Two Women Played Doctor Who Before Jodie Whittaker’s Thirteenth Doctor

While it is true that Jodie Whittaker was the first official female lead of Doctor Who, two other women have previously portrayed the Doctor in officially licensed productions of the BBC series. When Whittaker was announced as the 13th incarnation of the Doctor in 2017, much fanfare was made about how no woman had assumed this role before, but it turns out this was not the case. Over the course of the series’ 60-year history, there have actually been two lesser-known instances of women taking on the role of the iconic extraterrestrial Time Lord known simply as the Doctor.