Doctor Who will be a white guy because...

Note that it is entirely possible that this is now irrelevant as of time of posting, in that the new actor might already be announced. Or may become irrelevant within the day. But still I'm going to write this to say that the next actor will neither be black nor a woman because the show, basically... isn't important enough, nor desperate enough.

When RTD was in charge, he made a point (okay, according to his own book) of making sure the BBC always had Doctor Who in mind. He had a firm guiding hand, and it was very much his show (*cough* down to rewriting nearly every single script *cough*). However, I've never felt that from Moffat. If anything, I've heard the opposite, that Moffat doesn't script edit enough. And when Tennant said he wanted a year off, out went the idea of Doctor Who on at a constant time. Now it's all over the place. Ostensibly to allow for summer time and for people to get out and about... but, hey, that's just another way of saying 'this show isn't important enough for people to stay in and watch voluntarily, so we wait for bad weather to make sure people are inside.'

From all this, I then infer that no-one is watching this show is no longer the flagship show it used to be, and doesn't need to be a leader/innovator any more. Hence no black/woman.

On the flip side, it is stable. It gets high ratings. When it is shown, people do watch it. It doesn't need to pull any tricks to get the average person to pack their butt on the sofa and stare at the idiot box. Any tricks it does pull ('hey, it could be a regeneration!') is more for the fan who knows what is going on.

From that, I then infer that the show isn't desperate enough to pull a ratings grab such as making the Doctor black/female. The papers are going to print whatever happens, so it will get press either way. Just putting in Matt Smith (Who????) garnered plenty of attention.

The only way we'll see a black/woman Doctor at the moment is if Moffat decides he wants that more than his love of the series continuity... although, now I think about it, he does currently have a magpie approach to discarding whatever happened a season ago for his new favourite shiny arc idea...

So, from that... I suddenly infer that if we do get a black/woman Doctor, it will be a short stunt move before they go back to a white guy... and that is at best. Gimmick aside... it ain't happening.

[END]