A strange thing happens when a property has been kicking around pop culture as long as Doctor Who. Much like the creative team now in charge of the Star Wars franchise, most of the people working on Who these days were raised on the sci-fi institution. Showrunner Steven Moffat, occasional celebrity guest writer Neil Gaiman, the revolving cast of Doctors and Companions, and more all have an answer ready when they’re inevitably asked “who is your favorite Doctor?” After more than fifty (non-continuous) years on air, this is a show for fans, by fans. That intense love can be a great thing—but it can also, at its worst, result in a bit of stale navel-gazing when it comes to storytelling. Enter Pearl Mackie, the newest occupant of the TARDIS, who partially landed the gig of companion because she is unfamiliar with the world of Who. Her first episode, airing Saturday on BBC America, acts as a kind of soft reboot for the franchise and is cheekily named “The Pilot.” As Bill Potts, the intensely charismatic Mackie bursts into this familiar universe in a way that’s less “breath of fresh air” and more “gale force wind.”

Speaking with VF.com, the 29 year-old Mackie explains why she missed the Who phenomenon the first time around: “I was part of the Doctor Who-less years when it sort of was off the air just before I was born, and then came back when I was about 16, when I was mostly interested in hanging out in parks and stuff like that.” Though, she confesses, “you’d have to kind of be living under a rock to not know about Doctor Who and about the TARDIS” and says she caught the occasional Christmas special.

But unlike the other young men and women initially unfamiliar with Who that have been hired by the franchise in recent years, Mackie didn’t do her homework. In a rather genius move, executive producer Brian Minchin actually told Mackie not to watch the previous seasons of the show. Energized by her fresh take on the universe, the creative team said: “Whatever you’re doing currently is working, so maybe it’s best not to watch it all because it might change your performance. It’d be quite nice if you experienced things as Bill experiences them.”

That wide-eyed wonder—such a key factor to the world of Who—comes easily for Mackie and is also baked into the creation of her character. Many old-school fans have noted that Bill’s style (specifically, her patches-covered jacket) seems like a nod to an early, beloved companion, Ace McShane—though Mackie says that was not intentional. But after watching “The Pilot,” the clearer comparison is to the most popular companion of all time: companion of all time: Billie Piper’s Rose Tyler.

When we first meet Bill, she’s dishing up chips in a university cafeteria. The way Mackie describes Bill may sound familiar to fans of Rose—a London shop girl: