The 13th Doctor Reveal Thread

[Dave]

...likewise Othello must always be black.

I saw A Midsummer Night's Dream at the Globe last summer and it was re-interpreted with Asian actors and a Bollywood theme, and the text was messed about with - Athens became Bankside and there was mention of "Hoxton Hipsters" among other things - however, Helena had also become a man called Helenus - I didn't feel outraged by this. I don't think all the changes worked, but Shakespeare's plays were adaptable and irrepressible, and only set when versions were written down later.

I think Bond must always be a man, and British...

Well, he was already Australian once and Irish a few times.

 

[thaddeus6th]

I think Patrick Stewart played him once. But I stand by what I said. When demography is critical to a character, it should be respected.

You can make a case that the context for Othello is 'the outsider' so maybe I could be persuaded that the context rather than specifically being black is the critical aspect. Also, if Wellington can be Irish and British, so can Bond

 

[MemoryTale]

With that out of the way, do any other arguments against this decision to cast a woman as Doctor Who still remain?

Not so much The Doctor being a woman, as that's been speculated ever since the 70's and frankly I'm surprised it's taken this long. I do have an issue about this sort of thing with other roles, and I do apologise if I don't explain it very well as I will admit my thoughts aren't 100% clear on this.

What I have issue with is the current trend to re-imagine male characters as females. Most recently it was Ghostbusters, but we've had a female Prospero and Dr. Watson and I'm sure there've been others. My issue is that there's an argument that we need strong roles for females, and I'm 100% behind that. What I'm taking issue with is that instead of creating a new strong female role, they've taken a strong male role and flipped the gender. I feel a bit uncomfortable with this, almost like the writers are unable to imagine a strong female character that hasn't been made famous by a male. So even though we have a strong female, it's still following the lead of a male.

 

[Paul_C]

It's probably time for a reboot of Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman.

 

[Ursa major]

What I'm taking issue with is that instead of creating a new strong female role

The real issue is that old ideas, particular complicated self-contained webs of ideas, are continually reused... hence all the remakes (and re-imaginings) we see.

Note also that random changes are made when transferring a story from one medium to another. Inspector George Gently is set in the North-East, but I believe the source novels were set in East Anglia (somewhere far less visible on our TV screens).

 

[The Big Peat]

I have no strong opinion on this, although I agree as a general point with MemoryTale that the continued reimagining of established male roles as female roles rather than creating new female roles sits ill with me.

But I have to kvetch and hiss anyway.

Because, you see, I sort through the BBC's press coverage.

And I can assure you with a fair degree of confidence that this announcement has provoked an equal, possibly greater, degree of consternation in the media and on the letters page than most terrorist attacks.

Its the announcement of an acting job. Okay, its also a major shift in some's perceptions of a cultural icon, but... like... France could simply dissolve into water overnight and there wouldn't be as much press coverage. I think that's hyperbole but I'm not actually sure.

I am stunned, floored, mogadoored, and so heartily sick of the matter I had to engage in it some more just to get it out.

 

[Danny McG]

France eh?
=))

 

[Ursa major]

France could simply dissolve into water overnight

Surely they'd show the Champagne moment...?

 

[Cathbad]

In all the comparisons being made - usually against the Doctor being a female - one thing keeps being ignored (not just here but other social media sites): The characters they compare do not regenerate.

No, I couldn't accept a female Alex Cross or Bilbo Baggins.

If the Doctor didn't regenerate, I might half agree with the arguments against a female Dr. Who. But he/she does. And my argument for female Dr. Who's is - logic.

 

[Ursa major]

Not exactly an example of regeneration in the sense of how it appears on the screen (and is explained to the audience), but perhaps more of one where what has happened offstage has had a similar effect... except in the script....

I missed the first third, but was able to see the rest of a series one (season one) episode of The Avengers on the TV the other night. John Steed wasn't in this episode; the lead character was Dr David Keel, played by Ian Hendry. Another episode from that series will be shown on Monday, and that is, apparently, all they have of that series in terms of complete episodes.

Hendry didn't appear in later series:

Production of the first series was cut short by a strike. By the time production could begin on the second series, Hendry had quit to pursue a film career. Macnee was promoted to star and Steed became the focus of the series, initially working with a rotation of three different partners. Dr Martin King (Jon Rollason), a thinly disguised rewriting of Keel, saw action in only three episodes produced from scripts written for the first series. King was intended to be a transitional character between Keel and Steed's two new female partners [Cathy Gale and Venus Smith], but while the Dr. King episodes were shot first, they were shown out of production order in the middle of the season. The character was thereafter quickly and quietly dropped.

On Tuesday, they're showing the first episode of series two. This is what Wikipedia says about it.

The first episode broadcast in the second series had introduced the partner who would change the show into the format for which it is most remembered. Honor Blackman played Dr Cathy Gale. [...] Gale was unlike any female character seen before on British TV and became a household name. Reportedly, part of her charm was because her earliest appearances were episodes in which dialogue written for Keel was simply transferred to her. Said series script writer Dennis Spooner "there's the famous story of how Honor Blackman played Ian Hendry's part, which is why they stuck her in leather and such—it was so much cheaper than changing the lines!" In "Conspiracy of Silence" she holds her own in a vociferous tactical disagreement with her partner.

I wasn't old enough to see Cathy Gale when her episodes were first broadcast; Mrs Peel was "my" companion for John Steed, but the character was clearly based solidly on the Cathy Gale (neé Dr David Keel) model.

(Note that Dr Keel wasn't much of a fighter, if what I saw the other night was anything to go by. Both Gale and Peel would have had no problem in defeating him.)

 

[SilentRoamer]

With that out of the way, do any other arguments against this decision to cast a woman as Doctor Who still remain?

It always has to be me...

Yeah I still disagree even with the last page of discussion to take into consideration. I see certain aspects as core to the Drs character - being a man, being the smartest person in the room - with the possible exception of when River Song is kicking about), being generally a good person, having a sonic screwdriver and flying round in a Phone Box. Now I don't necessarily see them in any order although if I did I would say the Phone Box for me is the most iconic, however I feel changing any of them is a change to the Dr. I understand regeneration's do change the Dr but it has always been within constraints.

I didn't like the Capaldi Dr. I thought the writing was weak and I didn't like Capaldi enough to watch despite that. I will be giving the new Dr a chance and I could always change my opinion.

That said it's a 45 min? slot in a week of my life so I doubt I will worry too much about it! Amazing how the internet has blown up about it - wouldn't even want to comment anywhere else on something like this as the internet is full of crazies. Except here. Where all the people are sane, or aliens, or dragons.

 

[nixie]

- wouldn't even want to comment anywhere else on something like this as the internet is full of crazies. Except here. Where all the people are sane, or aliens, or dragons.

And here we have the main topic of conversation for next Saturday

 

[farntfar]

OK. I’ve decided to make one definitive statement about how I feel about this and then shut up.

First of all, any scientific arguments are null and void.
If gender is defined by alliles instead of chromosomes or whatever, whereas character, or was it colour, is defined by the other one, I have no idea. I’ve heard the words but that’s pretty much the limit of my understanding. For Time Lords it may well be their mystidles and their devorpignags that are important anyway and changing gender could be terribly easy.
The thing that’s important is that with a re-generation everything is up for grabs.

It also seems to me that, although I’d like to see a black or Asian Doctor, it also seems less important than his gender. Whilst I see it’s important in a cultural message sense, which I would approve of, it matters less to the Doctor him/herself.
A regeneration is essentially a chance for the doctor to change personality and priorities and I would humbly suggest that there are more intrinsic differences here when comparing men and women, than there are when comparing black (wo)men and white (wo)men. (Leaving out social/political conditions.)

So there you have it.
From a simple story-line perspective, having a female Doctor seems to me to be a chance to explore a whole new type of Doctor, (If that doesn’t sound a bit obvious) and I’m very excited about it.

 

[Ursa major]

To quote Wikipedia:

In many species, sex determination is genetic: males and females have different alleles or even different genes that specify their sexual morphology. In animals this is often accompanied by chromosomal differences, generally through combinations of XY, ZW, XO, ZO chromosomes, or haplodiploidy. [...] In other cases, sex is determined by environmental variables (such as temperature) or social variables (e.g. the size of an organism relative to other members of its population). Some species do not have a fixed sex, and instead change sex based on certain cues. The details of some sex-determination systems are not yet fully understood.

I think that, in the case of Time Lords, the last sentence in that quote applies....

 

[REBerg]

The sheer audacity!

This blog is not available

 

[Cathbad]

 

[Dave]

I never saw this business going on for so long. It really doesn't bother me, so I have a real problem in seeing why it consumes other people so much and causes them so much anger (especially when there are plenty of "real" non-fictional environmental and political concerns and wrongs that have me fired up.) I mean to say, it is over two weeks since this announcement (it has been talked about as a possibility for over a decade) yet last night on Twitter the term "Nurse Who" was still a trending topic!

 

[TheDustyZebra]

You don't see why the people who don't like it are still consumed by it, or you don't see why the defenders are? Because, well, as long as something as utterly ridiculous and demeaning as "Nurse Who" is going around, I'm likely to keep smacking idiots up side the head.

 

[Danny McG]

Let's have a schoolkid next to cater to all the kids who watch it.
We've had a schoolboy doctor series before, Doogie Howser MD.

"Dr Who do you think you are sonny?"

 

[Ursa major]

yet last night on Twitter the term "Nurse Who" was still a trending topic

It must take a very "special" type of person not to notice that some doctors aren't male.