Doctor Who and Catherine Tate

So Doctor Who starts again on Saturday, yippee! And the Doctor’s new companion will be Catherine Tate.

Now, like many other people when I first heard the news Tate would be in this series I have to admit I really wasn’t sure about it at all. In fact I did register my disgust, in the really ineffective way many people seem to do these days, by signing up to a Facebook group, this one called Get Martha Jones Back in the Tardis!.

But I was thinking yesterday: won’t it be refreshing to have a female character in Doctor Who who is a little bit older for a change? Tate is 39 – not exactly ancient obviously – but certainly a different generation from Rose (Billie Piper, 25) and Martha (Freema Agyeman, 29).

I think its a good thing to have a female character who’s a bit older (whether her character will be a good one remains to be seen). But without being an expert on the Doctor’s past “companions” (which the more I think about it seems a little bit of a creepy word to use), it seems unusual to break the mould of older Doctor, young female assistant (does anyone more geeky than me have any stats on this?).

So really, this is just to say – yay for an older woman in the Tardis for a change.