To be getting increasingly pissed off with Doctor Who's sexist attitude?

[FairPhyllis]

In Doctor Who this evening there was an exchange where the Doctor is trying to get Clara and the TARDIS to get on nicely together. He puts the TARDIS into 'basic mode' for her. She is slightly put out and asks him if he's done that because she's a girl. He says no of course not. Then we get a shot of him grimacing - we're clearly meant to understand that what he said is a fib.

Really, Doctor Who? Really? A 'ha-ha girls are rubbish with machines' joke that would disgrace a 70s sitcom?

There have been other snidey snide Woman!ZOMG moments and really depressing treatments of female characters for a while now. Well, I say 'characters'. Clara seems to be cut from the same 'sassy woman who thinks the Doctor's just fab' cookie cutter that Amy was.

AIBU in thinking that this isn't really good enough for a flagship children's show? Do the (all-male) writers not think girls (and women) watch it too?

With my family I regularly age years overnight, without time travelling

My family wouldn't, Pixel. I generally look about 90 in the mornings :)
I enjoy Dr.Who as mindless relaxation with the potential for a bit of detective work on the story arc if you fancy it. I didn't take the exchange to mean she was a useless girl. I do miss Rory though.

Excellent x-post, HoneyDragon!

IM finding since DW was rebooted (regenerated) RTD and SM and all the other wirters, just about every fr episode ALWAYS get the gratutiuos gay reference in, and usually a dig at God too.

wow, I must be watching a different show, because I found nothing sexist or offensive about it. Except the awfulness of some actors, the three 'guest stars' were almost incomprehensible.

They also made sure that 'Clara' wasn't eye-candy by dressing her in an outfit that did indeed look worse than a bin liner.

most doctor who fans are male, a large percentage are gay. This was giggled at in the very first 9th Doctor episode with a character being surprised that a fan was female. Back in the 1980s when it was last made, references to being gay were much less acceptable on TV.

Rhiana But that's the point! All of the characters you listed apart from Rory were created by Russell T Davies. The diversity of the characters has changed markedly since he stopped being showrunner.

Why should I shut up and switch off? There's precious little British sci-fi being produced at all. This is the top sci-fi show in the UK, I've been watching it (the old series) since I was a child, and I'm actually genuinely worried for its future if it goes on like this. I don't want another dark age where it goes off the air.

what about the age gaps???? a 19 (sic) year old girl and a 900 year old man...omakes Hugh Hefner sound like a toddler

I might be off topic here but isn't Matt leaving? I worry about the new one and how many incarnations is he allowed?
My two p worth- I hated this weeks' episode as it seemed cheaply made and just a filler episode to set up the longer story arc with Clara.
Surely they are due back in Victorian times soon?

Jack was created by Moffat. And River isn't twenty-something, whatever else she may be.

I agree that Moffat could sometimes do better, but I reckon you're overstating your case. After all, next week we get Strax, Madame Vastra, and Jenny, all quasi-companions, all Moffat's creations IIRC, and in no way Girl Sidekick stereotypes.

and there you go, the girls again next week (btw Im not anti-gay, just ,why? whats the point? what does it add to the story?)and I think madame Vastra is a brill character. and Strax!

i suppose to quote 9th doc, 'so many aliens, so little time' !!

Matt Smith has signed up for the 8th series, which will go out in 2014.

I think the thing about the number of regenerations that are left isn't a constraint anymore - originally that was imposed by the Time Lord High Council, who are all dead now. And River gave the Doctor all her regenerations. Plus they can do whatever they want by, you know, making stuff up.

To be fair I did like the Cold War episode and 'Hide' a lot. I think the experience of being a Doctor Who fan is largely that of endless frustration about what the show could be like if only ... , punctuated by moments of Awesome. It's a bit like the Archers in that respect.

It would be awesome if the next regeneration could be a female Doctor. Especially if she was an even stronger character than River.

No, no, I really don't want a female Doctor. I would stop watching it, it just wouldn't be Doctor Who and I want someone I can have a secret crush on.

Although Joanna Lumley did a pretty good job in The Curse of Fatal Death .

I love Doctor Who but have not been taken by this series at all. I the DCs have been rewatching the 9th/10th Doctor episodes and they were all pretty good - the Donna Noble series in particular.

Moffat wrote some brilliant stand alone episodes and a lot of the Amy/Rory episodes were good too (even though I didn't like Amy one bit) but I don't feel the need to rewatch this series at all which, for me as a geeky fan who likes to notice things, is really sad.

And I'm another who wouldn't like a female Doctor. I'd just like some good companions and better story lines!

NNNNNNNNNNOOOO to a female doctor. as pixel says, wouldnt be the same.

claras okay but yy to decent companions, platonic companions like Donna and most pre-8th doctor.

Ace was good.

They can indeed do what they want by making stuff up! :o

I'm looking forward to a female Doctor just because it would annoy so many people :)

And because it could be genuinely interesting and innovative...

I think it was meant to appear 'sexist' but as others have said I think it was more to do with the Doctor* not being sure who or what Clara is. Notice he questioned and scared her about that issue just before they jumped off the cliff?

Oh and she called herself a girl because she's Northern, it's what we call women of all ages, I try to remember to use 'woman' instead of 'girl' in work i.e. "Joan is the woman in finance you need to speak to" but it feels weird and I'm always conscious of it not being my natural choice.

*its never Dr and always Doctor. That really grates

modernjournalism.tumblr.com/post/47314835256/doctor-who-bechdel-test

This is a great blog post using the bechdel test to compare episodes written by RTD and Moffat. Obviously the bechdel test isn't perfect, but in this context it's rather illuminating.

Its going to be very hard for Dr Who to pass the bechdel test as all of the characters always talk about the Dr.

True, but when you consider that 25% of episodes of with Moffat as show-runner don't even have 2 named females, it's pretty bad before you even get to what said non-existent females discuss!

Bechdel test is not normally a problem. The female companions normally befriend and talk to the female guest stars about the problem of the week. They do it in an empathic way because they are girls you see , and can do the touchy feely stuff which the Doctor can't because he is a bloke alien. They then girlsplain it to him.

I am ambivalent on the idea of a female Doctor. I don't think it needs to be done for the sake of doing it. There's nothing wrong with having a show which has a male lead, especially as the part of the companions is so much bigger these days. But it could be interesting.

In a sense the Doctor is actually less important in a character sense to the show than the companions are - the Doctor's appeal is mostly that he is mysterious, fun, a little bit scary and enables the adventures. For a character who's been around for 50 years he has had remarkably little character development. In fact too much character development would remove that mystery (I don't need to know what the Doctor's name is!). But it means that the companion has to emotionally carry the show, and I don't think Clara and Amy have had sufficient depth to do that - the arcs now are about 'solving the mystery of the companion' rather than about the companion's emotional journey, and I find that a less satisfying form of storytelling, however skilfully it's plotted. What we have at the moment is just moving characters around like chess pieces.

I really liked the idea of having a married couple in the TARDIS to show that you don't become a boring old fart the moment you get married, but for me it didn't really work because Amy was just such a weakly-drawn character.

In fact from a story telling pov I'd prefer it atm if there was only a male companion with the Doctor, because the chances are they would be better written and more interesting.