles on Emmerdale and Captain America: The First Avenger."

17 of 255 comments (clear)

  1. Male companion by Stargoat · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Why can't we have a long term positive male companion? Yes, it's nice to look at young women, but that isn't what Doctor Who is all about. Is it going to take a female doctor before we have can have a decent male companion that isn't a coward or dies every other episode?

    (If it does require a female companion, can I vote for Emma Thompson?)

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    Hoist Number One and Number Six.
    1. Re:Male companion by Stargoat · · Score: 4, Interesting

      errr, (If it does require a female doctor, can I vote for Emma Thompson?)

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      Hoist Number One and Number Six.
    2. Re:Male companion by owlnation · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Why can't we have a long term positive male companion?

      Probably because the BBC is trying to hit the right advertising demographic in the US. It's one of the very few scripted shows that the BBC can sell abroad, and they want to milk every penny out of it they can (even though its production is wholly subsidized). The BBC loves to get paid twice for things -- and more so with Dr Who as it has lots of merchandising too.

      They did used to have male companions, back in the days when the BBC actually gave a fuck about its Charter. It was originally supposed to be an educational show for children, but now it's wholly-commercial, ratings-driven TV (of variable quality) -- something the BBC is not supposed to produce.

      Hopefully this girl can act better than the ginger girl, who could not act to save her life. But since this new girl is an ex-soap opera actress, I'd think it's likely she's been hired for her other assets.

      You'll probably only see a male companion if the Doctor gets a sex change.

    3. Re:Male companion by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Interesting

      No. Absolutely not. As in, hell no. Ick, I think I just puked up a little.

    4. Re:Male companion by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I'm not claiming this is in any way representative of Who viewers as a whole, but my university has a Who fan club (we call ourselves the Society of Gallifreyan Scholars) and the membership is ~75% female.

    5. Re:Male companion by Beardo+the+Bearded · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I'd like to see more "companion rescuing the Doctor" events.

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      ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
    6. Re:Male companion by morari · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I was always disappointed that Jack Harkness didn't stick around for more than a few episodes. Of course, I guess the character did get his own show to make up for it.

      What I really want is for the Doctor to take on a non-human companion. That would open things open a lot more, I think. Also, while we're at it, why doesn't the Doctor ever regenerate into a female form?

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      "He who can destroy a thing, controls a thing." --Paul Atreides, Dune
    7. Re:Male companion by Hatta · · Score: 3, Interesting

      If you haven't watched Torchwood yet, I'd advise against it. It's really pretty bad.

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  2. Too Bad by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Too Bad David Tennant doesn't want to act the Doctor anymore, Matt isn't bad, & does eventually grow on you but David is and in my opinion the best Doctor of the newer series.

    1. Re:Too Bad by apharmdq · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Tennant ran around and yelled a bit too much for my taste. Eccleston felt far more like the classic Doctors, in that he was more of thinker than a man of action. I definitely preferred Eccleston to Tennant. (Though Tennant does look dashing, and has some great moments.) I haven't gotten to Matt Smith yet, but from what a few friends of mine have told me, his Doctor is a lot closer to the classic Doctors, which is something I really liked. (FYI, my favorite Doctor is still the 7th, though I thought each one brought something unique to the table.) In any case, I have a feeling Tennant would have gone over a little better if it weren't for Russel T. Davies' writing style. But I guess I shouldn't complain, as RTD did bring the show back from the dead after all.

    2. Re:Too Bad by geminidomino · · Score: 5, Interesting

      . Eccleston felt far more like the classic Doctors, in that he was more of thinker than a man of action. I definitely preferred Eccleston to Tennant.

      And here I thought I was alone in the world. (My brothers still mock me for it)

    3. Re:Too Bad by DahGhostfacedFiddlah · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I'd love to see Robert Picardo play The Doctor. I'll admit it's 90% for the joke (he played The Doctor in ST:Voyager), but if he can do a British accent, I think he'd be able to pull it off well.

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  3. I hate to say it... by PCM2 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    ...but the last season of Doctor Who stunk so bad that I almost completely lost interest.

    When Steven Moffat was first announced as the new show-runner, he gave a bunch of interviews about how the best Doctor Whos were the old ones where things were scary, and all these plans he had that sounded really great and like he could save the show from the worst aspects of Russell T. Davies' cloying writing.

    Well, scrap all that, because he gave us an even younger Doctor, companions straight out of Australian soaps, even more of Davies' deus ex machina solutions, even more of the Doctor waving his sonic screwdriver around like it's Harry Potter's want (they destroyed it in the old show for a reason), incomprehensible stories full of characters you can't identify and don't care about, and he actually made the Doctor the sidekick in his own show. I never really got to the point where I thought New Who was better than the original, but now I think it's really much, much worse than the old shows, warts, cheap budgets and all.

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    1. Re:I hate to say it... by FPhlyer · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Series 5 and 6 of the new Who actually did something that Doctor Who has needed for a long time: it made time travel an important plot point in several of the stories. Time travel has obviously been an important part of Doctor Who, a story about a time traveler, since it began in '63, but usually time travel has been used as a plot device to get the Doctor into a dramatic situation. Steven Moffat has taken time travel and made the paradoxes an important part of the story itself.

      Unfortunately, Moffat has failed to resolve any of these dramatic time travel story lines in a way that makes any sense. He uses time travel as a device to get out of a sticky plot complication without worrying about if it makes any logical sense. The finale of Season 5 illustrates this: The future doctor goes back in time and gives Rory the sonic so that Rory can free the Doctor so the Doctor can go forward in time so that he can go back in time to give Rory the sonic... The only way that I can digest that poorly thought out resolution to the problem of getting the Doctor out of "the perfect prison" is to shake my head and let it slide because I like Doctor Who. But seriously... couldn't the writing staff of the series come up with a better resolution than that?

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    2. Re:I hate to say it... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      It's wibbly wobbly timey wimey stuff. I'd much rather have that than any of RTD's resolutions. Moffat may in fact be a time traveler himself, though. That, or he has seriously been thinking about this show his entire life. In the mid-90s, he was posting messages on Usenet about plot points he'd later actually bring to the show.

  4. Don't care until it is on Netflix by NotQuiteReal · · Score: 4, Interesting

    [fingers-in-ears] + "nananananaaaanaaanaaanaaa" (I can't hear you).

    No "spoilers", please! What with this modern age, and all, we don't all live in "real time". If some entertainment is worth experiencing, it will be for a while, and not everyone can experience it at the same time.

    Currently, I am watching "The Doctor", and "Emilia Pond" (with "Rory")... Don't confuse me with actors names, I don't want to NOT "suspend belief" to geek out about the (real life) details that don't affect me. I am not in the TV biz, this is just entertainment for me.

    Sometimes watching "dead" series like "Firefly" (or whatever) is nicer, since you know there IS an end.

    Another show I enjoy, "Breaking Bad" will have a final season, that THE SHOW CREATORS know is the end, so they get to create a satisfactory story too, I hope.

    Are "fans" of any serial really good for an on-going work of "art"? Maybe a complete story is, by definition, better than an unfinished story?

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    This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
    1. Re:Don't care until it is on Netflix by Grimbleton · · Score: 1, Interesting

      Voyager was better than TOS.