Yes, we finally have a woman Doctor on “Doctor Who” but will she be treated equal to her predecessors?
Here’s one clue. Jodie Whittaker, who will be taking over the coveted role, will get paid the same amount as current star Peter Capaldi, BBC Director-General TonyHall told the Evening Standard.
The announcement comes after the network released the salary information for its executives. For the first time, the BBC also released the salaries for its top-earning actors and presenters.
According to that list, Capaldi, who’s been the Time Lord since 2013, earned somewhere between around $232,000 to $290,000 in the last year.
For comparison’s sake, Matt Smith — who was the Doctor before Capaldi — earned about the same amount per year while Tenth Doctor David Tennant earned over $1 million per year.
With the release came criticisms of a distinct gender pay gap. The top seven earners and two-thirds of the highest earners overall were male.
Emily Maitlis, for example, didn’t make the list of high earners at BBC despite the fact her male co-worker on “Newsnight,” Evan Davis, earns more than her.
Hall released a statement in response saying that one of the network’s goals was to create more gender equality by 2020.
“We want all our lead and presenting roles to be equally divided by men and women,” he said. “This is already having an impact — of the top talent we have hired or promoted in the last three years, more than 60 percent are women.”
The move doesn’t address how the BBC would handle the racial pay gap. The top 24 earners at the BBC are all white. The Guardian found that around 10 percent of the presenters aren’t white.