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By now most of you will have heard that Matt Smith is to be the 11th Doctor.
I trust Moffat and co. to have chosen carefully, but I am a little worried about the future if recent trends continue. At this rate, another fifteen years we'll have a foetus behind the console!
I trust Moffat and co. to have chosen carefully, but I am a little worried about the future if recent trends continue. At this rate, another fifteen years we'll have a foetus behind the console!
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They seem to think he gave a good interpretation of the role, and the rest of us will just have to wait and see what new slant he brings to the role, while maintaining the essential Doctorness.
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The one thing I didn't think they should've done after Tennant was make him younger. To me the Doctor works best as a middle-aged man - the weird uncle that the kids like. While I like both Davison and Tennant as the Doctor, I still think they were too young. Now they've gone even younger.
I used to want to be an actor so I could play Doctor Who. Today I've woken up to learn I'm too old to play Doctor Who. : )
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My biggest issue with an actor so young playing the Doctor is that there would be many people who wouldn't listen to him, where an older Doctor can at least fake the maturity as he takes over.
That said, I'd hope Moffat would take it way Davison tried to play it - the old man trapped in a young body. That could be really interesting. And a Doctor who no-one listens to because he looks too young could be interesting as well.
But I agree about the middle-aged, weird uncle type. And I felt old when Tennant came in, you young bastard!
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It's time for a change, anyway.
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(a) being against change in general,
(b) being sexist.
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IMHO the Doctor is male and white, and should remain that way. That isn't to say that a black woman couldn't (or wouldn't) be great a Doctor, but the Character is what he is, you shouldn't just chuck out 30 years of back story on a whim. It would seem that your advocating change for the sake of change.
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And for parts of the viewership to look at a show that changeable, random and gloriously mad, and to say "X could not ever happen" or "Y would be a terrible, terrible idea", is something that I think runs very counter to the spirit of the programme.
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I'm sure a talented writer could give a plausible reason for any change you might want to make to the Character. But I've been watching since I was 3, it is in fact the first thing I remember watching, so I want his future direction and decisions to remain consistent with all (well maybe most) of his previous choices and actions.
Is there some reason you think the Doctor should have been a woman?
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One of the problems Doctor Who has is that due to its structure - educated middle-aged man accompanied by audience-surrogate young woman - it's effectively Pygmalion in space. It's an inherently sexist programme. The production team can adjust it a bit, they can work on making the companion more of an equal (which has only been properly done once with Romana II), but the structure is always there. Having the Doctor be a woman with a young male companion for a few years would be a refreshing break out of the box in that regard.
But the bottom line? Because there's a story there.
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In this post-whedonesque sf world their are very few strong male characters for young boys to identify with, I think keeping the Doctor the way he is worth doing for that reason alone.
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Put that stuff in Torchwood and I'll quite happily go watch it there, but let the Doctor do what the Doctor does without complicating things, please. A show does not have to do everything a little and be brave in every direction - it needs only do what it was designed for very excellently, and go about that focus without fear.
And I don't think it's fair to levy sexism as the only possible reason for the opinion. Gender-swapping a character does a lot more than change its societally implied competencies (which I am agreed is a thing it does not have to do at all, in fact). The goal of gender equality is a society where people of any gender can display their individual skills to their fullest potential without labouring under the gender-fuelled misapprehensions and presumptions of others; it is NOT to create a sexless society where genders are interchangeable and only determinable by reference to physiology. A female Doctor DOES create a different character and a different dynamic, it doesn't draw on the same archetypes that have fuelled the doctor over the show's history, and it sits poorly with much of what has made the show work over its long history.
Do feel free to point out to me non-continuity or fanfic stuff with a female Doctor that proves me wrong, though.
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- GregT
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As does the shift from Hartnell to Troughton, or Eccleston to Tennant, etc.
I'm still not convinced it would be any different.
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Of course if they'd just bring back Romana and give the Doctor an intellectual equal again, all would be forgiven. : )
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This guy does look very young though...
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