'Doctor Who' Season 12: Is Jo Martin's character only a token black woman Doctor?
One would think that the return of John Barrowman as Jack Harkness on an episode of 'Doctor Who' — a decade after he last appeared on the sci-fi show when the Doctor was played by David Tennant — would be enough of a surprise for one episode.
However, the episode titled 'Fugitive of the Judoon' — written by Vinay Patel who penned last year's 'Demons of the Punjab' — featured another, potentially bigger surprise. Jo Martin was revealed to be playing the first black Doctor.
When the episode started, she appears as a character named Ruth Clayton, whose partner is killed by the Judoon. It turns out that the fugitive is Jo Martin's Doctor and that her partner was also a Time Lord.
It was also revealed that Jo Martin's Doctor is a past incarnation of the character, one that comes before Jodie Whittaker, whose casting as the Doctor changed history as she became the first woman to play a character that had been played by 14 white male actors.
However, this led fans to question as to where Martin's Doctor comes into her history. When John Hurt was introduced as the War Doctor for the 50th Anniversary special 'Day of the Doctors', he was introduced between the 8th and 9th Doctors — with a special webisode released to show Paul McGann regenerating into John Hurt — this was possible because we had not seen McGann's regeneration before.
The question remains, however, as to how the writers can explain Martin's presence. Moreover, it is important that Martin wasn't introduced just as a token black woman to play the character.
An important thing to consider is that Martin hopefully will be seen as the Doctor in a significant number of episodes. It would not do well if she comes on and off sparingly to play a character that has been quite controversial.
'Doctor Who' airs on BBC America on Sunday nights.
