Doctor Who’s Mandip Gill thinks Yaz should join Torchwood
Exclusive: If John Barrowman ever gets the spin-off back on TV, he has one willing recruit
After years offscreen 2020 saw the surprise return of John Barrowman to Doctor Who, with his character Captain Jack Harkness playing a small role in series 12 almost 10 years after he was last seen onscreen.
Since Barrowman’s comeback, fans have wondered whether this could also mean the BBC is gearing up for a long-awaited return of Who spin-off Torchwood, which starred the actor in a leading role and still has plenty of fans.
And if it does return, it turns out that Barrowman already has one willing recruit from the main Doctor Who series to join the new Torchwood team – Mandip Gill, currently playing Yasmin Khan alongside Jodie Whittaker's Thirteenth Doctor.
“My answer would be yeah, I think Yaz would be up for it at that point” actor Gill told RadioTimes.com.
The Doctor Who Series 12 DVD is released on 4th May and is available to pre-order now
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“She's learned so much that she would be good for [Torchwood]. But I also think she would really want to do it, and to top it off I think she would need it.”
As Gill went on to explain, she felt that if Yaz stopped travelling with the Doctor she wouldn't be able to return to normal life, with a job at Torchwood left as one of the only avenues for her to find similar excitement on Earth.
“If this is her journey with the Doctor over, she's not ready for Sheffield,” Gill told us.
“There's so much more for her to learn and develop, and she's just starting to find her feet and be confident with everything that she went through and what happened to her when she was much younger.
“She’d need more! She's not going back home and to her family. That’d be too fast.”
If Gill did end up appearing in a rebooted Torchwood series down the line, she wouldn’t be the first Doctor Who character to cross over, with Freema Agyeman’s companion Martha Jones appearing in three episodes of the sci-fi drama’s second series before team Torchwood later cropped up in the 2008 Doctor Who finale.
And Gill suggested that the appeal of working with John Barrowman again after their time together on series 12 was also a factor in her interest, having become fascinated by his stories from previous eras of Doctor Who.
“He's such a character, isn't he?” Gill told us. “You know when people ask like 'how's it working with the Cybermen or a Dalek?' I guess working with John Barrowman was the same - because they're iconic.
“And also it was very nice to work with somebody who's been doing it for years. Just to come back and be like 'when we used to do [Doctor Who] this was happening, and we used to have fans come all the time to set,' and all that stuff. And just hearing what it used to be like.
“Because it is a bit different now, there's loads of us and years have passed,” she added.
“I think sitting and listening to John’s stories was for me really interesting. Who he was working with, how he found it, and all the stuff that comes after.”
Clearly, this could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship – and if it is, any evil aliens coming through the Rift in Cardiff had better watch out…
The Doctor Who Series 12 DVD is released on 4th May and is available to pre-order now
