About two and a half weeks ago, on 23 Apr 2016, we got the latest big news in the continual evolution of our show: the announcement of the new Companion. In a two-minute video titled “Friend from the Future,” we were introduced to Pearl Mackie’s character Bill as she and the Doctor hid from Daleks. Fandom immediately began passing judgement.

I will admit that first impressions can be important in forming an attachment to a character, but I find it astounding that some fans have already decided they either love or hate Bill based on 124 seconds of footage. I only read a few reactions (mostly along the lines of, “Why won’t she shut up? What part of ‘killing machines’ doesn’t she get?”) before I stopped paying attention.

Frankly, I’m tired of all the speculation so far ahead of the fact.

Regardless, it’s kind of the bread and butter of fandom (especially for those of us who blog) to leap into the speculative fray. I’m therefore essentially duty-bound to give you my own thoughts on what may be in store for us once Bill’s adventures aboard the TARDIS come to our screens. Long time readers will be shocked (sarcasm) to hear that I am “cautiously optimistic.”

Here’s the thing. While I can see the point of those who think Bill’s lack of chill when faced with Daleks makes a poor addition to a potential Companion’s résumé, all we have by which to judge her is this tiny snippet of time during which she is immersed in a completely foreign situation. We have no idea what led up to that moment, what else she may or may not have been exposed to while with the Doctor up to this point, or what else in her life might have led her to find him in any way credible. In other words, we know nothing, Jon Snow. (Sorry—wrong franchise.)

By the same token, one might argue that we also have no rationale for thinking Bill will be awesome. However, there are several reasons I come out more on the positive end of the entirely premature “will Bill be a good or bad Companion” argument. The first, oddly enough, is the fact that she won’t shut up.

“Now hang on just a tick,” you may say. “That’s not a reason to like her!” Sure it is. To begin, the way Bill can’t seem to stay quiet reminds me of Donna, who was my favorite Companion of the RTD era. Obviously there are differences, but even an oblique similarity is enough to skew my first impressions toward the favorable.

Further, it reads to me as an interesting bit of characterization. Maybe the way Bill deals with stress is by running off at the mouth. Maybe she simply doesn’t quite believe what the Doctor is telling her about the gravity (or reality) of the situation. Whatever the case, I think it makes her more three-dimensional—more human—that she’s not perfect at this kind of adventuring right off the bat.

I also like that she doesn’t immediately take everything the Doctor tells her as the be-all and end-all, but continues to think about it and fit it into her own worldview. (“Is there a Dalek at the back with no gun and two suckers and it’s really hacked off?”) It makes me hopeful that she will be someone who will call the Doctor on his crap, but not in the way that Clara did. (More than anything, I’m looking forward to someone different from Clara.)

Perhaps my favorite part of the whole thing, though, is the idea that maybe—just maybe—Bill is from our past. I know pretty much nothing about fashion trends in the UK, but if they’re anything like they were in the US, her look is fairly ’80s. (Maybe someone out there can tell me more about how black British girls wear their hair now as compared to thirty years ago, and let me know whether or not that is also a clue.)

Her eerily well-timed choice of T-shirt—the harlequin-style “When Doves Cry” design from Prince’s “Purple Rain” era (Prince died unexpectedly two days before the Companion announcement video was released)—lends weight to the ’80s hypothesis, since Purple Rain (both film and album) came out in 1984. Given how the show likes round numbers, then, I’d guess Bill has been pulled from her timeline not long after that, in 1987.

The most compelling evidence to support the claim comes from a combination of the video’s title and the last non-Dalek dialog. Presumably the Doctor is the eponymous friend from the future, bringing a star-struck Bill along for the ride. At the end of the clip, he gets an alert on some sort of hand-held device. Pocketing it again, he tells her, “We need to get back.”

“Back where?” she asks.

“To the future. 2017 needs us.”

The look of awe and delight on her face tells me as strongly as his choice of words that our (nearly) present day is her future.

If I’m reading these clues correctly and she really is from a different time (albeit not too distant), it will be a welcome change of pace. She may be another young, relatively modern British woman, but the promise of a new personality is always exciting. And the Doctor’s not wrong—2017 needs them; fandom will be starving for new episodes by then.

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