The Poor Execution of the Female Doctor

[clearspira]

Leaving aside my overall feelings of the politics behind it, I am going to explain why I think conceptually the sex change did not work.

Simply put: all they changed was his genitals. That's it. From the episodes I have seen, you could rewrite them to feature Eleven or Twelve very easily indeed. Change the companions, change a bit of background fluff, change a few lines of dialogue and done - you have a script that could have been done in 2011. Her scripts are imo a microcosm of the very vanilla and predictable rut the show is currently in.

They needed to own the decision to change his sex. They needed to do something with it that only a female Doctor could do. And I can think of two things right off the top of my head:

1) Trap her in the past without the Tardis - at least for a couple of episodes. You want to do politics then fine; lets see the Doctor in a more patriarchal age. Lets see her be fricking awesome when dealing with sexist, asshole guys that only recently she would have been safe against. Remember ''Human Nature''? Like that, only with the Doctor now in the Martha role.

2) The big one - get her pregnant. Its a completely new plot for her, for us, and has great story potential. Remember Adria from Stargate SG-1? How about bringing back Susan and have the Doctor realise what a shitty grandfather he was to her? Bring back Jenny. Show that pregnant women are not incapable by having her still able to save the universe.

These are just some ideas - but it is more thought than has been shown so far and I fear will be shown seeing as she has already quit. Maybe the Fourteenth Doctor (who is guaranteed to remain a woman) will be more inspired.

[Yukaphile]

I haven't advanced that far yet, so can't see the changes people have made to her - or accuse them of having made. It is possible people are just blowing this out of proportion because subconsciously, we've been ingrained with a male Doctor for the past half-century? And yes, Dax was similar, but... we never saw her change sex on screen. I guess I'm saying a female Doctor is always going to feel clunky and weird to people not seeing women going where men have traditionally ruled. Change is never easy that way. But it will probably get easier over time.

[Jonathan101]

Eh...no, that's pretty much the opposite of the issue.

They problem is that they changed TOO MUCH- they DIDN'T just make the Doctor female; they ALSO made the decision to cut out all past monsters and aliens, to introduce multiple companions on top of a new Doctor meaning that you had 4 characters to develop across 13 episodes on top of handling the plots of each episode (which, of course, almost always introduced a new monster or alien who needs time to be established as well), they changed the tone into something that wants to be fun-filmed family adventure on the one hand and serious family / political drama on the other, they brought in a bunch of new writers who had never written for Doctor Who before or even sci-fi in many cases...

All of which invites sexist and misogynist fans and critics to blame the problem on the Doctor being female, which allows the BBC and defenders of the show to ignore legitimate criticisms and say that the bad reputation of the show comes from sexist, reactionary trolls.

And the way the show handles politics and moral issues is generally bad because it's on the nose and also inconsistent and all over the place- having a blatant Donald Trump parody as an antagonist and condemning him for shooting the giant spiders as inhumane, only for your solution to be "starve the spiders to death", is just shoddy; saying that it's wrong to kill your villains but then dealing with them by locking them up for eternity or sending them back to the dinosaurs is just sloppy.

It's blatantly obvious that they are trying to re-imagine Doctor Who as a heavy-handed educational show with sprinkles of entertainment, and it's blatantly obvious that they are not even good at it. The biggest recurring complaint about the current show is that it is BORING.

Though lets be honest, Doctor Who had been going downhill for a while now; all the current show did is continue the downward spiral by taking all but the bare bones of "Doctor Who" out of the product.

[Mecha82]

I do think there is nothing wrong with way they handle Doctor being woman because problem is stories that were written aroind her. She needs those better stories to show what she can do.

[PerrySimm]

Eh, The Doctor as a galactic soccer mom isn't that bad of a look.

[Fianna]

I haven't watched the recent episodes, but I find it weird that people say there's not enough time to introduce and develop four main characters. Like, for most television shows, four main characters is on the small side for an ensemble.

[Jonathan101]

I haven't watched the recent episodes, but I find it weird that people say there's not enough time to introduce and develop four main characters. Like, for most television shows, four main characters is on the small side for an ensemble.

Yes, but every episode has it's own plot and characters that need to be introduced also, which is different from how most shows operate. Doctor Who usually makes do with two main characters with the occasional tagalong. Also bare in mind that Doctor Who involves travelling through time and space so when a new episode comes along there can be entire worlds and alien races that need to be established as well.

Of course, there is also the fact that the writing itself isn't always great in the first place, or the most consistent (like, one of the new lead characters had a condition that made it difficult for him to balance, but that is pretty much dropped after the pilot; another lead has episodes that involve her family, but don't really develop HER, etc.) so that doesn't help either.

[Worffan101]

I mean, I like the cast a lot. Especially the new Doctor. The scripts have been hit and miss, the Rosa Parks one hit like a truck emotionally even though it kinda falls apart if you think about it in detail, but whatever, I'll work extra hard to suspend disbelief for a payoff like that.

Like so many modern shows, though, it definitely needed more time to do character work in and play with characters.