I'm completely okay with this, but actually less okay than a female or non-white Doctor. I'm kind of fed up with the 'well we can't go out on a limb for the main character so lets just shove it all one the side character'. And if they do that to the Master maybe there'd be less motivation to change the Doctor.
Zontar said:
In principle I'm ok with the idea, in the context of the show however it just wouldn't work. Think about this for a second, as much as we all love the stories in the future on some far off world, what about the ones on Earth in the distant past? The writers would have a hell of a time making a fun, light-hearted story in a past setting without it being weighed down by the fact that society's values where very different back then. I like the light-hearted stories set in the past that could care less about giving some important message, and I wouldn't enjoy a series without that nearly as much as one with them, and given which show we're talking about here there would probably be a heavy handed message and a darker tone to every adventure they had in the past.
I guess my position is best described as supportive in message but unwilling to bear the cost. Kind of like the exact reason community got cancelled, only without the "me being a fan of community" part.
I used to be worried about this too and I figured it was a very good reason not to do it. But after watching some more Doctor Who I realised it's totally not a problem. The show has had plenty of black people and women go back to times when that should have caused a problem, as the assistants or one-offs and the show just ignores the problems. It works because Doctor Who isn't some gritty hardcore historical thriller, the whole tone of the show is 'anything is possible', so when this arises in episodes they're completely happy with just ignoring all that stuff and getting to the fun parts. If you think about it, if every week we're going to imagine a world where Cybermen are wondering around Rome causing volcanoes to erupt or whatever, imagining a world where a 1400's King would listen to a women isn't a big stretch.
If you watch the episodes where it happens, it basically ends up being the same sort of thing as the assistant and Doctor wearing anachronistic clothing or talking about future events. It's just handwaved (sometimes lampshaded) and if you think about it, you can assume the Tardis is making them look white or male or whatever or it's a psychic paper kind of effect.
In fact it would allow them a wider variety of episodes, because they can choose to ignore it whenever they want a fun episode, but when they want to do a serious episode they can choose to do it with the Doctor or the Master or whatever directly instead of a through a proxy like they normally do.
