to hope that the next Doctor Who is female and not understand why this would be so terrible?

[findingme]

My first AIBU - I have used advanced search and can't see an existing post on this so apologies if there is. I don't want to link to DM so please just google "Female Doctor Who" to look at the recent articles about this in the DM and newspapers.

It seems that it is a possibility and I can't understand why anyone would think this is a bad idea. AIBU?

TolliverGroat I can agree that it could be done well- I would think the chance is as likely as a month of Sundays, because if we get a female Doctor the process will go like this we want to liven this up à la the shitty Doctor Who: The Movie we are having a female Doctor > how can we justify that > hastily-written story written specifically for that point. And it will look like exactly what it is, and be unbelievable.

But gender-changes weren't compulsory, and the Doctor's has never changed sex before, so you would need a really strong storyline to explain why he's changed his mind this time. I used to have a comic (not sure how canonical it was) in which he teases another character for changing. I think. (Oh god, will have to spend ages on Amazon trying to identify the comic annual, in order to determine the period and canonicity.)

I'm a feminist but a female Doctor wwho would just be "political correctness gone mad".
OK he's not human but there is regeneration and there is completely changing your chromosomal identity. It stretches scientific credibility and would be silly. I'd not be impressed with a black or asian Doctor Who for the same reason.
He can regenerate into different white men but anything beyond that just gets silly.
Women and people of other skin colours can sort out their own super heros and often do so without tinkering with this one.
I also agree that there aren't many male nonviolent superheroes.
They should have more srong female characters in it like Romana and River Strong, preferably strong female characters who are as intelligent as him and can disagree with him and don't fancy him.
It's a shame the only black male character I remember in it "Mickoi" always sounded thick as pig shit and that they didn't persevere with the black doctor assistant although they made her fancy him too which I think was a mistake.

Do any of these undergo periodic regeneration?

I was taking the mick because this has turned into quite a thread.

Sadly the only person(s) that can truly answer the question are now deceased. Any bastardisation of the original series would be down to the current writers.

In theory I guess the Dr. could be any living creature but the clue is possibly in the fact he's a Time Lord and not Lady. Thus is makes some sense that he retains this phyisical characteristic.

BigJessie, I'm not sure I'm following but I'll try to answer you.

DISCLAIMER the below is all meant genuinely and with no snark or anything else unpleasant intended.

No, I didn't say/wouldn't say 'Don't be so misogynistic- I'm sure you can have female Time Lords, why would they be all male?'. What I'm saying is more along the lines of 'Why not try out a female Doctor?'. The word misogyny doesn't come into it.

This is where I really start to lose your meaning, but (again genuinely) I hope I address what you mean.

I don't believe I've said anything 'fatuous' or 'in a pretentious, patronising way', but am happy to be pointed to where you believe I have.

I don't understand why you say I'm playing the victim.

P.S: in this context, pseudo-liberalism is the idea that that making a male character (whose most subversive point is his identity as a male-pacifist) female, is a victory for feminism. Pseudo-liberalism is quite a problem in sci-fi generally. (Klingons don?t get a nature vs nurture debate, for example. Individuality is for humans (and Ferengi after a few years), and tolerance means accepting that particular races are identikit personages.)

I agree that the stories are too short these days and tend to have crap over complicated rushed endings. 3 or 4 parters would produce much better stories, even my kids prefer the old longer stories a la Tom Baker.

I don't want a woman, not because I'm a mysoginist. I just like the character how it is

Can anybody explain which of the Doctor's qualities are specifically male?
Genuine question. I can't think of any.

I'm still holding up for Martha as the next Doctor, and being a lesbian as well so s/he can continue the simmering romance with River. (Making her ginger might be a bit of a stretch but, if anyone can carry it off, Freema can!)

Blindworm, River is a strong character but has been spending too much time going all mopey and sacrificial around the Doctor lately. I preferred it when there were just hints of the bond. I know the romance is developing and all that, but remember she's travelling through time on the opposite trajectory to the Doctor. There should only be one point where they're in sync, and I think we've seen that already? I'm getting fed up with her mooning; I want her to go back to outrageousness!

I might give it up in favour of that Gallifrey radio show. First time I've heard of it :)

No, I didn't say/wouldn't say 'Don't be so misogynistic- I'm sure you can have female Time Lords, why would they be all male?'. What I'm saying is more along the lines of 'Why not try out a female Doctor?'. The word misogyny doesn't come into it.

This is where I really start to lose your meaning, but (again genuinely) I hope I address what you mean.

I don't believe I've said anything 'fatuous' or 'in a pretentious, patronising way', but am happy to be pointed to where you believe I have.

I don't understand why you say I'm playing the victim.

I complained about people who say things like "Don't be so misogynistic- I'm sure you can have female Time Lords, why would they be all male?" or a variant, and said that such people are up-themselves morons. The fatuousness and pretentiousness is in the quoted comment and their variants. You posted "[up-myself moron, apparently]".

You evidently felt that the comment addressed you. Either you had said something similar, or you hadn't. The latter is where the accusation of assumed victimhood applies.

A I said, a female Doctor would be fine by me. However, if the below comes to pass, I think it'd probably be a step too far:

Michael Jackson?s daughter Paris has been lined up to be the next Doctor Who. The 15-year-old tweeted her job application to the BBC after becoming a massive fan.

Even having the Doctor regenerate dressed up as Dr. Frank-N-Furter would be better than that!

Martha's married to Mickey, so not lesbian. Unless you just mean the actor returned as a separate character?

Hahahahahahahah! And, eek, Son!!

She is non-white and ginger, and female. Not sure about - you know, being a good enough actor to credibly portray thousands of years' worth of wisdom

I am really curious.

How come, when there's a debate about sex changes in real life, we're not allowed to talk about how being female is innate, to do with your chromosomes, etc. etc. And if we do discuss these things, even if we pick our way through the debate with an awful lot of care not to use emotive language, we're deleted. And we're told it is transphobic to say such things.

I notice this, because I really hope I'm not transphobic, but I do question whether or not it is possible to 'change sex', and whether there is such a thing as gender identity, that is separable from your chromosomes and the genitals you were born with.

On this thread, one comment has been deleted for making a pretty unpleasant and explicit point about sex changes, but other than that, it seems it's absolutely fine - because the same people who're making these comments are attacking feminism instead of defending it.

Oh, I forgot about Mickey, blindworm. Easily done.

Scary point, LRD. I feel okay with it because the character's chromosomes are alien, so all bets are off. The only guarantee about the Doctor's chromosomes is that they're Gallifreyan.

Oh, I am absolutely fine with the character's chromosomes being alien.

I am of the opinion it's a story, it changes with different writers, it doesn't too much matter.

I just feel a bit confused.

BigJessie, I read your comment as addressed to me because it started with my name in bold. Apologies for getting the wrong end of the stick.

What I said was in response to 'Every time someone asks for a female Doctor, they are actively requesting tokenism.'

and my comment was 'In fact, in my case anyway, it's actively requesting a change. And a fresh take on a long-running show.'

So I didn't mention misogyny.

2rebecca actually, I'd be fine with a non-caucasian Doctor. I think that would be less of a stretch. He has actively chosen to remain male, but that doesn't preclude skin colour change. He changes hair-colour, doesn't he? That's fairly drastic genotype change, in human terms. More importantly, he's been desperate for a mirror to check his appearance, which suggests that's involuntry so he's not necessarily been choosing to remain white. Canon shows that the temporal aristocracy do undergo changes that would require huge changing one's very "chromosomal identity". Hair colour and skin colour is all about melanin really. Why not one, and not the other?

Secondly, grab your DVD box set now. What colour skin does River Song have in her second incarnation? She didn't look white to me.
First- baby to eight year old girl
Second- the one known to the Ponds as Mels (for Melody) through their school years.
Third: the curly-haired cool psychotic we know and love.

Thirdly: "all planets have a north", so why Gallifrey's orbit around the sun(s) might have produced areas where it was advantageous to evolve to produce more/less melanin in the skin.

Kim147 that sounds like such a fun PhD. It would be great to gain academic recognition, instead of shouting at DVDs to the bemusement of my children!

"Even having the Doctor regenerate dressed up as Dr. Frank-N-Furter would be better than that"

Heresy - you can't mix aliens from different Sci Fi shows

But IMO a transexual (omnisexual?) Dr. would actually work quite well.

Yh, they really missed their chance to have an omnisexual Doctor in the Seventies, Ziggy Stardust stylee!

Perhaps they're ready for it now ... ?

Has anybody managed to tell me which of the Doctor's qualities are specifically male?

Heresy - you can't mix aliens from different Sci Fi shows

Compared to having Paris Jackson as the Doctor, I think I'm quite prepared to go to the stake for it.

LRD I can only speak from a privileged cis-gendered perspective, but I don't really believe in innately male or female identities or characteristics, or that we're just our chromosomes. Our environment is interacting with our genetics to produce us from the day the fertilised egg travels down its fallopian tube. I do believe in gender dysphoria though. I happen to feel like me and like my body fits well enough (which means I'm either cis-gendered and simply can't see my gender because there's nothing for it to contrast with, or I'm without gender. The first is rather more likely) . Some people find that their bodies cause them intense, debilitating distress.

The time aristocracy seem to have varying levels of preference over it and to get a choice about it, first regeneration onwards, anyway. Some pick a sex and stay with it. Others switch. As I've said repetitively I think the fact he hasn't switched before suggests he got comfortable with one sex.

Therefore, to me, none of his traits are particularly male or femalealthough the writers keep making him say laddish things. Aargh, he's a 900 year old alien, not a lad trying to be cool in a pub.

It's kind of bizarre that there are people on here claiming only boys/men watch Doctor Who, it's a boy's/man's show, the fans are boys and they will all stop watching it if the doctor is a woman.

Yet this is taking place on MumsNet, on a thread where most of the posters are presumably women, and whether they want a male or female doctor or are not bothered either way, they all seem to have watched the show.

It reminds me of all the people who claim Star Trek is for men, despite the fact that the original tv series was nearly cancelled and was saved due to a campaign by housewives. Maybe also interesting is that the woman who played Uhura (Nichelle Nicholls) was going to leave the show at one point, and Martin Luther King convinced her to stay, so important did he think it was to equality and human rights in real life to have someone who was both a woman and black in a position of authority on an entirely fictional space ship.

Despite all of this, I mainly want a female doctor because gender swap is one of my favourite fan genres as it is interesting and entertaining.

Hang on a minute- anyone else remember Romana deliberately regenerating to look like that princess? So they do have control over their appearance. But the Doctor and River Song need mirrors? Perhaps you need a triple-first from the academy in order to control the way your hair and facial appearance result?