My Thoughts on the 13th Doctor

Those who have read my blog know that I read a lot of female heroes:

Spider-girl, Captain Marvel*, Squirrel Girl, Batgirl, the Birds of Prey, Silk, Spider Woman (Jessica Drew), Superwoman, Wonder Woman. I've read them, generally loved them, reviewed them, and recommended them. I'm looking forward to both the Captain Marvel and Batgirl Movies. I say all that to say that I love good, well-written stories of female heroes and promote them.

However, I was disappointed to hear about Jodie Whittaker becoming the 13th Doctor. Why? Because I'm a stick in the mud prejudiced sexist who hates women and doesn't think women can't be heroes---or at least that's what the Internet tells me.

I don't think she's a bad actress. I saw her in the first two series of Broadchurch and thought she was pretty good in that, although nothing in what I saw screamed that she was Doctor material, but I think that was just the nature of her role.

There are numerous arguments in response to people not being happy with a female Doctor that are not really honest:

---It doesn't matter what the Doctor's plumbing is, just as long as the writing's good.
---People shouldn't get upset, it's just a TV show.
---The Doctor's different from other heroes given that he/she's not actually human, he/she's an alien Time Lord and it's always been a possibility that the Doctor would regenerate into a woman.

The first argument is disingenuous for those who have been saying for months that we need a female doctor. If the plumbing doesn't matter....why have you been hoping for and calling for a Female Doctor for years on end?

The second point is silly because creators want us to care about media, and if you're a fan of a show, you want other people to be fans so you can talk about it with them. To decide, "You disagree with me on this topic which I obviously care about, therefore you care too much about it," is silly and unjust.

The final point has a little bit of truth in it. Yes, the Doctor is an alien and not a human. However, he's alien who has looked like a series of human men for the past fifty-four years and that's how we've met and related to him. Some of the most popular Doctors (Hartnell, Pertwee, and Tennant) did little to act alien, but even the most alien (Capaldi, Baker) were still just odd men to most of us. As for the Doctor's gender changing, that possibility has only become canon recently.,

It was first mentioned as a possibility as Tom Baker shared a random thought that popped into his head in 1980. Then during the era that Doctor Who was off the air, there was spin off media that went a bit crazy as no one at the BBC cared what they were doing and someone wrote a gender changing regeneration into a novel. for someone other than the Doctor. A comedy story written by Steven Moffat for a non-canon Comic relief special in 1999 featuring Rowan Atkinson as the Doctor ended up with the Doctor regenerating multiple times with the last being into a woman.

There was an audio drama, "Exile" that suggested a Time Lord suicide could produce a different gender regeneration in an alternate universe. This was never even confirmed to exist until the Doctor's Wife aired in 2011 and the Eleventh Doctor mentioned someone who had regenerated into a different gender. We didn't actually encounter a character this had happened to until 2014. In short, for the vast majority of the show's existence, this wasn't even confirmed to be "on the table," and only extreme geeky fans of the show were aware of the non-canonical places it'd been mentioned.

The ideal behind the argument against people being upset with the new Doctor is the idea that gender is irrelevant. It's just the plumbing, that's all. Yet, biologically, that's not true. Science has shown that there's a difference between how men's brains and women's brains work. There's a difference in how we relate to one another. Guys are not just women with different plumbing. Women are not just guys with different plumbing. This is the twenty-first century, so I have to write that.

And you can be cute about it and say the Doctor's not human and therefore that doesn't apply. I guess you could argue if you forget that the Doctor traveled for a Time Lady for 3 seasons and those differences were shown to exist.

I think the message behind this change is that gender is an irrelevant social construct. Men and women, mothers and fathers are ultimately interchangable and therefore ultimately disposable under this gender ideology. I don't think that's true, and when a falsehood becomes the core of your story, it really becomes a problem. I think most science fiction has some lie in it, but if it's off to the side, you can ignore it and enjoy the story and find the truth in it, if it's front and center, it becomes harder.

The truth is that over the 50+ years, the program's been on the air, many have related to the Doctor as a father figure or if not that, then a bit of a male authority figure and role model. Some times that played out on the show: there was the warm fatherly relationship between the Doctor and Jo Grant. When she left she even married a man who was much the younger version of the Doctor. It could also be seen in the relationship between the Seventh Doctor and Ace, and most recently between the Twelfth Doctor and Clara.

Fictional characters can play a big role in our lives and perhaps too big a role. I'll always remember the first season of Who Wants to be a Superhero? where a contestant met Stan Lee and confessed that his father committed suicide when he was a young man and he relied on Spider-man as a role model.

In a society where fathers are so often absent for the children's lives, I wonder to what degree, some children have latched onto the Doctor in the same way that young man latched onto Spider-man so many years ago. In many ways, despite his flaws, the Doctor was one of the better male role models on television. Often teaching lessons in kindness, mercy, and compassion you don't really see from many male heroes on TV.

Of course, one might argue that this new Doctor will be a female role model. Fair enough, but you shouldn't have to destroy a male role model to create a female one. As the Fifth Doctor said at the end of Warriors from the Deep, "There should have been another way."

Romana or Susan could have been brought back to regenerate along with the Doctor and you have a Time Lady who could get her own spin off. Sara Jane Smith's spin off ran for five successful season and would have run many more if not for her untimely death. However, what was decided was to go this direction to support an ideology, even though a wide variety of fans shared their discomfort and ignoring them will have a cost.

If I were to guess, I think Doctor Who will probably lose between a quarter to one third of their domestic viewers over the change, which would put them below the viewership totals that Sylvester McCoy had during Season 26, but the show will probably continue if, for no other reason than political pressure as well as multi-year commitments in other countries that will keep the show on the air until 2020.

Of course, Chibnall could also write some scripts that draws new fans in. He did a great job on Broadchurch Series 1, and I think his scripts "42," "Dinosaurs on a Spaceship," and "The Power of Three" worked fairly well. On the other hand, Broadchurch Series 2 was a bit of a mess and that Silurian story from Doctor Who Series 5 was the low point of a very good series.

For my part, I won't know because I don't plan to watch Series 11 at all. If you do, then that means you're....a person with a different point of view than me.

There has been way too much invective thrown about this online. Many people who love the show have different views on it's direction. , For example, many who are generally progressive still opposed a female Doctor. Among them, Fifth Doctor (Peter Davison) and Seventh Doctor (Sylvester McCoy), along with Third Doctor Companion Jo Grant (Katy Manning) and First Doctor Companion Steven Taylor (Peter Purves). And yes, there are plenty on the other side as well. It's a fundamental disagreement about what's right for the show. And the other side of the argument is not evil.

Certainly, Doctor Who is under no obligation to entertain me. I'm thankful for the hundreds of hours of entertainment I've gotten from Doctor Who and if you want to continue to enjoy it into Series 11 and beyond, have fun.

I have no ill will towards Chibnall or Jodie Whitaker, both of whom should be treated with decency and respect.

For my part, I'll be like those fans who only watch Classic Doctor Who and listen to Big Finish, only though I'll add Doctors 9-12 to the mix as well as the spin off media from Big Finish and Titan comics. It should be a long time before we run out of stuff from these old Doctors and I'll enjoy every bit of it.