Wouldn't rewriting a main character and simply inserting a newly created character that is darker skinned being involved in the story both change the lore?

I don't want the lore to change either tbh. I'm just.... Hoping it will be good.

Did  you mean isn't? xD . Okay, that's cool, just clarifying. 

Of course a doctor can be a woman.... The character "the doctor" isn't just a doctor though. Pretty gross oversimplification of the character there.

The doctor is a time lord who is straight and was once married to a woman with children. Not sure how changing the doctor into a woman fits here.

They should have just made a separate time lord who happens to be a woman instead of making this character a hand me down. It seems feminist and progressive on the surface but it's actually the opposite.

Once again, people are jumping on the "If you don't agree with racially oriented decisions (so, racist decisions), then you're the racist". Obviously, the guys doing the casting are by definition racists (the skin color of the actress being the most important factor). There is no "positive discrimination", just discrimination. And everytime Hollywood turn a white character into a black one, it just shows that they are unable to create popular black character, or they think that a normal black character wouldn't be good enough. So, they have to choose an already popular character and turn him/her black, and they even get some "We're superior diverse people" bonus point. But that's just because they think that black people (or women) are inferior and need the popularity of white characters to be good enough. Very racist IMO... 

And the complaints about The Witcher are not about racism, but about fidelity to the source material. Remember when people complained about characters in Eragon being blonde? (Eragon and another character IIRC) Was that racist?

This 'controversy' might be the dumbest thing I've ever seen people get upset about. This or the whole puddle thing in the new Spider-Man game.

No idea why I fool myself into thinking I can inject a bit of decency and reason into a discussion like this. All I see is a bunch of easily offended people somehow hurt by the idea that a character who's race is not important being cast as not-white despite being portrayed as white in the past.

Reminds me way too much of people who counter 'black lives matter' with 'all lives matter', thus completely missing the point while trying to turn the argument into being all about them once again or somehow devaluing the hardships that some groups experience.

Literally nothing of value is harmed by making this character non-white in an adaptation. There's literally no argument that makes your whining justified no matter how much you've internalized the character as white. Stop whining about change, stop whining about 'the SJW agenda', and get some perspective. This is NOT the sort of social issue that needs attention. If you don't LIKE the idea of a traditionally white person being played by a non white person, that's fine, but don't try to pretend that your outrage is justified.

There is honestly too much wrong with the arguments in this thread for me to keep up. There are so many poor examples of logic, faulty arguments, and irrelevant views that I'd need 4 days, 7 gallons of coffee, and fingers of steel to explain in graphic detail how so many of you are just wrong when I only need to repeat the same point:

The character's skin color is not important. She's a fantasy character and not based on any real person. Therefore, in the spirit of adaptation, there's literally no reason to be upset about her being portrayed as non white no matter how much it offends your fragile sensibilities. No amount of 'but that's how she was in the game' or 'she was described that way in the books' will change the fact that you're whining about an aesthetic change that will not do anything to make it untrue to the book.

Take Hermoine. Hermoine Granger from Harry Potter was traditionally portrayed as white. She was drawn as white on the book covers and was played by a white girl/woman in the movies. However, when a black girl was cast in her role for a stage play (An adaptation), folks like you had a shit fit even when JK Rowling publically announced that Hermoine's skin color was not specified in the books and wasn't relevant to her character. This is the exact same sort of thing. You're just a bunch of immature brats having a fit about a perceived slight that almost certainly will not affect the quality of the end product.

Heimdall. that is all.

That's the thing. White people have been casted in movies and shows for a century now where it made no sense, and no one cares. 

Soon as a non-white gets a role that should probably go to a white actor all of a sudden SJWs have ruined the world.

SJW's are the cancer of this industry. Who am I kidding, they are the cancer of EVERY industry.

people saying it's sjw fault this, and sjw fault that need to calm their tits. her skin color was never represented in the book, and the book is canon.

I can only speak for myself but just as I think this Ciri situation is a bad decision, I thought that was a dumb idea as well. The main characters in that movie were mythological gods, most of which had been represented in Egyptian culture through animals or humans with animal heads, but if they were going to make them human then they should've looked like they belonged to Egypt. Which wasn't the case at all, obviously.

So don't generalize dude. Some of us call the BS as soon as we see it, no matter the color.

Other people quoted the books though, and it clearly said that she's white...