Future Doctors

[dalekboy]

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!

Comments

[waylanderpk.livejournal.com]

Well its probably my selfish streak, how many shows have a white male flying through space solving problems with intelligence and compassion, a principled caring man doing good things.

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.

[angriest.livejournal.com]

Certainly not non-violent ones.

[(Anonymous)]

The Doctor is a parental figure. A female Doctor would be, to me, like a parent getting a sex change - great if that's what they want, but more than a little confusing to me as a person. That is, fair enough, ultimately my problem, and it's a concept that's worth exploring in a fictional setting, but I'm ultimately coming to Doctor Who because of its tradition of exploring macro-social issues through the allegory of monsters rather than its tradition of exploring psycho-sexual hangups through the allegory of regeneration.

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.

[greg tannahil (from livejournal.com)]

Oops, that above thing was me, by the way. Stupid OpenID.

- GregT

[angriest.livejournal.com]

A female Doctor DOES create a different character and a different dynamic

As does the shift from Hartnell to Troughton, or Eccleston to Tennant, etc.

I'm still not convinced it would be any different.

[angriest.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah, and as I've noted previously - Doctor Who is a show about change. Why should so many elements be open to that, but not gender? Makes no sense.

Of course if they'd just bring back Romana and give the Doctor an intellectual equal again, all would be forgiven. : )