Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Names and faces
■ British actress Jodie Whittaker was announced Sunday as the next star of the long-running science fiction series Doctor Who — the first woman to take a role that has been played by a dozen men over six decades. Whittaker, best known for playing the mother of a murdered boy in detective drama Broadchurch, will replace Scottish actor Peter Capaldi at the end of the year, the BBC said. Whittaker is the 13th official incarnation of the Doctor, a galaxy-hopping Time Lord from the planet Gallifrey who travels in the Tardis, a time machine shaped like an old-fashioned British police telephone booth. The revelation was made on live television after the Wimbledon men’s tennis final. Doctor Who ran from 1963 to 1989, and was revived to acclaim in 2005. Its longevity is partly due to its flexible premise. The central character, known only as the Doctor, can travel across space and time and can regenerate into new bodies — allowing for endless recasting of the role. Whittaker, 35, has worked extensively in British television and film. She said that becoming the first female Doctor “feels completely overwhelming, as a feminist, as a woman, as an actor, as a human. I want to tell the fans not to be scared by my gender,” she said. “Because this is a really exciting time, and Doctor Who represents everything that’s exciting about change.”
■ On Saturday, Ann Coulter declared “the worst airline in America” to be Delta Air Lines — which she said committed the offense of de-seating her. Coulter didn’t just slam Delta for moving her from her “PREBOOKED seat” with extra leg room. She documented the experience in photos and tweet after tweet, which she shared with her 1.6 million followers. She even took a photo of the woman who “waltz[ed in] at the last min” and took her seat, even though she is not “elderly, child or sick,” nor “an air marshal or tall person.” Coulter didn’t immediately reply to questions about when and where she was flying, and whether Delta had responded to her tweets and why she decided to photograph and publicize her co-fliers’ faces. Delta didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment. A Delta spokesman told The Associated Press that the airline was reaching out to Coulter.