Hopefully baseless rumor suggests that Hugh Grant might be the new Doctor Who

Current Doctor Who star Jodie Whittaker and showrunner Chris Chibnall are both leaving the venerable BBC sci-fi franchise at the end of this year, and while we know that Chibnall’s replacement will be Russell T. Davies—who created the rebooted version of the show and served as showrunner during the underrated Christopher Eccleston era and mostly good David Tennant era—but we still haven’t heard anything about who might be stepping in for Whittaker at the helm of the TARDIS… or at least we hadn’t heard anything until today, when a rumor came out that makes us long for last week when we still hadn’t heard anything.

The rumor came from British tabloid The Mirror, which says that Davies wants 61-year-old white man Hugh Grant to be the new Doctor, which will somehow “bring a fresh feel” to the show that has starred 12 men and one woman since it premiered in 1963. No deal has been made yet, but The Mirror says “conversations are in progress.” It also points out that Davies wanted Grant to play the Doctor when he first made the rebooted series in 2005, but Grant turned him down. (Grant actually played the Doctor in a 1999 Doctor Who parody for Comic Relief alongside Rowan Atkinson, Richard E. Grant, Jim Broadbent, and Joanna Lumley.)

There’s also talk of the BBC spinning the show out into a Marvel-style universe with various tie-ins, which was already a hallmark of Davies’ original tenure with shows like the edgy Torchwood and the kid-friendly Sarah Jane Adventures that occasionally (very occasionally) connected to whatever adventures the Doctor was having at that point. That’s not an especially bold prediction, then, but it also seems fairly unlikely given the BBC’s history of drastic budget cuts. Would they really pay for a major star to play the Doctor and foot the bill for multiple Doctor Who shows?

More spin-offs could be fun, but at the risk of editorializing, Hugh Grant seems like an absurd choice for the Doctor. The show finally introduced its first female version of the Doctor with Whittaker, and immediately going back to the “fresh feel” of a white man—regardless of who it is—would seem like an insult to both Whittaker and anyone who was a fan of her performance (say what you will about her storylines, but she’s been nothing but a delight). Then again, the show has played with phony regenerations in the past, and bringing Hugh Grant in as a fake Doctor, or at least a Doctor who is not the official new Doctor, could be fun.

So… until we get more information about the next Doctor, let’s go with “this seems like a terrible idea on paper, but we’re open to it being used as a setup for a joke.” There’s still plenty of time for the BBC to figure things out, though, with Whittaker’s Doctor still getting a handful of feature-length specials to finish up her tenure.