At Last, a Female Doctor Who
I’m not
a frequent user of social media for the simple reason that I have
adult ADHD—nor do
I suffer fools gladly—so
with all the idiots on social
media, these ingredients come together to create a supermassive black
hole ready to devour all my time. So I take a pass on social media. I
did however look at web sites reporting on the social media reaction
to the announcement that the new showrunner for Doctor Who
(Who), previously the showrunner/creator of the crime drama
Broadchurch, has
cast Broadchurch actor Jodie Whittaker as the 13th
Doctor—the first female to play the
role on an ongoing basis. I am jazzed at the prospect, but it saddens
me to read the vitriolic reactions of what I can only hope is a small
minority of some self-identified Who fans. Unfortunately, the
online very negative reactions of these supposed “fans”i
to this news has much in common with the backlash from a
sub-population of supposed Star Trek “fans” surrounding
the casting and characterization choices (among other things) of
those behind the new Star Trek: Discovery series, set to
premier this fall. I am addressing the disturbing political and
cultural zeitgeist in the US (mostly) at length in another series on
this blog, but as these retrograde trends are spreading to those who
call themselves fans of the two most cherished science fiction
franchises on television, Star Trek and Doctor Who, I
have some things to say. Given the long-standing ethos of Doctor
Who and Star Trek, one might be excused for being shocked
by how much overlap there is between Whovians and Trekkers and
Trump/BREXIT supporters, but fact that such people seem to exist is
an indication how far we have yet to go.
My
first exposure to science fiction was through Star
Trek in the form of Star
Trek: The Animated Series (TAS).ii
I had always been interested in space,
and even in grade school I would lay
outside on clear, warm summer nights with
Dad’s binoculars, a flashlight, and books about the
stars and planets. In
junior high, I made the happy discovery
in the
library of the paperback
short-story
adaptations of Star Trek: The Original
Series (Star
Trek: TOS), and TAS,
by James Blish and Alan Dean Foster, respectively.
My reaction was essentially “Wow! Space
with stories!” Later, I found the
robust moral compasses of the
protagonists and the high-minded,
optimistic vision it offered of
humanity’s future resonated strongly
with the ideals of the religious faith I was raised in, without
the disturbing end-times eschatology.iii
As
I got older, I became aware of the iconic
status of The Doctor, but
I only got into Doctor
Who after the 2005 “reboot” and
was quickly sucked in—and for
the record, I have never owned a Trek
prop or uniform, but I do have a set of Who
pub glasses and the sonic screwdrivers of
Doctors’ 10 and 11, and I plan on
getting the 13th
Doctor’s sonic as soon as they are available. Like
the Trek
franchise, Doctor Who
has never shied
away from challenging viewers to look at things from a different
perspective and aspire to nobler
ideals. Another way the character of The
Doctor resonated with
me is they
have never
suffered
fools gladlyiv—probably
because there is no room across the whole
of space and time The Doctor can
enter where they
are not the smartest person
therev—even
though others in the room dismiss The
Doctor as a daft old coot or a
younger, oddly-dressed nerd.vi
A female Doctor is entirely plausible from an “in-universe”
perspective as other Time
Lords have changed
gender as a result of regeneration.vii
All Doctors
have had to work through the choices made by their previous
selves—the best recent example is in
the Doctor
Who 50th
Anniversary Special “The Day of The
Doctor,” where the
10th
was the “man who regrets” and the
11th
was “the man who forgets” (or tried
to) how they thought they
ended the
Time War. Throwing
in a change in gender along with the other changes regeneration
routinely brings
makes for meaty storytelling and
acting challenges with immense
potential.viii
As for
the historically ignorant, loudmouthed puddingbrains complaining of
some liberal, SJW “diversity” agenda being crammed down their
throats by a shadowy cabal of liberal activists, the unfortunate
reality is the progressive idealism embodied by franchises like
Doctor Who and Star Trek left space dock on 23
November, 1963 and then again on September 8, 1966 respectively. On
November 22nd, 1968 the Star Trek episode “Plato’s
Stepchildren” aired showing the first black/white kiss on
prime-time American television—a
mere seven months after Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was
assassinated—nor
was the controversial nature of the scene
and its timing lost on the writers, director, or the cast.
Also in the original Trek was the Vulcan philosophy of
“Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combination” which was presented
as noble ideal worth aspiring to. In the run-up to the premier of
Star Trek: Voyager in January 1995, a small, but loud and
obnoxious, minority of Trek fans were utterly apoplectic at
the idea of a female starship captain headlining a Trek series
for the first time. Were these past plot/storytelling choices
instances of some SJW agenda being pushed down viewers’ throats 20
to 40 years ago as well? From the apparent mindset of many of those
objecting to the 13th Doctor’s gender or the
casting/plot of Discovery, it seems likely they would have
thought so—at
least if they’d been old enough to remember. It also raises
the question of why the hell anyone with attitudes like theirs even
watched Doctor Who or Star Trek in the first place, let
alone those that claim to have been “fans” for decades? Do they
suffer from some sort of cognitive impairment or does a subconscious
cognitive dissonance usually filter out the bits that conflict with
their contemptible world-view?
Thoughtful,
intelligent science fiction in general has an established history of
challenging the conventions, prejudices, and preconceptions of the
audience/readers of which their authors, creators, producers, actors,
etc., can justly be proud of. Science fiction at its best tells
stories that expand our minds, enlarge our horizons, and challenge us
to reassess our perceptions, both of ourselves and
others. This is how both Doctor Who and Star Trek have
lasted over 50 years, by speaking to the consciences of their
viewers/fans and, with varying degrees of subtlety, raising our
consciousness, individually and collectively, to the possibility of
our being better tomorrow than we were today.
I also
have a further point to make for those on both sides of
the new, female Doctor Who debate. Given the half of all human
beings born female, it is frankly preposterous, after the nearly 55
years of the franchise’s existence, for the title character to
never, ever take on the form of a human female following a
regeneration. However, I have encountered a small subset of the
overwhelming positive online reactions supportive of the new Doctor,
which then went on to express an apparently sincere wish to see
future regenerations of The Doctor be representative of their
specific, minority community. And just to be clear, I am not
referring to the sarcastic comments along the lines of: “Next
they’re going to have the Doctor be a transgendered, left-handed
amputee with dyslexia.” After the past 50+ years of Doctor Who,
a Doctor resembling the 50% of humanity that are our mothers,
daughters, sisters, and nieces, etc., is not PC
pandering. However, the world has given us Trump and Brexit, so I am
less skeptical than I was of the ludicrously, ridiculously improbable
actually coming to pass, so there may well SJWs advocating a sort of
“scorched earth” agenda which more sane, liberal, broad-minded
human beings might mistake as headlines from The
Onion.ix
One of
the primary marks of our shared humanity is our passion for stories.
The reason storytellers tell the stories they do are as unique and
individual as the storytellers themselves. Passively absorbing
stories is easy, but engaging our higher cognitive faculties to think
about the stories we hear, and maybe even learn something from them
is much more difficult because doing that requires some
minimal amount of courage, a willingness to challenge our own
thinking. More difficult still is creating and telling such stories
and doing it well. Aided and abetted by the Internet, it is fast
becoming a cliché for small subsets of fans to protest loudly
whenever their favorite franchise goes in a direction they disapprove
of, and this seems to be especially true of science fiction and other
fantastical genres. Some feel there is way too little “diversity,”
while others think the creators have sold out to the SJW
agenda—though I
doubt “fans” at either pole could
coherently explain what such an agenda
might be, even if their lives depended
on it. However much the fans of any franchise might feel
personally invested in it, they don’t own it. Since the first
glimmerings of spoken language arose in our Pleistocene
ancestors—perhaps
even before—stories helped us
understand and explain the world around us, including our own
existence. We share
those explanations and understandings—the
good, the bad, and/or
how it might be better—with
others so we might understand them and
they us. Whether it was the first Sumerian scribe to record
their elaborations on the already ancient oral Epic of Gilgamesh
on cuneiform tablets, a lone 21st century self-published
author like Andy
Weir, or the hundreds of people making creative contributions to
TV and movie franchise, they are entitled to tell the stories they
want to tell, the way they want to tell them. If anyone in the
audience is rubbed the wrong way by the stories of others, thinking
all’s right with the world as is, then they can either
read/listen/watch other stories. Or better yet, create the sort of
stories they want to hear.
Among the
many reasons J.R.R. Tolkien (and yes, I’ve read nearly all of his
stuff too) gave for writing The Lord of the Rings was for the
challenge of telling a long, complex tale that would engage readers
and perhaps even move or inspire them. Online, Whovians of both sexes
have commented about how, from an “in-universe” standpoint,
Whittaker’s Doctor will have to break through entrenched gender
stereotypes to be taken seriously before she can get on with her real
work of saving puddingbrains throughout the cosmos. I noted earlier
how, from the very beginning, part of The Doctor’s shtick was being
initially dismissed—sometimes as a
harmless annoyance, other times as an incompetent, dangerous,
unstable element in the crisis du jour—especially
by those who
ought to take The Doctor seriously. The best example of this is, of
course, Doctors 4 and 6 (Tom Baker and Colin Baker, respectively), I
mean, just look at those outfits! Since 1963, The Doctor has been an
archetype for a protagonist other story characters will initially
dismiss as a nutcase.
The
challenge Chibnall has set for himself and the other writers for the
13th Doctor is how they maintain continuity with the
essential characteristics of all the previous Doctors—not
suffering fools gladly and knowing, whatever room she (going forward)
enters, she’ll be automatically the smartest occupant—with
the new twist of
the character’s in-story quirky or eccentric sartorial tastes might
not be the only reason The Doctor is not taken seriously at first.
For Ms. Whittaker, the challenge will be to make her Doctor
believable in terms of the long back-story of the character, yet
subtly informed by the long-overdue change in perspective being
perceived, superficially at least, as a human female affords. Having
seen the first series of Broadchurch, I’m sure she’ll be
brilliant.
When
still a religious believer, I was saddened by the idea that no one
would ever know if someday, a united, peaceful (at least amongst
ourselves), curious, courageous, compassionate, and adventurous
humanity would have spread outward to the stars—because
of the whole “rapture” thing. Now, years later, as an atheist and
a rationalist, I am still enough of a
romantic idealist to find it bittersweet indeed that I personally
will never know how the story of humankind will turn out, but my
younger self’s hope for humanity’s future remains. Yet
even among self-described fans of the two most hopeful,
forward-thinking science fiction franchises ever, it
looks as though there may indeed be substantial numbers of our
fellow human beings we will never be able to convince that such a
future is worth striving for. What we will do then I do not know.
iMy
use of scare quotes around “fan/s” is intended to suggest such
fans might not have a clue about the broad ethos of the shows of
which they claim to be “fans.”
iiI
have only the vaguest recollection of seeing the Apollo 11 landing
on television on July 20, 1969, about a month before my 5th
birthday. The original run of Star Trek ended the month
before the landing in June, 1969.
iiiIronically,
as an adult, it was my own moral revulsion at my fellow Christians
who cared more about valuing the “correct” beliefs than they did
about believing in, and living by, the ideals they claim to value.
ivUnless
it was part of The Doctor’s overall tactics/strategy.
vBear
with me, I’m trying to avoid using gendered pronouns and
still be somewhat readable.
viThat
aspect of the Doctor’s character—at
least as they had been written and
played by white guys—appealed
to me because after being diagnosed as “hyperactive” at the age
of five (in 1970), in 2007 I was diagnosed as having adult ADHD—and
with an IQ well above the 99th percentile. From the age
of 5 to the age of 42, I always had the feeling everyone else knew
or understood something that always seemed to elude me, only to
learn the reason I always felt somewhat out-of-place, was that every
time I entered a room, I was quite likely one of the brightest
people in it—feeling out-of-place as a
result.
viiOr
maybe “regenderation”? My typo might have been a Freudian slip.
LoL
viiiIn
the end the 12th Doctor never knew he had gotten through
to Missy, though he felt he had come close. Perhaps the 13th
Doctor’s gender was due a subconscious desire to understand why he
thought he was ultimately not able to get through to
Missy. If so, I call dibs on the credit for any story ideas arising
from this.
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