Jodie Whittaker Doctor Who "feels like a different Doctor — friendlier, less angsty, more of a straightforward action hero"

The New York Times

It's too early to tell based on the first episode what kind of stamp Whittaker will put on her version of Doctor Who, says Mike Hale. New showrunner Chris Chibnall "clears the decks," says Hale, adding: There is, in comparison to recent seasons, scant reference to the show’s mythology, as if Mr. Chibnall is consciously distancing himself from it. The Tardis, the Doctor’s time-and-space ship disguised as a police box, does not appear, and there is, for all intents and purposes, no travel in either time or space. Beyond any momentary quirks, though, there are deeper changes in style and spirit that are likely to be more permanent. Mr. (Steven) Moffat’s Doctor Who was like an hour spent hanging out with clever undergraduates whose imaginations were on overdrive, saturated in both canonical and pop culture and enamored of wordplay and brain teasers. It was frosted, sometimes too heavily, with moral dilemmas, light conundrums and the kind of romanticism associated with ancient British universities. It could leave you cold or drive you crazy, but there wasn’t much else like it on television...This Doctor Who feels like a lot of other TV shows, not just in its writing but in its pacing, its cinematography, its use of music. When the scary monsters appear, you could be watching any other well-made but conventional science-fiction or horror show. Or a police procedural, for that matter. Everything about the show is more ordinary, which may have to do with levels of inventiveness but also feels like a choice. Mr. Chibnall has eased off the throttle, lowering the sensations per minute."

ALSO:

• How Jodie Whittaker as Doctor Who could change the way women are portrayed in sci-fi
• Whittaker had to stop calling The Doctor a "he": "Women are not a genre, we're just the other half of the population. I'm guilty of this as well because when I first started to audition, I kept calling the Doctor a 'he' — it was just this automatic thing. Now it's second nature to me: the Doctor is the Doctor without either/or, but you can't help but associate it with that because that's how it's always been known."