Man, you leave him unattended for two seconds...
I'm seeing lots of "Doctor Who's gonna be a WOMAN??? Nuh-uh! He's a dude!" (or words to that effect) posts popping up on my Facebook feed, many by people that I ordinarily find to be progressive, rational people. My response? About. Frikkin'. Time. They made the Master into Missy and NO ONE had a problem with it and Michelle Gomez hit it out of the park. The Doctor a woman? Why the hell not? I’m sure Ms. Whittaker will do a great job and bring her own subtle nuances to the role that all of the former Doctors brought.
Also, to anyone out there who is applauding Ms. Whittaker’s casting by saying that she is breaking the gender barrier for being cast as the first female lead in a sci-fi TV show? Kate Mulgrew (a.k.a.Captain Kathryn Janeway of Star Trek Voyager) would like to have a few words with you. Just saying. 
~Rob
The form may change but the Doctor is still the Doctor. I am looking forward to see how she does.
Eh, the reason I didn’t object to the Master becoming Missy is that this is the first I heard of it since The last Doctor I every paid attention to was Sylvester McCoy. I pretty much rejected the first American Doctor when it seemed that the movie scriptwriters were treating magic as a genuine force rather than as a lot of garbage thus going against the earlier sprit of the series. Sounds like I missed a lot of nonsense by pursuing that policy. ^_^
That’s pretty much my approach to it, Rob.
Up until Missy, I was under the impression that sex was one of the things that fundamentally didn’t change when Time Lords regenerated. Male Time Lords always regenerated male. Female Time Lords regenerated female.
Missy blew that theory out of the water. Once Missy was in play, the question wasn’t whether there would be a female Doctor and more one of why, in twelve Doctors, there hasn’t been a female Doctor ALREADY.
@Towering Barbarian: Gotta admit, there have been a few episodes in the rebooted Doctor Who that went well out of the realm of hard sci-fi and into science fantasy. I think there was one season where I was starting to think ‘if they keep this up, I’ll declare the shark jumped and stopped watching’ – but fortunately they seemed to have dialled back on it since.
If the change makes sense in the writing for its own sake, fine, I don’t care. Does. Not. Matter. At all.
If it’s “ooo, look at us, checkin all the PC boxes!” then they’re idiots, and the writing is likely to suffer. Also, they’re bigots (or at least pandering to bigots).
In this day and age, I know which way to bet…
Luckily, I’m not a big DW fan, so it doesn’t really affect me, either way.
In “The Doctor’s Wife” episode, the Dr mentions another Time Lord (The Corsair?) who frequently switches gender, although keeping the same tattoo in each regeneration.