Yesterday the BBC announced that the actress Pearl Mackie will be the new companion of the Doctor in the tenth season of the TV show “Doctor Who”. The announcement consisted of a short scene in which the new character together with the 12th Doctor were being chased by a group of Daleks and overlay announced the new companion, whose name is Bill.

There’s little information about Pearl Mackie, a young actress still virtually unknown outside the UK but now things are already radically changing. One of the first consequences of the announcement is that her Twitter followers increased more than tenfold in a few hours!

Only yesterday a page on Wikipedia in some languages about her was created and slowly at least in the English version a bit of information were added. The page about her on IMDB is still really thin instead so I found out about the first part of her life just that she was born in Brixton, a London district, apparently in 1988, and in 2010 she graduated from the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School.

Pearl Mackie’s career as an actress is still at its beginning and her roles have been mainly on stage. Curiously, one of the still few roles she had in television productions was in the TV show “Doctors”. Thanks to the BBC, I discovered that she can also sing and dance, will we see her do some musical duet with Peter Capaldi? For the Twelfth Doctor as a companion Bill might be perfect from that point of view.

As always happens in these cases, there were many rumors about the actress to be chosen to play the new companion. When Peter Capaldi was announced as the Twelfth Doctor, in the days before the rumors about him were very strong, in Pearl Mackie’s case hers was one of the many names but for a long time shw wasn’t considered the favorite. Maybe this time the BBC managed to keep some secrecy almost to the end.

Yesterday it was also the anniversary of the death of William Hartnell, the first Doctor. He was also known as Bill and the homage to him explains the new companion’s name. To see her in action we’ll have to wait until the next year because the BBC decided to skip 2016 and broadcast the tenth “Doctor Who” season only in 2017.

For now about Bill we only have the scene broadcast in the BBC promo but already many fans started commenting about the actress and her character. I expect that many of those who loved Clara will hate Bill and vice versa, as normally happens with the arrival of each new companion.