They were more than rumours, there were several women under consideration by the BBC to be the Doctor.
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Oh, I would so wear that! (Any of them, really.)
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Aren’t they fab!
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Okay, now I want a timeline where The Doctor was played by Anna Quayle at some point in the 1960ies.
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The Doctor being a woman goes further back than that. When Tom Baker left, he and JNT decided to create some press so when Tom did his announcement, he congratulated the next Doctor “whoever he – or she-- might be.”
Also, Patricia Quinn did make it onto DW in Dragonfire.
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I’m so glad it was being seriously considered back then! It was an idea my oldest, closest friend who introduced me to Doctor Who in the first place was also really excited about.
Actually she says I was the one who introduced her to Doctor Who, and, while I remember differently, I lost her to cancer in August 1997, so she gets the last word.
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The Curse of Fatal Death. Written by the Moff, himself. Classic.
Also, Arabella Weir played the Doctor in a Big Finish audio. The Unbound Doctor stories are really fun.
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Hopefully you don’t end up where it is Barbara Windsor by mistake
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Indeed!
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“terf”
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No problem, I watched Dr Who when Peter Davidson was the Doctor! Although I pretty much gave up after him - you honestly think the series is shonky now, Michael Grade hated it, and did his damndest to sabotage it.
Jody’s stint was spoilt by poor writing, she did the best she could with it.
Really looking forward to the new incarnation.
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Clearly spoken by someone who never saw it from the beginning, and is indulging in a revisionist point of view. It was shown in monochrome, on 425-line TV’s with tiny little screens, so the ‘defects’ you describe are absolutely not apparent when viewing. And Hartnell was not, by any stretch of the imagination ’feeble’, he was pretty scary to those watching, with a sort of barely controlled anger, which only Peter Capaldi really matched. The Daleks were bloody terrifying for kids, the grating voice unlike anything ever heard on tv, and completely alien, which they were. Children’s tv had always been light-hearted puppets and presenters, Dr Who was shockingly scary at the time. My kid brother, who’s nine years younger than me, would run out into the kitchen and watch it through the crack in the kitchen door! Which is almost a cliché among those who watched it as children.
I watched Dr Who from the first episode, and I really had a thing for Susan, the Doctor’s granddaughter, even at my tender age!
Gotta say, every one of those is just glorious! 
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When I first saw Doctor Who, it was mid-seventies on PBS, so Four was my first Doctor. Star Wars was still a few years away, and the height of special effects was Stan Winston building on Dick Smith’s basic monster makeup. Weekend monster movies had us used to zippers on the backs of costumed monsters, so this weird low-budget-looking British show didn’t look any worse than that.
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It is an embarrassingly shallow thought, but I just can’t get over how awesome Dawn French’s new hair is.
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I thought Rosa was well done and fairly respectful of the history and significance of the moment. I can’t help but wonder how it would play out with this Doctor now that you mentioned it. I could swear Quantum Leap tried to handle this type of situation.
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You couldn’t be more wrong. I saw it in monochrome (as it was recorded) - and more especially as that was the only flavour available here at the time (early 60’s). Colour transmission didn’t begin in Australia until 1974 and my family was not the first to get a colour set. Although, being as how it was transmitted in the PAL standard - same as UK - we received the Doctor in 625 lines on our …can’t remember if it was a 21 or 23 inch set. In fact, simplistic black and white lent to the genre. Daleks and their low budget construction were rather preposterous, but no moreso than the whole notion of a Timelord. But SF was my jam and I couldn’t wait to get home from school to watch Doctor Who (as well as The Samurai, which probably did not get a showing in the US). Anyways, as lame as some of the WHO sets were they were still more believable than the whizz-bang jim crackery of some more slick US shows like the later Lost in Space or Time Tunnel - which got family timeslots, while Dr WHO was shown at 5 or 6pm - definitely a kids timeslot. Give me “exterminate” over “danger Will Robinson” any day.
Oh, and on William Hartnell, by “feeble” I did not mean his acting but his appearance - he seemed ancient. Again, perhaps that might have only been apparent when they would trot him out later alongside other Timelords. I suppose it was his makeup and craft that made him seem as old as time. Though, when I looked at some still shots of him yesterday he seemed much younger than I imagined. He was only 59 when he ceased his Dr WHO role.
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