If you keep an eye on news from the world of entertainment you may well have seen that Whoopi Goldberg has gone on record voicing her hope that she’d have loved to become the first female Doctor.

The quote comes from an interview in the current issue of SFX magazine promoting the new adaptation of Stephen King’s weighty post-apocalyptic novel The Stand, in which Goldberg plays Mother Abigail, a 108 year-old with psychic abilities.

As well as expressing a wish to play the Doctor, she says she’d like to be involved in an American version of Doctor Who and says she has discussed it with a previous Doctor:

“I was lucky enough to speak to Tom Baker about it. He is the Doctor that I know best. I said to him, ‘I love the idea of an American Doctor Who.’ For me, Tom Baker was the best Doctor. Of course, the younger Doctors are also good, but when it comes to the older Doctors, it was always Tom Baker for me. I’m still trying to do it here.”

Goldberg has long-standing sci-fi credentials, of course, having appeared in Star Trek: The Next Generation as the enigmatic bartender Guinan, who often joined Jean-Luc Picard for a chat when he was off duty. In the same interview, she discloses she hopes to appear in spin-off series Picard in 2021.

Aside from prompting us to imagine a meeting between Tom Baker and Whoopi Goldberg (a premise surely worthy of a Big Finish spin-off drama of its own), the interview once again raises the question of an American Doctor Who. The DWC’s Rick Lundeen considered this for us last year, concluding (very reasonably), “It probably shouldn’t and wouldn’t be done, but if it is, I think it best to do it right, if at all humanly possible.”

The Stand can be viewed on Starzplay in the UK and on CBS All Access in the USA. More details on the current issue of SFX can be found here.