Harriet Harman Says It’s Time For Doctor Who To Have A Female Lead With A Male Assistant

Isn’t it about time we saw a woman tell a man what to do on mainstream TV?

Harriet Harman Says It’s Time For Doctor Who To Have A Female Lead With A Male Assistant

by Jazmin Kopotsha |
Published on

The conversation around who will next play the lead role in the BBC’s *Doctor *Who, is by no means a new one. Amid calls for wider diversity on the show over the years, there has been lots of talk about the need for a woman to finally take the lead as the next Time Lord, which is of course yet to happen.

But now the current Doctor, Peter Capaldi, has announced that he will be leaving the show at the end of the year, all eyes are once again on who will, or rather should, take his place.

Like many of us, Peter supports the move to appoint a female doctor. He told the Mirror: ‘The time felt right to bow out, to let somebody else play this wonderful role and I would like Frances de la Tour to be first female doctor’. And that’s Frances de la Tour as in Madame Maxime, Headmistress of Beauxbatons in Harry Potter btw I know, great shout Peter.

Thankfully the conversation doesn’t stop there though. The matter of who should play the 13th Time Lord reached Westminster in fact, reports the Mail Online, where former Labour deputy leader Harriet Harman spoke about how thinks the next Doctor Who should indeed be a woman, but also called for the show to go a step further.

Harriet said: ‘Of course there should be a female Doctor Who but what we need is a man as her assistant. She’s got to tell him what to do, he will need that leadership’. It would be a bloody refreshing thing to see on our TV screens, don’t you think? You know, one of those dynamics where the supporting role isn’t automatically given to a woman? That’d be nice.

Ex-*Doctor Who *star Billie Piper also reiterated the fact that it's time for a female actress to take the lead role. ‘I’ve always supported the original format but I don’t know where they can go from here. I think it would be great [to have a female Doctor] given the spirit of the world at the moment. I think it would be timely’.

...timely AF. It's great, really it is. But it's not like these conversations haven't done the rounds before. If you ask me, we've passed 'it's about time' stage. Having more female actresses playing lead roles, being seen in positions of power, and yes 'telling men what to do' is long overdue. We really need to get moving and bring mainstream TV up to speed with a reality that isn’t represented as widely as it should be.

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Follow Jazmin on Twitter @JazKopotsha

This article originally appeared on The Debrief.

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