I WANT EVERY SINGLE FEMALE WHOVIAN TO REBLOG THIS TO SHOW MY MOM THAT DOCTOR WHO IS FOR GIRLS AND BOYS.
C’mon! Let’s show her the power of the female Whovians!!! :D
you should’ve just said “And those opinions are for SEXISTS.” seriously though does your mother live in the middle ages
I disgree with this actually. Look at the direction of the show. The show nowaday is highly objectifying to women. The current showrunner’s dim views on women are well known and I won’t repeat them here but everyone who doesn’t have their head in the sand knows what I’m talking about. (And frankly, most of the people who respond “NO HE’S NOT MISOGYNIST!!!!!” are exactly the head-in-the-sand people I’m talking about). These views are endemic in the scripts over the past couple of seasons: this is not a good time for girls in Doctor Who.
Then look at the show back in Classic Who times - when the current showrunner was watching it. Christopher Eccleston said he didn’t even watch it - one of the reasons for which being some of the female companions often didn’t do much besides scream for help (which is a big reason Carol Ann Ford quit the show), and he didn’t find it empowering for women at all. (Not all companions were this disenfranchised - Sarah Jane for example, sticking up for her gender - but by and large.)
So if Current Who is less than empowering, and Classic Who often wasn’t empowering, when was a good time? There was a bit of a sweet spot in the show’s more recent history - the Davies era, of course, and much of the pseudocanon for example Big Finish. Other than that, when has the show been for girls at all?
I’ll tell you, I’m sure as hell not letting my two little girls watch the show as it is now. What would be the point? They play pretend and reenact everything they see on TV. I don’t want them to pretend to be Amy, or River (jury’s still out on Clara but consider the source) - to think their attitudes are normal, or something to aspire to, or represent strength. I want them to be like Rose, or Martha, or Donna, or Sarah Jane, or Maria, or Rani, or Toshiko, or Gwen. (They watch SJA and s1-4 of DW, which I highly encourage)
Doctor Who as it stands today is NOT for girls. I’m not saying it’s “for boys” (way to put warped ideas into their heads and help them devolve into Moffat-esque asswipes), but it sure as hell isn’t for girls.
Steven Moffat seems kind of obsessed with little girls and turning them into romantic interests for the Doctor. It’s starting to be deeply disturbing on a creepy level.
- We’ve had Reinette who we meet as a little girl turn into an insta!romantic interest and then snog the Doctor the first time…
I’ve been reading a lot of meta lately, and I’ve seen this post four or five times. I agree with it in broad strokes (though I’m not sure about River as we never actually see her as a child, and Clara’s history/memory is such a jumble still that it’s hard to peg her yet either).
That being said, I’ve read a number of replies that don’t agree (which is fine and lovely, because disparate opinions lead to healthy debate which gets people thinking about issues like these). Further than that, I’ve read some that bring up Father’s Day and baby!Rose with Nine as a tool to either call the OP hypocritical or to say the pattern started before Girl in the Fireplace.
Here’s the thing that’s wrong with that.
All of the above characters (again, minus River as we never actually see her and the Doctor on screen together when she is a child except in AGMGTW, however she’s clearly been fed stories about him all her life, so there is an element of that there) meet the Doctor around age 9. I think Reinette is 7 or 8, Amy is 8, and Clara looks to be in the 7 to 10 range in the prequel to The Bells of Saint John.
Rose in Father’s Day is less than a year old.
This is important to keep in mind because of something called ‘childhood (or infantile) amnesia’. This is the term used to explain why most people don’t really have many solid memories from their first three or four years of life. A lot of it has to do with brain development, considering the human brain doesn’t properly finish development until about age 25, this isn’t very surprising. Memory from before about age 5 is rare (not unheard of, but rare) and from under a year, practically unheard of.
Put simply, Rose couldn’t have remembered the encounter with the Doctor even if she wanted to because at 6 months her brain wasn’t sufficiently developed to allow her to do so.
However, by age 8 or 9, it definitely is. This is key difference between the characters in the OP and Rose in Father’s Day. These girls remember the Doctor. They’ve built up figments in their heads that don’t necessarily match the actual man (This doesn’t seem to be the case with Clara, but despite the lack of an actual meeting with River as a child, she has built up a version of him due to her upbringing). To then show these women as love interests takes this idea of ‘imprinting’ (or at least leaving such an impression that no reality that she can achieve on her own, under her own power as an empowered woman with her own agency, can compete with) and makes it out to be a positive thing. At the very best, it undercuts the agency of these characters because they are on some level waiting for the Doctor to come back and be the guy they’ve daydreamed of for years and years.
Not only that, but if we think about the general order of event’s from the perspective of the women, and just for a moment think of it as a normal guy and a normal girl where this pattern is taking place, it gets a bit skeevy. Think about it.
-Man does something terribly impressive and a young girl admires him for it.
-Man shows up years later and sees her again
-Man kisses girl (or, rather is kissed by, as the Doctor initiates exactly 0 of these kisses) who has dreamed/fantasized over him her whole life.
None of these things are terrible alone, but when you put them together…. Take away the fantasy element of time travel and it’s not an order of events most people would be generally OK with. That man, if real, is not a man parents want around their daughters.
This is fiction, though, so there’s a level of writing off of things that in RL would be problematic that happens. That’s OK, because fiction doesn’t have to reflect reality, but when you bring up problematic issues in fiction you still have to address them. Just because it’s the Doctor and he sees the world differently doesn’t mean it’s alright to create this pattern and show it as normal without addressing the problems that exist in it.
But, back to the point, why Father’s Day doesn’t fit this trend.
With Rose, she doesn’t daydream about the Doctor, because she doesn’t remember the meeting. When they do kiss, it isn’t Rose throwing herself at an internalized image of the Doctor as a hero. It’s the Doctor Seeing Rose and not wanting her to die. Rose’s memory and image of the Doctor has nothing to do with it. In Reinette, Amy, and River’s cases, at least, it’s entirely about their perception of the Doctor.
TL;DR version: All in all, disagree with the OP if you want. Debate is wonderful. But don’t use Father’s Day as a basis for your argument or as a lynchpin in it. Father’s Day isn’t a part of this pattern. The above all are, at least tangentially.
Thank you for this, excellently put <3
dryadalis replied to your post: kilodalton replied to your post: brightstyle…
Tennant also jokes that Reinette would likely have been cyberized the very next episode, so at least he wasn’t ALL for it…
seriously???? he said that???? rofl omg omg abort mission this is it this is the one comment that kills me
Yes exactly XD This is hardly the stuff of ~true love~ XD XD
I gotta admit though that I would have loved to see this. Note how freaking insensitive he is when Rose and Pete tell him solemnly and sadly that Jackie has been Cyberized - he doesn’t even react, he just changes the topic. Pete’s wife just freaking died, and someone that Rose had an emotional attachment to died, and he couldn’t care less. Now, imagine that Reinette had also been Cyberized in that ep … can you imagine the emo-ragey-guilt-and-anger? And can you imagine how pissed off canon!Rose would have been, considering what his canonical lack-of-reaction was to Jackie dying?
littlewhomouse replied to your post: okhazel replied your post OH EW. Im so skeeved by…
It was when Jenny takes off her dress to fight and the Doctors sonic screwdriver suddenly points upwards. When he realizes he has down boy moment with it. Ugh
…. I just went back and watched and now I’m extra skeeved out. Like hey, Doctor, can you stop overly sexualizing the woman? ESPECIALLY since you know she’s IN A RELATIONSHIP?!? (And presumably a lesbian, or at the least bisexual, idk if they clarify.) But JFC, what is up with the dirty jokes lately?!? And like, the teenage boy humor.
Even if Jenny is a lesbian/bi, remember that we have apparent confirmation in Moffat!land that all it takes is a Strong Male Character for such women to spontaneously decide they are straight — see his portrayal of Irene Adler in Sherlock.
Brb raging.
I thought it was time to give some thought to what the Doctor-assistant relationship is, what function the assistant has on the show, how Doctor Who distributes personal qualities by gender, and why I now hate this lovely show that I used to love.Damn, this rings true and it breaks my (1) heart.
“[in Moffat’s Who] the woman is not of interest for her character or her abilities, but for some fundamental mystery in her being. The mystery isn’t even a secret she’s keeping, something over which she has control- it’s something she does not know about, that the Doctor must puzzle out in his own mind. It’s not about her- it’s about what’s wrong with her. When Steven Moffat took over Doctor Who, women became a problem.”
I love this article.
“I can’t imagine Matt Smith’s Doctor loving someone any more than I can imagine Steven Moffat having done something to deserve access to clean air and water”
May the fourth be with you
The Fourth Doctor, that is.
Are we sure this is Tennant? Body type and hair are right, but isn’t the guy here a bit short? Jenna Louise Coleman is only 5’2” and yes she’s wearing heels but they look to be 3” heels TOPS … Billie is 5’5” (so roughly the same height as JLC in those shoes) and Tennant (who is 6’1”) usually towers over her … we sure this is him?
(OK now I’m starting to feel like a geeky height creeper, I’m gonna go away now)
In today’s DWM, in their season 3 retrospective:
“In the last season, the Doctor and Rose were almost sickeningly in love, an almost adolescent, all-consuming kind of love. But in the end, they were torn apart. It’s hard to move on from that kind of heartbreak. For a while, nothing else matters. ‘But your heart grows cold, the north wind blows, and carries down the distant - Rose.’ It’s the one name that has power over him. He might have a new friend, Martha - but it’s still all about Rose.”
FUCKING LOL THAT ARTICLE IS BY THE AUTHOR OF THE STONE ROSE
AHBKSDLGJSDGKA;SG;SADLG’SALH;SA
JACQUELINE RAYNER LET ME LOVE YOU FOREVER AND EVER
WHY DIDN’T YOU GET TO WRITE A S2 EPISODE OMGOMGOMG
OMG HOW DID I NOT NOTICE THIS LAURA????? Lol I was so excited over the fantastically shippy article (bc DWM is rarely **THAT** overtly shippy) that I didn’t even notice the author OMG OMG OMG haahah
Steven Moffat. (DWM. June 2013.)
In today’s DWM, in their season 3 retrospective:
“In the last season, the Doctor and Rose were almost sickeningly in love, an almost adolescent, all-consuming kind of love. But in the end, they were torn apart. It’s hard to move on from that kind of heartbreak. For a while, nothing else matters. ‘But your heart grows cold, the north wind blows, and carries down the distant - Rose.’ It’s the one name that has power over him. He might have a new friend, Martha - but it’s still all about Rose.”
