Today in unsurprising reactions...

The BBC decided to announce the
casting after today's Wimbledon
match because Britain is adorable. 

Finally BBC, finally. After thirteen incarnations, the thirteenth Doctor on Doctor Who is a woman. Yeah, the math is a little weird and that should be fourteenth, but the one-off War Doctor played by John Hurt doesn't count for space reasons. Don't worry about it, the important thing is that British actor Jodie Whittaker is the new Doctor and if none of this gibberish makes any sense to you just go back to your rich full life, unconcerned with long-running British TV sci-fi and go for a jog or maybe socialize with friends.

Regenerations can be triggered by
wounds, or radiation poisoning or
just the strong dislike of the fans.

Still there? Great. If you're not super-familiar with Doctor Who, I'll give you the broad strokes. The titular Doctor is a mostly immortal alien with a time machine who can avoid death by regenerating into a new incarnation. The concept was invented because the first Doctor, played by William Hartnell was getting older and ill and needed to retire from the series and this was his out. But now it's become kind of a tradition that whenever the actor wants to move to other projects the character just turns into some other guy and blamo, the show's been on for 50 years now. Yes, some other guy.

Shut up you one-off, that was not a pun
although I did almost say balls back there.
No, I'm not better than that. I'm really not.

Because despite being around for fifty years and casting thirteen canon Doctors, all of them, all of them have been white males. Since reviving the series in 2005, the writers have repeatedly alluded to the Doctor being physically able to regenerate into a woman or a non-white person but until now they've never had the...shall we say courage? The courage to do something which twenty years ago would have seemed risky, but now feels a little 'it's about time.'

So as with any big casting news, the eyes of the world immediately turn to the learned opinion of those deemed wise enough to be granted a Twitter account:

Really? But he hasn't even seen Whittaker in the role.
I mean, maybe he'll really enjoy her performance if he-

-hell. Hell? That seems a little-

-killed the tradition of a classic show?
I guess he hasn't seen Love & Monsters.

Wow.

And my personal favorite so far:

Gee, I guess you can't argue with that reasoning.

Well men, it's all over and if I were to
be honest I'd give us a C+ at best.

Alright, so obviously I picked the jerk reactions because it's fun to call them out on their sexist whining. It's not that everyone isn't entitled to their opinions, it's just that their opinions are ridiculous and they are idiots. I mean, one incarnation of one fictional time-traveling alien on one TV show and suddenly men are in danger of loosing their grip on total domination of the Earth that's lasted for thousands of years? Holy shit guys. Holy shit. And this based on 8 seconds of a one minute announcement clip that went up 2 hours ago and for these guys 50 years of Who fandom is forever spoiled by Jodie Whittaker. Oh yeah, speaking of. 

Pictured: the entire casting pool
of the United Kingdom.

Jodie Whittaker, right? Now, as a limp-writsted liberal racked by white guilt, I still feel the need to suggest they could have gone with a woman of color in the role and fully joined the future, but that's a quibble. As for Whittaker, I've only seen her on the British crime drama Broadchurch, which, incidentally also starred 10th Doctor David Tennant and Arthur Darvill who played the 11th Doctor's companion Rory. This isn't so much coincidence as it is the fact that the British TV and film industry has exactly twenty four available actors and half of them have already been on Doctor Who.

Anyway, I've only seen season one of Broadchurch but she Whittaker was pretty great in it and I think she'll make a swell Doctor. Also, judging by the entire twitter response and not just the asshats, fans are pretty excited to see the BBC take the series in a much needed direction even if it did take them fourteen tries to finally come around. I mean, seriously, fourteen tries?

"A TV show about a female immortal
alien time-traveler? Pfft...balderdash!"

-idiots on the internet