After 12 men over 54 years, ‘Doctor Who’ will now be a woman

He fought off regeneration for as long as he could, but Peter Capaldi’s 12th doctor is no more. The BBC science fiction show “Doctor Who” has a new eponymous hero, and this time it’s a woman.

Jodie Whittaker replaced Capaldi at the end of this year’s annual Christmas special, “Twice Upon a Time,” which aired Monday.

The main character of “Doctor Who” is a member of an alien race called the Time Lords whose members must periodically take on a new form. This process, called regeneration in the show, results in a change in appearance and personality. Whittaker is the first woman to play the Doctor since the series began in 1963.

In the final minutes of the episode, Capaldi’s Doctor makes peace with his transformation before exploding with energy. In a close-up, his face transforms into Whittaker’s. The newly female Doctor takes stock of her new identity briefly before saying: “Oh, brilliant.” With this, she pushes a button on her spacecraft time machine, the TARDIS, disguised as a police telephone box, which responds by seeming to malfunction. Whittaker is knocked to the ground and then falls out of the TARDIS’ door into the open sky. The final shot of the episode shows her plummeting to Earth.

The casting of the 13th doctor was hotly anticipated before it was announced in July. Beginning in 2014, Michelle Gomez appeared in the show as the Master, the series’ main antagonist and fellow Time Lord, spurring speculation the next Doctor would be a woman.

Whittaker previously appeared in the British crime drama “Broadchurch,” whose creator, Chris Chibnall, will also be taking the helm of “Doctor Who” next year.