As we creep ever closer to the end of the Whittaker era, it seems an opportune moment to tidy up images for this most current era of the program within the Tour. When Jodie Whittaker’s Tardis Team was formally announced, we here at the Tour thought the ‘home run hire’ was Bradley Walsh as Graham O’Brien. Now, if we’re being honest, this wasn’t a terribly hard choice since we had no ‘working history’ built up with either Tosin Cole or Mandip Gill, but we did with Walsh since he was the only through line (much as Gill is doing for Whittaker) for the entirety of the run in ‘Law and Order UK’ and very much appreciated how well he anchored that end of that show.
Then again, as stated before in these confines, we have always liked the idea of an older, more world weary companion that has the gravitas to compare life experience, in some measure, with an essentially immortal character in the Doctor. We felt this way going back to Wilf in The End of Time and to really stretch a point, the near-miss companion played by Beatrix Lehmann as Professor Rumford in The Stones of Blood. Big Finish understood this point also by pairing Maggie Staples as Evelyn Smythe opposite Colin Baker’s Doctor.
It was Graham who decided to sit back and enjoy some tea in Orphan 55, probably the smartest decision any character in that story made, but it was also Graham who carried the emotional weight in It Takes You Away. Walsh could do both, and the Whittaker era is all the better for it.
Doctor Who is an interesting footnote in a career for Walsh which includes soaps, loads of game shows, and even travelogues. He’s going to be back in some capacity for Whittaker’s swansong, ‘The Power of the Doctor.’ Although extensive already, we added on a bit to the Bradley Walsh gallery as the Whittaker era draws down. Seemed like the right time to do so.