Clara (Jenna Coleman) and The Doctor (Peter Capaldi) in Doctor Who.
Clara (Jenna Coleman) and The Doctor (Peter Capaldi) in Doctor Who.
The ninth season of Doctor Who will soon be upon us, and that means the show's alumni have already started popping up and offering their thoughts on all things TARDIS-related.
Seventh Doctor Sylvester McCoy thinks the Doctor should absolutely remain a man and a man only.
"I'm a feminist and recognise there are still glass ceilings in place for many women, but where would we draw the line? A Mr. Marple instead of Miss Marple? A Tarzanette?" McCoy recently told the Mirror.
McCoy suggests making the Doctor anything other than male is beyond the realm of possibility, but he's still an imaginary character. Marvel Comics made Thor a woman, Captain America black, and Spider-Man black and Latino and the earth seems to still be spinning on its axis and going around the sun. Isn't it possible that a non-white, non-male Doctor could exist without setting off a global nerd riot?
Current Doctor Who showrunner Steven Moffat seems to think so, though he's resisted the idea of giving the Doctor a female body simply because of modern gender politics. Under Moffat, the evil Time Lord The Master became The Mistress rather unceremoniously, and without comment from the Doctor.
"We've been laying in the possibility for an awfully long time, but you don't cast that way," Moffat said last year at the Sky Women in Television and Film Awards in London. "I know I'm going to get in trouble for saying that - you cast a person, you don't cast the gender."
It's worth wondering why people like McCoy cling so fiercely to this one detail when the Doctor is an alien polyglot who travels through space and time, and whose sexuality ranges from squishy (especially considering the homoerotic subtext of his friendship with Captain Jack Harkness) to asexual. Given the Doctor's ability to essentially molt and shed one human body for another - which is how the show passes the role from actor to actor - what's stopping a regenerating Doctor from becoming a woman or an ethnic minority? The traits that make the Doctor such a compelling character - wit, compassion, charm and ingenuity - are hardly constricted by race or gender.
"I'm sorry, but no - Doctor Who is a male character, just like James Bond," McCoy said. "If they changed it to be politically correct then it would ruin the dynamics between the doctor and the assistant, which is a popular part of the show."
Moffat, who took over showrunning duties from Russell T. Davies in 2009, has said he would also be game for reworking the Time Lord-human relationship - the Doctor's companion has always been a young, impressionable, and attractive "20th century female" - which has also come under fire. The debate over the Doctor's gender goes beyond just whether or not the character should remain white and male for perpetuity; it's the way the supporting characters are written.
Not only are the companions always female, but they're also always willing to drop everything in their lives that's important to them to get whisked away by this mysterious man. They are always pining for and falling for him, but never seeing their feelings truly reciprocated (the Doctor is too noble for the messiness and heartbreak that comes with human relationships).
This is reinforced so heavily that when Doctor Who brought back Sarah Jane Smith (Elisabeth Sladen), who played the Doctor's companion from 1973 to 1976, there's an aura of jealousy and suspicion between Sarah Jane and Rose Tyler (Billie Piper) that eventually softens into the two women commiserating about the Doctor's idiosyncrasies. Even though the Doctor practically abandoned Sarah Jane for her own good, she's still longing for the Doctor and new adventures and willing to pick up and leave her life behind all over again.
There's been some variation - Catherine Tate's Donna Noble was probably the most willful and outspoken of the bunch - but generally the Doctor's companions have offered superficial resistance and adoration that borders on the divine.
Playing with the identities of the Doctor and companion could really shake that up, and bring a 50-year-old show fully into the not-so-new millennium.
Jenna Coleman and Peter Capaldi in Doctor Who.
Moffat has also taken heat for the show's dearth of female writers and directors despite Doctor Who's significant female fanbase. The nerdy pop culture site the Mary Sue has consistently pressed the show, and Moffat especially, on this. Torchwood writer Catherine Tregenna will be writing for series nine, which debuts in the U.K. in September. She'll be the first female writer on the show in six years.
"Female directors and writers have a tendency to turn us down," Moffat told Zap2it. "There are fewer female directors and female writers - it's a statistical fact - it's shameful but it's true. Most of the people who are desperate to do Doctor Who are men.
"... There's a slight tendency to think Doctor Who is not for them. Catherine was happy to write Torchwood - she had a very good Torchwood run - but wasn't as keen to write Doctor Who. I'm doing my best, despite what people say about me. There's very much a culture of thinking about Doctor Who as a boys' show, but I'm always going to conventions and looking at fans and thinking there's practically more girls than boys."
