Following the announcement, there was a lot of praise for the decision, with a number of famous faces coming out in support of the refreshing and progressive change.
The decision did prompt some criticism, however, from certain sections of the fanbase, but according to former showrunner Russell T Davies, the naysayers were few and far between.
Speaking to Frank Skinner on his special Absolute Radio podcast, Davies said: "I am on a book tour for this Doctor Who book, so last night there were 200 fans with no doubt [Whittaker will be brilliant].
"I am really tired of the objections. It's outrageous to me, you meet these fans and they are very, very happy that this is happening.
"Maybe 10 people online with different aliases are spouting saying you've ruining the programme and it's all that gets reported."
Elsewhere in the interview, Davies was asked how he felt about some of his narrative choices being retroactively changed by Steven Moffat during his time as showrunner, specifically relating to Gallifrey's salvation in 'The Day of the Doctor'.
"When you leave Doctor Who, you have to take a deep breath and think it's all up for grabs now, it's all there to be rewritten," he mused.
"It was interesting. I love that episode. It wasn't so much the Time Lords disappearing, it was all the Daleks shooting themselves.
"It was like, couldn't any of them [have] missed?"
Skinner quizzed Davies about how he felt when Steven Moffat re-engineered the Time War narrative that he’d written into the show when he brought it back. Was, Skinner asked, Davies in any way “miffed” that an important piece of Doctor Who lore was reworked?
“When you leave Doctor Who, you have to take a deep breath and think it’s all up for grabs now, it’s all there to be rewritten”, Davies said.
“But not retrospectively, surely?” asked Skinner.
“You’re very clever”, laughed Davies. “It was an interesting evening”, he said of the night Day Of The Doctor premiered. “But I love that episode”.
With a grin on his face – and it’s important to note that there was no criticism being aimed – Davies laughed that “it wasn’t so much the Time Lords reappearing, it was all the Daleks shooting themselves. Couldn’t any of them dodge that?!”
Davies also admitted that since he left Doctor Who, his mind hasn’t come up with one story in the series he’d want to tell. “A year before I knew I was leaving, my mind had moved onto other things”, he said.
Via Digital Spy by Louise McCreesh
