I’m getting kind of tired of people being in an uproar about BBC not making the new Doctor a woman.
I’m as much a feminist as the next marginalized human being who’s ever been talked down to because vagina, but am I the only one who remembers there’s been a series before this one, and that that series had Time Lords, and those Time Lords had genders? Romana? Anyone? Anyone? Anyone? Not everything, not every TV show or movie or breath we take has to be about pointing a finger at society’s current wrongs or inequalities. Sometimes a male character… is just a male character (not a slight, not a marginalization, not a continuance of the dominant paradigm; just male). I’m not saying that you always need to stick with traditional gender roles — Starbuck in Battlestar Gallactica and Watson in the new Elementary are two that spring to mind that were done well; but (and I’ll go into this a little more in a second) I don’t think Steven Moffat could consistently write a strong female character if his mammy was standing behind him rapping his knees with a switch and yelling “write strong female characters!” at him while she smacked him. So why would I want to burden a wonderful actress with slipshod characterization?
Sure, I’d love to see a Helen Mirren or an Angela Basset as a main character in a TV show. But even now, I find the “totally non-sexual because Time Lords but yeah still sexual tension” between the Doctor and the Companion tiresome. The sorrow the Doctor felt when Rose left was well played. Martha leaving the Doctor was also well played, even though I was sorry to see a storyline where the Companion wanted to marry and run away with the Doctor. Donna was just irritating (if she hadn’t sacrificed herself sooner I would have crawled into the TV and done it myself; half a season with her and I was ready to quit watching the show forever). Then Amy Pond, who wasn’t in love with the Doctor, then she was, no she wasn’t, or wait was she, then she had Rory, but Rory was always jealous, because was Amy in love with the Doctor, and for crying out loud, please write something besides relationships, I don’t watch Doctor Who because I like soap operas, because trust me, I do not like soap operas. Aren’t there some bad guys out there to defeat, or plots to discover, or … something?
Anyway. If the sloppy relationship-driven writing is the same field plowed over and over again, imagine how that would be if the Doctor was a woman! Is there even a TV show *on* these days that has a female as a main character who is NOT having sex with someone? Besides female characters who have essentially become desexed/non-sexual because they have become mothers. Do you know why I stopped watching Star Trek: Voyager? Because of an interview I read in a magazine where the writers said that they would never give Janeway a love interest, because giving her a love interest would mean she would get pregnant, and they didn’t want to deal with pregnancy in the show. Between thinking like that (and yes, that was 20 years ago, but I do not believe that our TV writers have exactly advanced far beyond that line), and considering that most main female characters since Steven Moffat started writing Who have sacrificed themselves for the Doctor because of love for the Doctor/the greater good as long as that good involves saving The Doctor, I don’t exactly trust Moffat to be able to write a complicated, multi-faceted, nuanced female doctor who doesn’t throw herself into a whirling pool of light at the end of the season.
So I’m kind of glad they stuck with the traditional gender roll with this one. (1) I would like to see more of a fatherly (or grandfatherly), teacher role taken on by the Doctor. More of the archetypal Merlin and less of the googly eyes and duck faces at each other in the engine room. I would like to see the Doctor be less of a class clown, less of a bumbling dervish, less someone who lets his companion solve everything, and more someone who uses his brain. (2) Unless he’s been hiding the ability to write female characters who aren’t into self-sacrifice I don’t particularly care to see Moffat write a female Doctor. Do you think for one moment that a female Doctor isn’t going to be scrutinized, every scene dissected by fans, people on both sides of the fence denigrating or defending? I’d rather that whomever the actress is that eventually wins that part doesn’t have her legs broken out of the gate by shoddy writing.