Jodie Whittaker
On 16 July 2017, Whittaker was announced as the Thirteenth Doctor in the science fiction television series "Doctor Who"; she is the first woman to play the title role. She had previously worked with incoming "Doctor Who" showrunner Chris Chibnall on "Broadchurch". She admitted that she had to "tell a lot of lies" after being cast to keep the information secret and used the codeword "Clooney" when talking about the role. She urged fans not to be afraid of her gender, saying ""Doctor Who" represents everything that's exciting about change. The fans have lived through so many changes, and this is only a new, different one, not a fearful one." Chibnall said that he always wanted a woman for the part and that Whittaker was their first choice.
The Doctor (Doctor Who)
In his final serial, the Second Doctor states that Time Lords can live forever, "barring accidents." When "accidents" do occur, Time Lords can usually regenerate into a new body. It is stated in "The Deadly Assassin" that Time Lords can only regenerate a total of twelve times, giving a theoretical final total of thirteen incarnations. It is possible to exceed this limit: in "The Five Doctors" the Time Lords offer the Master, who is inhabiting a Trakenite body after exhausting his original twelve regenerations, a new regeneration cycle as reward for his help and cooperation, and at some point during the Time War they resurrected him, with his new body having at least one regeneration of its own. Regeneration is apparently optional, as in "Last of the Time Lords" the Master refuses to regenerate despite the Tenth Doctor's pleading. In addition, there are ways of killing a Time Lord that do not permit regeneration; for example, more than once it has been implied that stopping both the Doctor's hearts simultaneously would accomplish this (as demonstrated in the Eleventh Doctor story "The Impossible Astronaut"). The Chancellery Guard (Gallifrey's equivalent of a police force) are armed with stasers, weapons capable of suppressing regeneration. In "Death of the Doctor", a serial from spin-off programme "The Sarah Jane Adventures", the Eleventh Doctor flippantly responds to a child that he can regenerate "507" times; writer Russell T. Davies intended this line as a joke. Due to the retroactive creation of a numberless War Doctor and the Tenth Doctor's aborted regeneration in "The Stolen Earth"/"Journey's End", the Eleventh Doctor was the final incarnation in his natural cycle. The Time Lords used a crack in the universe to give him a new cycle consisting of an unknown number of regenerations in "The Time of the Doctor", triggering the regeneration into the Twelfth Doctor (Peter Capaldi). The Twelfth Doctor later claims to be uncertain he "won't keep regenerating forever" ("Kill the Moon"), and even Rassilon, the president of the Time Lords, expresses uncertainty about how many regenerations the Doctor has available to him.