Could Ben Browder be The Doctor’s new companion?

The latest issue of Doctor Who Magazine has revealed some interesting details about the upcoming season of the hit BBC show.

Most interesting are the following revelations about episode three of the new season.

The episode will take place in the American West during the land rush – which the show will likely depict as wild and gun-slinging. To save some money, it will not be actually filmed in the US, however. The vistas we’ll get to see will be on the dusty plains of Spain, and on green screens, of course.

That’s not the good bit, however. This is: Ben Browder will be in the episode, presumably playing a gun-slinger or cowboy of sorts. Doctor Who Magazine makes no such supposition, but I think it’s possible that this is our new companion.

Consider it.  I don’t think they would bring in an actor like Ben Browder, famous with American sci-fi viewers for his roles in Farscape and SG-1, for a single episode throw-away character. They have a huge pool of extras and minor UK actors to draw from for that kind of stuff.

Also, show runner Stephen Moffatt already told us the new companion – being introduced to replace the Ponds early in the season – would come from an unexpected place. Meaning, it will likely not be another pretty girl from the UK. The American Old West is fairly ‘unexpected’ as that goes, and what better way to honor the glut of new American fans of the show than to grab a companion from the States. Personally, I think the Doctor tooling around with an Old West gun-slinger would be awesome.

The new season of Doctor Who – which begins this fall – will be split by the new year for budgeting reasons.