It’s a move that has clearly paid off, with a recent poll of 50,000 viewers revealing Whittaker as one of the most popular incarnations of the sci-fi hero.

“I feel like I’ve been accepted as the Doctor,” the actor told the Guardian, as she returned to the series at the start of 2020. “There was a pressure. If I’d have been a guy in this role I’d have only been representing my own casting as an individual. But it felt like I could hold people back if nobody liked what I brought to the Doctor.

“The gender question is now going away. Hopefully it won’t make the news next time,” she added.

Jodie Whittaker gets real about the anxiety of “doing it wrong” when she first took over as Doctor Who