Who is watching Doctor Who tonight

[Firefly2009]

And if you've now seen it, what are your thoughts?

I'm predicting I will love it no matter what. But look forward to discussing it.

Maybe The Doctor will have learnt from his Jodie Whittaker incarnation to (a) not wee everywhere, (b) put the seat down and (c) replace the loo roll when it’s finished.

I bet he’s as bad as the rest of them, as evidenced by waving his sonic screwdriver around.

So according to RTD being trans makes you more than one person? So he thinks being a trans woman makes you 'more' woman than a biological woman is. Righto. Thst actually explains TRA to a tee.

Trans relates to the stereotypical social construct that is gender identity. It is impossible to change from one sex to another (unless you are a regenerating Timelord). Rose may be stating they have a different gender identity but they will never be biologically female so they are not a mixture of male and female. Rose is a biological male expressing stereotypes socially imposed on women.
Rose’s gender identity is irrelevant to the metacrisis because the metacrisis is not about Donna’s gender.

It was very poor writing that sacrificed plot credibility for lecturing the audience.

Really enjoyed it.
I loved seeing Dr and Donna together again, and Donna's family.
Sat down to watch it altogether as a family, like we did when DS was younger and loving Matt Smith.

I like the actor from Heartstopper. I don't feel as though RTD has slighted me in any way as a woman.

Looking forward to next week.

Same here. Just the age of the actor confused me. I assumed she was going to be Donna stepdaughter seeing as she was obviously not a 13/14 year old. That's the only thing that bothered me

I was only half watching so initally missed the daughter was a transwoman. Intially I spent a baffled few minutes trying to work out how Donna had an adult daughter when her boyfriend and then her marriage to him was introduced in the 2010 DT regeneration episode and no child was mentioned.

Then when it became clear the daughter was supposed to be 13, I just thought it was crap casting of an actress who was clearly in their 20s and it was jarring to see a clearly adult, very tall woman talking about going to school and spending her spare time in a shed making soft toys.

The plot was ok until the end whe it got very rushed and poorly constructed even for Children' Programme Dr Who. If women can channel timelord energy and "let it go" why didn't Donna do this at the time of tbe orginal meta crisis? It was a poorly retrofitted excuse to keep Catherine Tate for all three episodes. It would have been better if she had died - sacrificed herself to save London. That would follow the orginal DT doctor storyline arc of him being a rather selfish unthinking person who doesn't like to think about the companions who sacrifice themselves while he keeps on living.

the coffee spill let it down for me, it was not very well done

It would have been better if she had died - sacrificed herself to save London. That would follow the orginal DT doctor storyline arc of him being a rather selfish unthinking person who doesn't like to think about the companions who sacrifice themselves while he keeps on living.

I agree. That would have been a much better ending. But they would have had to deal with the emotional fallout. The Doctors guilt, Sylvia's fury, bereaved family. That would presumably have affected the upcoming series (unless they pretended it didn't happen). I got the impression this mini series is supposed to reset the programme so they may not have wanted that link back.

Someone suggested Donna could let it go now because the metacrisis had been divided between two minds where before it had just been Donna. But I still find it a ridiculous explanation; the Doctor still thought it was a major problem for them even divided between two people. They ran out of time and ideas and, having decided Donna would live, came up with a trite explanation so they could rush onto getting Donna into the TARDIS.

For a moment at the point Donna ‘died’ I thought that she was going to part regenerate. That energy would leave her and destroy the meep etc and stop the link with the soldiers and make everyone better, but a last tiny speck of the doctor would stay, (like the last tear of rapunzel saving Flynn on Tangled) and bring her back to life.

that’s what I would have written 🤣

I thought Rose being trans worked well with the storyline and the recent change of the doctor from male to female. Yes, Rose is biologically male but she has a woman's brain essentially, so is both (as is the Doctor). I thought the 'educating' us on pronouns was condescending and unnecessary. That bit of dialogue was really clumsily written, but other than that I think Rose being trans made sense to the plot and trans people do exist so no reason for them not to feature on TV shows as well as biological female teenagers. There can be both.

A brain is a man or woman brain based on the body it is in. You can't have the 'wrong brain' for your body any more than you can have the 'wrong' arm or kidney.
Your brain may not fit societal gender stereotypes, but that only goes to show that the stereotypes are wrong, not you / your brain.

If women can channel timelord energy and "let it go" why didn't Donna do this at the time of tbe orginal meta crisis?

Because RTD can see sex as a device to produce a child and is totally unwittingly sexist he suggests that women can just 'cope' (despite the stats on women being three times more likely to have mental health issues - particularly anxiety related conditions but why the hell would he draw attention to that and raise awareness because that's a woman health issue and it's not trendy and cool).

But when it comes to trans women, he forgets biology because it suddenly doesn't matter because it's all about feelings and how they matter and that all women are - a bunch of feelings. And he can't tell the difference between trans women and non binary - they are all the same. And all of a sudden genitals don't matter (don't make the poor dad's get embarrassed and have to talk about genitals heavens no - but it's absolutely fine now to talk about changing gender cos genitals don't matter - apart from when they are an essential plot device to create a non-binary child. Safeguarding and women's rights be damned, we should only care about embarrassed dad's).

RTD is he is utterly sexist and utterly stonewalled but he doesn't actually know a fucking thing about the subject beyond 'be kind'.

Ooh what's a women's brain? Is it pink with a fluffy texture? 🤔 🙄

@GordoStevensMustache no, no, no you’ve got it all wrong. A “woman brain” is glittery and can only cope with thinking about kittens and unicorns, oh and Make Up. Woman brains should not think about gender stereotyping and sexism and just accept that they can’t cope with the complicated things in life.

<pats Gordo on the head in a condescending manner>

So Rose is a man with a woman’s brain, who has timelord energy because Donna shared it with her during pregnancy because she had timelord energy in a walled off part of her memory. And the time lord energy can now be released because it’s shared between two female brains instead of one, and Donna has now remembered which allowed Rose to remember. And it wouldn’t have worked with a male and female brain because women can ‘let it go’ in a way men can’t. It must be related to the being kind mechanism.

Right…. that explains everything and Rose really is special.

I have to say I didn't mind the pronouns bit with the Meep. As someone said near the start of the thread there is a tendancy (in the English language at least) to default to "he" if a pronoun is unknown. But why should that be the presumption? And it ties in nicely with the running joke about "the" doctor (yes yes grammatically definite article is not pronoun but there have been The Doctor jokes over many seasons of the show). Would people have been so fussed about the conversation if it hadn't been established that Rose was trans? What if Donna had asked why he was assuming the alien was male?

Assuming pronouns is an issue and should be questioned. I read an interesting article once about the problems for AI software translating between non gendered languages and English. They have to use context from what/who is spoken about and end up assuming that if the context is a Dr then the pronoun must be he, and teacher must be she etc (because that is what the datasets tells them because that is the the stereotyped data that has been collected). It is not just about trans and non binary people.

I think you should have done! I like that explanation/get out much better.

Yes, Rose is biologically male but she has a woman's brain essentially

Ah bless. Does Rose think about sugar and spice and all things nice too?

During my insomnia last night I've created some fan theories...

Rose is Trans because the Doctor spent the last few years in female form. Now the Doctor has reverted to make, Rose will start to get "male feelings" again. Because Rose is partly the Doctor (and a Time Lord in her own right)

I’d come up with a clever response but my lady brain just isn’t wired that way so here’s a picture of a kitten 🙄

By woman's brain what I mean is feels like has the mind of a woman. Imagine your brain /mind/feelings were transplanted into a body that was the opposite sex. That's what I imagine it's like to be a trans person. So maybe mind was a better word to use. Rose is a male body with a woman's mind, making her both.

I agree that societal gender stereotypes are a major cause of issues though.

By woman's brain what I mean is feels like has the mind of a woman.
Go on, explain. What is "the mind of a woman"?

I don't need to. You lot have already explained to me that it means pink, glitter, kittens etc. 😸