Doctor Who has finally cast a female lead, and it's proven to be as controversial as you'd expect. Or has it? There's no denying the BBC made history with the announcement that Jodie Whittaker would be taking over the controls of the TARDIS as the new Doctor; the 13th official iteration of the Time Lord, she'll regenerate from Peter Capaldi in this year's Christmas special, marking the first time the character's been played by a woman.

As you can imagine, such a major change up has stirred up plenty of animated discussion online. Doctor Who is a show with over fifty years of lore and incredibly dedicated fans of all descriptions who object to pretty much every recasting of their favorite Time Lord, so something this seismic would surely only create more upset than normal. And you can feel it - whenever people discuss Whittaker's casting, it seems to center on not just her gender, but her gender in relation to a negative reaction.

But is there actually a substantial backlash from any mobilized corner of the fanbase? Shortly after the announcement, many started pointing out the number of comments criticizing those bemoaning the change appeared to actually outnumber the "Doctor Who, not Doctor Womb" tirades. Let's take a rational look at the "controversy" and see how much of it really holds up.

All The Ways Doctor Who Set This Up

Peter Capaldi as The Doctor and Michelle Gomez as Missy in Doctor Who

What makes the idea of any fan backlash so strange is how Doctor Who's been explicitly positioning itself for this for a good few years.

The notion of a female Doctor dates back decades, with members of the fan community expecting it all the way back when Tom Baker regenerated. Since then it's been a major topic of discussion, even getting parodied in Red Nose Day skit "The Curse of Fatal Death" where the Doctor's final (and, ironically enough, 13th) form was Joanna Lumley. The 21st Century reboot actually made consolations for it quite early on too, with Tennant at one point claiming it was "distantly possible" and Smith's immediate reaction to longer hair being him exclaiming "I'm a girl" before clutching his Adam's apple.

It was finally confirmed that Time Lords could change gender upon regeneration in 2011's Season 6 episode "The Doctor's Wife"; at the start of the adventure, the Doctor discussed friend The Corsair, saying "The mark of the Corsair. Fantastic bloke. He had that snake as a tattoo in every regeneration. Didn't feel like himself unless he had the tattoo. Or herself, a couple of times. Ooo, she was a bad girl." The TARDIS got in trouble before he could elaborate, but over six years before Whittaker's casting the seeds had been sown.

That this wasn't just a flippant outside joke was made clear in Season 8 (2014), when Capaldi's debut year ended with the reveal mysterious Missy was actually the new form of long-standing Time Lord adversary The Master. It was now established the show wasn't above using it as a major narrative device. Gender permutability was further highlighted in Season 9, which not only increased Missy's role but also had Time Lord The General regenerate from old man into young woman (and afterward celebrate the return to her original gender).

The teasing got extreme in the latest season. In the finale two-parter, The Master and Missy met, leading to several discussions on gender and its role in Gallifreyan culture. The Doctor remarked to Bill that "We're the most civilized civilization in the universe. We're billions of years beyond your petty human obsession with gender and its associated stereotypes.", and later when asked by The Master if the future was "all girl" replied, "We can only hope." These final points are important as they take what could be read as opportunistic and tie it back into the character as originally conceived.

With all that context, it's amazing a female Doctor was remotely surprising to anybody who's actually been paying attention. And, if the prospect is objectionable to viewers, then where was the upset at, well, all of this? The Master change was criticized more for how it altered the personality totally independent of gender. It's almost like the show exists apart from the argument.

The Argument Doesn't Really Relate To The Show

Now, let's not for a moment suggest that some people aren't angry about a woman Doctor. There have been complaints made to the BBC and British tabloids disgustingly published nude photos of Whittaker from Black Mirror.

If you look at the comments on Screen Rant's initial news report, there are a lot of incredibly negative comments. However, upon further inspection, there's also an equal spread of positive takes and reactions to those angry responses. And things dissipate with time; on the story where Whittaker talked about the potential outcry, only one comment out of 22 was against it and clearly came from a nonsexist, traditionalist standpoint. This may speak a lot of the quality of comments on this site - if you go to some other publications the reaction is much more hardened - but shows while there is some backlash, things are more balanced than the reporting of it perhaps suggests. Trying to find negativity that has traction on Twitter is even harder, with a lengthy, un-cookied search only turning up criticisms of angry broflakes and none of the source complaints. That isn't irrefutable, but it does make those disliking the decision for the gender swap appear to be an unbacked minority.

The biggest conclusion to make in light of all the aforementioned setup done by Doctor Who itself is that those who suddenly aren't happy with the change sight-unseen are those who don't actually watch the show and instead just have a Luddite sense of ownership of it because of its perennial position in modern culture. This is a multi-generation series, especially in the UK, so even those who've not seen a frame of Nu-Who have an opinion. In fact, given that the phrase "Dr. Who" (a term only used by the reviled Peter Cushing films) was trending it's almost like the debate is happening away from fans of the show - in part, it's a sci-fi casting appropriated as gender discussion.

But then why has there been so much reported controversy? Why is the instinctive response from those fans who do welcome Whittaker's casting not to assess her suitability for the role or even discuss the meaning of the gender swap, rather to complain about those who may not like it? Perhaps there's a fear she was cast only because she's a woman - something in part backed up by new showrunner Chris Chibnall saying a female Doctor was always his plan but also underwritten by the fact the pair have worked together before on Broadchurch and thus have a history - which is being channeled into a backlash to a perceived backlash. As previously stated, new Doctors are always controversial, but in this case it may feel hard to criticize the choice lest it be mistaken as sexist (a complication we've seen recently with Ghostbusters).

The other side is that we've been waiting for this moment for so long it's oddly moot; yes, it feels modern against the backdrop of Rey and Furiosa, but the idea has been fanon for decades, meaning the reaction to it has been deemed pre-written. A female Doctor as first conceived in the 1970s probably would have at the time annoyed many diehard fanboys, an expectation has been carried over to 2017 even though societal attitudes have changed and the show has spent three solid years winning any doubting Whovian round to the idea; despite the majority having accepted it, everyone still assumed a backlash and so there was one.

After all, for all the complaints, the actual Who fanbase has been incredibly positive (their concerns center more on writing), to the point where if the casting is going to have an impact on ratings (as those genuine retorts suggest) it's going to be upwards. Through all this, it's worth remembering that Capaldi's era has seen a major drop in viewership due to initially confused writing and no amount of improvements have helped. The BBC wanted to do something different and, while at first that looked to be a return to the Matt Smith era (hence the Kris Marshall rumors), they've gone progressive to inject new life into the show. As a result, many who gave up on the series due to stagnation are now tempted to return because of the ideological shift Whittaker's casting represents. That's not cause for dogmatic controversy - it's cause for celebration.

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None of this is to say there isn't a group of people unhappy with the gender swap, but that the overlap between them and people who actually watch or care about Doctor Who is incredibly minor. Their force appears to only being strengthened by the immediate assumption this needs to be a controversial moment. It's not necessary and not really very Who. Celebrate the progressiveness, celebrate the openness, and above all celebrate Jodie Whittaker. Will she be good? Will she not? Who knows, but when all's said and done gender's unlikely to have anything to do with it.

Doctor Who will return to BBC America and BBC 1 at Christmas 2017. Season 11 will arrive in 2018.

Next: Doctor Who: What Kind of Doctor Will Jodie Whittaker Be?