SFP wrote:It's difficult. Doctor Who has an impact that extends beyond many programmes, particularly given it's longevity. It has, and always has had its fair share of foibles and foolishness (the sonic screwdriver for instance which, I feel, is ridiculously overused);
I detest the sonic screwdriver. It's just another simplistic and unconvincing Deus Ex Machina that can be used by the script to tell the Doctor anything, and to allow him to alter many things without needing to put either the story or the stage people who make up the program's sets to any trouble. K9 was another thing I thought cheapened the program. And Romana's various body try-ons at the beginning of Destiny of the Daleks, and how stupid the Brigadier (supposedly a very capable and intelligent man) could be on rare occasions.
my partner was always happy enough to let me watch it but still regarded it the whole premise as just plain silly. I must admit, their were many occasions I found it hard not to disagree with her but some of the programme's appeal, I feel certain, lies in it's connection to childhood memories, hidden behind the sofa watching monsters menace and, perhaps the feeling that, no matter how bad things got, the Doctor would still save the day.
Agreed. Certainly at times the program can seem childish, or at least to grossly oversimplify the unseen tragedies of a given episodes storyline. We never, for example, see how bad the human slaves realistically have it in a Dalek episode or the William Hartnell stories that touch on slavery. But I like the philosophy of the program (at least from the second Doctor's time onwards), that there is a force for almost pure good, someone who is incorruptible and always ready to face evil, and that that person is someone who would actually talk to me alright if he met me (he wouldn't regard me as just one of countless trillions of life forms, or as someone who'd achieved nothing worth talking about). We live in a world where justice is not only not the norm, but where evil often wins out (especially if the evil side has money to back it up), and the Doctor represents the good that should exist and prevail, wrapped up in someone idiosyncratic enough to make him and his work really interesting.
And most everyone has 'their' doctor, the actor who first engendered and, perhaps, most epitomised their 'Doctor'. I can understand people not wanting to let that go. I can understand them feeling passionate about it. I like his/hers passion for fairness and justice, his/hers humour, oddness, sharp incisiveness and even sexual naivety amongst other things which may be one of the reasons I feel the character is transferable across gender, race, etc.
Yes, everyone has their favourite Bond, their favourite Sherlock Holmes, their favourite Hamlet, and so on (provided they like that film/play/etc, of course). I don't know which Doctor I watched first, probably Tom Baker (who was brilliant, of course), because I was born in 1970, but just maybe Jon Pertree, though if I did see Pertree first then I wouldn't have understood what I was watching. My favourite Doctor was Colin Baker, and might still be, though I don't like most of his stories (as you probably know, that was Doctor Who's worst period, production wise, and as a result the program had some really bad scripts and technical people (cameramen, sound-people, etc) forced upon them. My favourite Doctor from the new series is Matte Smith (who was amazing), but I can't decide who I prefer between Smith and Colin Baker, because Baker never had a chance to really shine because he never had even one really good story.
I'd be interested to know whether your comment regarding Jodi Whitacker relates to her gender or to her suitability as an actress? Do you see the Doctor as intrinsically male (and it's fine if you do) or is their something about the 'essential' character as you perceive it that you believe is missing?
I do see the Doctor as intrinsically male, as to me it just would feel different with a female Doctor. As you said, the program did have a sort of "The Doctor will save the day" feel, which I've never felt about any heroine in an popular series. I might well be wrong, of course, or I might be right for the wrong reasons. I mean, we've always been brought up to read/hear about males saving the situations, be it in Greek myths, real life (more or less) war stories, fictional adventure stories, action films, etc, but how many heroines are there in classic or really popular media who single-handedly thwart evil and save many lives? How many fictional males heroes can you name of the top of your head?
James Bond, Batman, Superman, Spiderman, Indiana Jones, Sherlock Holmes, Luke Skywalker, Captain Kirk, Sam and Dean Winchester, Tarzan, Flash Gordon, John Steed, and dozens of others.
But how many female heroes can you name? Ones who choose to go face to face, to run towards the danger, to engage in physical combat if necessary (which in films or on TV it often seems to be), to be utterly unswerving in their intentions and point of view?
Wonder Woman, Katniss Everniss, Emma Peel, Rey from the new Star Wars films, and no doubt others. But i'd bet not even a tenth of the number of male heroes you could name. And very few of the heroines you could name came from before the 1960s.
We're conditioned to think of the real heroes as being almost entirely male. Granted that's certainly not at all the case in real life of course. In real life, there are always people doing heroic things all over the world, and 99.99999% of them will never have their story told or their names made known to others. After all, a hero in a film or book usually saves dozens or even thousands of lives (maybe even the whole world), you can't write a best selling film around someone who saves one life, no matter how truly brave that person (man or woman) has to be to, say, jump into a freezing lake where a five year old child has just fallen through the ice and is drowning. The person who jumps in to help knows full well that himself (or herself) could drown (especially since the body tends to quickly lose much of it's ability to move when it goes into shock because it's just been thrust into very cold water) or even get trapped under the unbroken ice in the very dark water, and so drown whilst trying to reach the surface. That person is a hero, and can be of either gender. They'll also never get a series of films based on them, or a range of action figures. Even say a soldier, who leads a charge or does something else that saves dozens of lives, doesn't get real recognition from the world.
And for various reasons the more cinematic heroes, the larger than myth heroes, the ones who fascinate generations of people and are always in our consciousness, tend to be almost entirely male. Partly yes, it's just because we're conditioned to think that way (wrong though it might be to think that way). Partly because most people who like action or adventure stories are male anyway, and so we like our heroes to be male so we can see ourselves in them. Partly because we expect women to be less forward, less physical, less confrontational, etc. Partly because we (many men, at least) really don't like seeing women suffering - seeing Indiana Jones, for example, suffering and in pain isn't good, but I'd feel much worse if it was a women suffering the same fate, and if it was a child then I doubt many people would like the film. And maybe even because some men, seeing a really strong women, might feel threatened or even frightened.
But for whatever reasons, I don't think a female Doctor could work. It just wouldn't be the same. Maybe I'm wrong, or maybe I'm right now but in say fifty years, if women do become more prominent as heroes in popular culture, then I'd be wrong because to that audience (fifty years from now) a female Doctor would feel as right as a male Doctor, I don't know. I just know that I honestly believe it, and so do lots of other people.
And aside from that, I don't like the way Whittaker's Doctor is written. It's too ditsy and, I don't know, it just doesn't seem right to me. But that is nothing against her gender, really, just another aspect of the bad righting/editing of the scripts of that season.