The next Time Lord has to be a Lady

Fans call it 'heresy', but if Doctor Who is to become evenbetter, says Ben Walsh, the show should consider a sex change

The Doctor Who special, A Christmas Carol, was a hoot - muchbetter than the Kylie Minogue-starring hogwash three years ago - butcan the BBC's wonderfully inventive sci-fi series retain such headystandards? Is a radical change needed? Should the next regenerationof the Doctor, the 12th, be... wait for it... a woman?

In fact, didn't the current Who guru, Stephen Moffat (theextremely capable replacement for Russell T Davies), feel the timewas ripe for Helen Mirren, Emma Thompson or Catherine Zeta-Jones toplay the Time Lord? Matt Smith has been an energetic, smart andtowards the end of the last series rather terrific Doctor - moreeccentric Tom Baker or creepy Jon Pertwee than prickly buffoon ColinBaker - but wouldn't an actress reinvigorate the series? Moffat,perhaps, could devise a couple of episodes in which the Doctorbecomes a woman, Boy Meets Girl-style. This might ease worriedWhovians around to the idea. Moffat could then unleash two fullseries with a female lead and a dishy young male assistant. AndrewGarfield of The Social Network or Dev Patel of Slumdog Millionaire,maybe?

It may be fanciful to suggest that thespian heavyweights likeThompson or Mirren would take on a role that was once filled bySylvester McCoy (last spotted in Casualty), but as Americantelevision has demonstrated, the best roles for women are on thesmall screen. Think of Julianna Margulies in The Good Wife, GlennClose in Damages, Anna Paquin in True Blood and all the female leads- Peggy (Elisabeth Moss), Joan (Christina Hendricks) and Betty(January Jones) - in Mad Men. Whovians (and I apologise for notbeing one, just a fairly regular watcher since the days of Pertwee)may baulk at the thought of the next regeneration going from male tofemale. But Doctor Who has not been frightened to do some prettysilly things in the past - flying buses, paving-stone girlfriends,K9 - so why should a gender change be preposterous? This is sci-fi,after all, and as Joss Whedon's Buffy the Vampire Slayer (a clearinfluence on the writing and storytelling of Moffat's series) andits offshoot Angel proved, anything goes in science fiction.

A brief peek at a Doctor Who internet forum, however, shows thatWhovians are not awfully keen - comments such as "unacceptable", "PCnonsense" and "I don't want a woman" feature prominently. One fanmaintains that Time Lords are born male or female and it isludicrous to suggest that they can change sex when regenerating. Itis heresy, etc. And illogical.

However, there has been some pretty weighty support for the ideaof a female Doctor. The UK Resource Centre for Women in Science,Engineering & Technology (UKRC) has argued that the next Doctorshould be a woman, in order to raise the profile of "femalescientists in the media". At the time of writing the Facebook page"The Next Doctor Who Should Be Female" has 31 members and "Make theNext Doctor Who a Female!" has 16. If they joined forces, therewould be a giddy 47-strong army for change. It's a start.

Sydney Newman, then the BBC's head of drama, broached the subjectin 1986. "At a later stage Doctor Who should be metamorphosed into awoman," he argued. Joanna Lumley was touted but the powers that beplumped for McCoy. Dawn French, Frances de la Tour and Judi Denchhave also cropped up as candidates. Russell T Davies went as far asto say that "Catherine Zeta-Jones would be great".

For me, though, the first female Doctor has to be Emma Thompson.The British actress has the wit, intelligence, charisma, gravitasand energy to pull it off. She wouldn't let anyone down and Isuspect that even the most zealous Whovian would accept her after awhile.

As long as Moffat is in charge, the storylines are consistentlystrong and the dialogue is perky and droll, does it matter whetherthe Doctor is female or male?