Weeeeeeuhhhhwooooo! New Dr Who starts 19 September!

[VagelinaJolie]

Hooray! Let's hope that this series is better than the last.
Oh look it's Arya Stark! And more Missy!
And PC's hair is madder than ever!
(And I've found the box of exclamation marks!!!!!)
Let's see

I'mo ld enought to have watcheda all the Doctors in real time iyswim . I have enjoyed all of them for different reasons . All, that is, exceptf or Peter Capaldi . I really don't like him .The writingh as been poor and though last night's was better, it was only marginally so . Can't stand Clara, not keen on Missy so am beginning to wonder how much longer I'll keep watching .Shame, my absolute favourite programme ever, but for me, completely ruined .

Yonic I would love if Moffat used the exact same wording and technique to bring back Moriarty

Did anyone else think Kate would have worked out about the fuel before Clara? I didn't really buy Clara swooping into the lab with theories that had eluded Kate and UNIT I am a big Kate fan so admit this may influence my interpretation

Interesting about the Bechdel test, I wonder if that's Moffat's aim this series - at least one conversation per episode will pass the test.

APlace - yes, I'm not 100% happy with the interpretation of Kate. It would have taken Clara a good 20-30 mins to get to UNIT, I'm sure there would've been more theories by then.

Cadno, you were right about that sniper. Hoorah!

I think Missy is a good extension of John Sim's master.

I also don't think for a minute Twelve thought she'd been killed outright by the cyber man.

I make no secret of my lack of fandom for Moffat

They were basically searching for a man ...

They we searching for a person who happened to be a man though. They weren't searching for him because he was a man.

As for Missy, Clara and the Tardis, we know they aren't gone but we don't know why or how they will come back.

Did anyone else think Kate would have worked out about the fuel before Clara?

Not necessarily. I got the impression she had been thinking along other lines. Clara's "thing" seems to be making connections between events.

Regardless, the fuel hypotheses was wrong anyway. :)

Soup, a conversation about a man doesn't qualify under Bechdel, but many lines of the exchange weren't about the Doctor, so it still passes.

Even if the fact he is a man is irrelevant? That makes no sense. The same conversation could be had about Missy with no amendments whatsoever.

I'm really only watching for the entertainment factor though, I'm not into all the picking it apart type stuff :)

Soup, one of the points of the Bechdel test is that normally men in films and TV have more agency than women. Often a conversation between two women is about a man in a romantic way.

But if two female secretaries are discussing their male boss's birthday party (to pick a stereotypical example) - they are having the on screen conversation about a man who is the 'important' one even though the man in question is being discussed as a boss rather than a boyfriend.

A conversation between two men on screen is much less likely to be about a woman, it's more likely to be about the situation.

But the fact that The Doctor is a man is absolutely not irrelevant. There are pretty obvious patriarchal reasons for every single Doctor having been male.

(I'm not unaware of Missy's existence, or the existence of other, female Time Lords. But they're not the story our TV is showing.)

If we lived in a world where all the Doctors had been female we wouldn't need a Bechdel test.

Scarf, actually, it might not. When there is a female lead, she is often more or less surrounded by men.

The lead in The Fall was Gillian Anderson, for example. She worked with several other police, only one of whom was male. Often two men were having a conversation on screen that wasn't about her. She had few enough conversations on screen with another woman that weren't about a man (the perpetrator or the senior policeman). I'd imagine far more episodes failed the Bechdel than failed the reverse Bechdel.

The test:

"The Bechdel test (/?b?kd?l/ bek-d?l), also known as the Bechdel-Wallace test,[1] asks whether a work of fiction features at least two women who talk to each other about something other than a man. The requirement that the two women must be named is sometimes added."

So, Clara and the Unit women or Missy could have a conversation about make up and handbags but not about how to rescue the Doctor...?

Why the implication that make up and handbags (global industries employing science, creativity and craftsmanship on a huge scale) are less worthy of discussion than a godlike male figure?

Yes, that's right.

The Bechdel test is not about how feminist a piece of media is. SATC regularly passed.

It's about how much women in the pieces of media are seen as people in their own right rather than by reference to the men in the piece.

Incredibly few pieces of media fail the reverse bechdel - it's very unusual even in a rare female dominated piece that there is not at least one conversation between men about a subject that isn't a woman. Even if it's about football or beer, which I suppose is the stereotypical equivalent of make up and handbags. SATC probably did fail the reverse Bechdel often, but I can't think of many. Buffy rarely fails the reverse Bechdel, I believe

Because they are clearly idle gossip and less worthy than formulating a rescue plan for someone...?

Err, what? There's no judgement on the value of the topic. Just as men might be discussing football or a plan to save the universe.

I was replying to Grauch.

Personally I think that any test that "values" vacuous conversation between two female characters over two female characters putting together a plan to save a character who happens to be male, for example, is crap. All rather pointless if a programme that has stereotypical fluffy females gossiping can pass but one that has strong female characters can fail. It seems to have started as a joke anyway.

But this thread is meant to be about Doctor Who.

I for one am glad that Dr Who is back. Not seen the first episode yet but I do love peter capaldi as the Dr.

I like the concept of the Bechdel test because it is a simple yardstick of the underlying values of a programme (even one that seems to have a strong lead). It's not the only yardstick but I think as a basic introduction to sexism/feminism in the media, it is quite effective.

And since Doctor Who often has female companions and has tried to challenge stereotypes and bigotry in so many ways, I think they will be aware of the Bechdel test, especially when you look at the programmes it directly draws on eg Buffy.

Yeah, it was a throwaway reference to Bechdel initially. I'll leave the discussion there with the thought that over half of films fail it; I imagine less than 5% of films fail the reverse test.

So... will the doctor shoot?

We can start another thread about Bechdel if you're interested? It was not ever intended to be a tool to evaluate a single piece of media but it's an easy way to illustrate trends as a whole.