Doctor Who General

[Thejebusfire]

I am now going to interrupt this thread with a GIF set of Five being adorable:

[Shane for Wax]

[Dakota Bob]

So excited for Series 8

[Patches]

We see Moffat and the other writers make these very strong female character in a show setting that is focused on a male lead character.  That is much harder than writing female characters in a show with zero male lead characters.

But this is the male definition of "strong female character", where as a female character's perceived power increases, so does her sexual objectification in order to "balance it out" and ensure she's still primarily there as a set piece.  A true "strong female character" is simply a "strong character", with the "female" part being completely irrelevant to her behavior and treatment.

I mean, think back on the RTD companions.  They typically wore trousers, full tops, and not much make-up (except for Rose in a few episodes).  No one ever commented on their legs or their ass or otherwise made disparaging comments about their gender unless it was to show that character was a douchebag.  The companions never tried to seduce the Doctor or force themselves on him in a suggestive way.  They were just people, who happened to be female, and they were able to become accomplished individuals without having to "offset" it with being sexy and seductive.

And then we get to Amy, River, and Clara.  Amy is constantly dressed in short skirts, five pounds of make-up, the Doctor nicknames her "The Legs", upskirt jokes are made, she tries to rape the Doctor in her bedroom the day before her wedding, and there are numerous instances of other characters going "huhh huhh, she's hot".  River dresses slightly more practically, but she's still the outrageous seductress, makes tons of sexual remarks, and gets nicknamed "Mrs. Robinson" by the Doctor (a G-rated term for "The Slut").  Clara III's behavior is much more respectable, but Oswin and Clara II were still both outrageous flirts, and Clara III still gets "short skirt" comments from time to time.  So far Kate Stewart has been the only true "strong" female character in Moffat's run, but unfortunately she was written by Chibnall, not Moffat, and only lasted one episode (though it appears she's returning for the 50th.  I just hope that Moffat doesn't feel the need to sexually degrade her as well once he gets ahold of her).

It's like writers are afraid that an accomplished woman comes across as sexually unavailable (which is also apparently a bad thing), so they have to go out of their way to make sure their male audience is assured that, "No, don't worry, this woman may be strong but she'll still totally have sex with you."  You see it all the time with female superheroes, warriors, spies, and leaders in the media.  "I am super capable, but I must do it SUPER SEXILY, which for some reason my male counterparts don't have to do." 

The prevalence of this "strong female = sex object" trope is so bad that it spills over into real life, where you get headline news articles about a female leader's hair or clothing not being visually appealing enough, and completely ignoring the content of her message and accomplishments.  Therefore, I have to insist that anyone who writes a female Doctor -- a person who is by definition a leader and inspiration to those around her -- not have a history of falling into the "strong female = sex object" trope, as it demonstrates a very undeveloped imagination regarding the roles and capabilities of female characters.  And Moffat has not only fallen into that trope, he's burned the ladder to get out.

[RavynousHunter]

I'll formulate a proper response later.  In the meantime, here's an image macro, because why not.

[Patches]

Also, having MLP writers do Doctor Who?  Please, tell me what you've been smoking that makes you think that'd be a good idea...might help me kill time, if nothin else.  One's a children's show about garishly-coloured ponies and the cliche "magic of friendship," and the other is Doctor Who.  The two should not be mingled outside fanfic.

Sigh... I put a disclaimer in my explanation to preemptively avoid people making this accusation, but it doesn't help if no one reads it.  To quote myself from my above explanation:

Again, this is NOT an attempt to say that the My Little Pony writers could write for Doctor Who.  They're two completely different genres and target audiences, and I don't think it's an appropriate fit.  This was ONLY a discussion of which show has the more organic and fleshed-out female characters, to back up my point of why I would not want Moffat writing a female Doctor.

[m52nickerson]

We see Moffat and the other writers make these very strong female character in a show setting that is focused on a male lead character.  That is much harder than writing female characters in a show with zero male lead characters.

But this is the male definition of "strong female character", where as a female character's perceived power increases, so does her sexual objectification in order to "balance it out" and ensure she's still primarily there as a set piece.  A true "strong female character" is simply a "strong character", with the "female" part being completely irrelevant to her behavior and treatment.

I mean, think back on the RTD companions.  They typically wore trousers, full tops, and not much make-up (except for Rose in a few episodes).  No one ever commented on their legs or their ass or otherwise made disparaging comments about their gender unless it was to show that character was a douchebag.  The companions never tried to seduce the Doctor or force themselves on him in a suggestive way.  They were just people, who happened to be female, and they were able to become accomplished individuals without having to "offset" it with being sexy and seductive.

And then we get to Amy, River, and Clara.  Amy is constantly dressed in short skirts, five pounds of make-up, the Doctor nicknames her "The Legs", upskirt jokes are made, she tries to rape the Doctor in her bedroom the day before her wedding, and there are numerous instances of other characters going "huhh huhh, she's hot".  River dresses slightly more practically, but she's still the outrageous seductress, makes tons of sexual remarks, and gets nicknamed "Mrs. Robinson" by the Doctor (a G-rated term for "The Slut").  Clara III's behavior is much more respectable, but Oswin and Clara II were still both outrageous flirts, and Clara III still gets "short skirt" comments from time to time.  So far Kate Stewart has been the only true "strong" female character in Moffat's run, but unfortunately she was written by Chibnall, not Moffat, and only lasted one episode (though it appears she's returning for the 50th.  I just hope that Moffat doesn't feel the need to sexually degrade her as well once he gets ahold of her).

It's like writers are afraid that an accomplished woman comes across as sexually unavailable (which is also apparently a bad thing), so they have to go out of their way to make sure their male audience is assured that, "No, don't worry, this woman may be strong but she'll still totally have sex with you."  You see it all the time with female superheroes, warriors, spies, and leaders in the media.  "I am super capable, but I must do it SUPER SEXILY, which for some reason my male counterparts don't have to do." 

The prevalence of this "strong female = sex object" trope is so bad that it spills over into real life, where you get headline news articles about a female leader's hair or clothing not being visually appealing enough, and completely ignoring the content of her message and accomplishments.  Therefore, I have to insist that anyone who writes a female Doctor -- a person who is by definition a leader and inspiration to those around her -- not have a history of falling into the "strong female = sex object" trope, as it demonstrates a very undeveloped imagination regarding the roles and capabilities of female characters.  And Moffat has not only fallen into that trope, he's burned the ladder to get out.

Oh my god female character that show a sexual side...they must be bad characters.

Yes Amy, River and Clara wear skirts.  Women do that some times.   Women also flirt and gasp maybe she an interested in sex.  Kate Stewart's character is in one episode and seen in a single light.  Easy to write a "strong" female character when that character is pretty much one dimensional.

Skirts, makeup and some flirting does not make characters super sexy. 

Your assertion that a strong female character must have no mention or reaction to her being female is ridiculous.  That not a strong female character,  that is a character without gender that is played by an actress.  You are not advocating for strong female character, just female characters that want nothing to do with things that are seen as feminine.

[RavynousHunter]

Also, having MLP writers do Doctor Who?  Please, tell me what you've been smoking that makes you think that'd be a good idea...might help me kill time, if nothin else.  One's a children's show about garishly-coloured ponies and the cliche "magic of friendship," and the other is Doctor Who.  The two should not be mingled outside fanfic.

Sigh... I put a disclaimer in my explanation to preemptively avoid people making this accusation, but it doesn't help if no one reads it.  To quote myself from my above explanation:

Again, this is NOT an attempt to say that the My Little Pony writers could write for Doctor Who.  They're two completely different genres and target audiences, and I don't think it's an appropriate fit.  This was ONLY a discussion of which show has the more organic and fleshed-out female characters, to back up my point of why I would not want Moffat writing a female Doctor.

Aah, my bad.  This, children, is why you pay attention!

[SpaceProg]

I am now going to interrupt this thread with a GIF set of Five being adorable:

Yeah, Five is rather good at that.

[Patches]

Oh my god female character that show a sexual side...they must be bad characters.

Yes Amy, River and Clara wear skirts.  Women do that some times.   Women also flirt and gasp maybe she an interested in sex.  Kate Stewart's character is in one episode and seen in a single light.  Easy to write a "strong" female character when that character is pretty much one dimensional.

Skirts, makeup and some flirting does not make characters super sexy. 

Your assertion that a strong female character must have no mention or reaction to her being female is ridiculous.  That not a strong female character,  that is a character without gender that is played by an actress.  You are not advocating for strong female character, just female characters that want nothing to do with things that are seen as feminine.

There is a difference between "sexy" and "sexualized", and it's entirely possible for a character to be the former without being the latter.

A "sexy" character is one whom the audience finds sexually appealing.  A "sexualized" character is one whose sex appeal is made a focus of the narrative.

There are plenty of people who find Rose, Martha, and even Donna to be "sexy".  And that's fine, I have no problem with that.  The reason is because they were never defined by it.  No aspects of their characters, no aspects of the narrative, no lines of dialogue hinged on them being explicitly "sexy".  The audience was left to judge their appeal for themselves.  Rose and Donna both had active romantic and likely sexual lives, but they weren't defined by them.  It was just an aside, "By the way, this character is probably sexually active.  But since that is completely irrelevant to anything going on, moving on!"  The audience is perfectly capable of noticing that a woman is wearing a short skirt without the camera panning up her legs or the other characters vocally bringing it to attention.

Yes, women flirt, wear short skirts, and are interested in sex.  And that's fine.  The problem is the amount of importance or attention it's given in situations where it's absolutely irrelevant.  Attention was brought to Amy and Clara's short skirts multiple times, but you'd be hard-pressed to find a legitimate narrative or character-building reason to do so.  It was a juvenile "let us pause the story for a moment to admire that chick's ass" moment and nothing more.

In short, it's the difference between a character being attractive and sexual, and the narrative objectifying these traits and treating such objectification as appropriate.  There's nothing wrong with being feminine, it's the way that femininity is portrayed.  One way is from someone who actually understands and respects women and writes them as human beings, and the other is from someone stuck in the boys' club who views women as "mysterious outsiders" and writes them with a set of stock traits meant to be ogled like animals in a zoo.

If Amy just happened to like wearing short skirts, then she would be "sexy", and that's fine.  But the moment the show devotes 20 seconds of its time to have someone catcall her and pan the camera around her ass, it becomes "sexualized".  And that's not fine.

[m52nickerson]

I remember Amy's skirt length being commented on twice, and once was in a comedy short.  Clair's skirt mentioned once.  None of those time stopped the story to do it.  They also don't suddenly make the characters sexualized throughout the stories.

River is very outwardly sexual, that does not in any way take way from her as a character or make her a weak female character.  It would if that was all she was, but clearly she is more.

Sexualizing people does happen in real life, so if you are going to write characters that feel real it is going to happen.  It does not just happen the female characters.  Remember when Amy was ogling the Doctor as he changed?  How about River's comment about the mind racing with possibilities when there were two Doctor?

[Thejebusfire]

We interrupt this thread to bring you the Fifth Doctor having too much fun in a wheelchair:




We now return you to your regularly scheduled argument.

[RavynousHunter]

"Go softly on!"  I need to use that during foreplay.

[Patches]

I remember Amy's skirt length being commented on twice, and once was in a comedy short.  Clair's skirt mentioned once.  None of those time stopped the story to do it.  They also don't suddenly make the characters sexualized throughout the stories.

River is very outwardly sexual, that does not in any way take way from her as a character or make her a weak female character.  It would if that was all she was, but clearly she is more.

Sexualizing people does happen in real life, so if you are going to write characters that feel real it is going to happen.  It does not just happen the female characters.  Remember when Amy was ogling the Doctor as he changed?  How about River's comment about the mind racing with possibilities when there were two Doctor?

Yes, these things do happen in real life.  And it's fine for them to happen in media, again, as long as they're handled the right way.  Characters are perfectly welcome to make sexually degrading comments, as long as the show frames them appropriately.  To use your example of Amy ogling the Doctor, check Rory's reaction.  This scene was framed in such a way as to make Amy's action come across as inappropriate, which is fine.  But when demeaning comments or actions are made in Clara, Amy, or any female character's direction, there is no implied disapproval.  In fact, the Doctor exerting his manly manness over those silly women is constantly shown in a heroic light.

It's this dissonance between the reactions I expect and the reactions I'm given that constantly throw me out of immersion in the Moffat era.  Something I rarely had a problem with in the RTD era.

For example, in "The Angels Take Manhattan", River pulls Amy aside and tells her she can never let the Doctor see her grow old, because that would make the Doctor upset.  And since no one objected to this, apparently we're supposed to consider this solid advice.  But that's awful advice.  Amy is going to grow old, it's a fact of life, and it's the 1,000 year-old Time Lord who needs to accept the fact that people age, not demand to be coddled by pretty young women forever.

Or in "Asylum of the Daleks" where Amy revealed she divorced Rory because she can't have kids anymore, and simply assumed that he didn't want her anymore so dumped him preemptively, without having any kind of discussion with him.  And this was her "proof" that she loved him more than anything to settle their argument.  What?  Like the previous example, that is such an egregiously self-serving admission, and yet it's never called out.  It's treated like the audience is supposed to accept that as good and valid reasoning, when it's so far from it.

And just so many more little things peppered throughout his run.  Instances where the Doctor or someone says or does something unbecoming of a heroic character and no one calls them out on it.  That doesn't mean they can't do unbecoming things.  You're welcome to have a pervy character who feels up women's asses and tells them to get him sammiches, but you'd better not portray that character as some sort of saint by having every other character tacitly approve of his behavior.  If there's no one else around, even the direction, camera work, lighting, and music can convey whether or not the narrative considers this character's actions good or bad.  Characters need to make mistakes, they need to do the wrong thing sometimes, yes, but the narrative needs to show it recognizes when a character is in the wrong.  And Moffat's writing in particular seems to have a difficult time conveying that it understands when its characters are wrong.  Especially when it comes to how it treats women.

[m52nickerson]

Yes, these things do happen in real life.  And it's fine for them to happen in media, again, as long as they're handled the right way.  Characters are perfectly welcome to make sexually degrading comments, as long as the show frames them appropriately.  To use your example of Amy ogling the Doctor, check Rory's reaction.  This scene was framed in such a way as to make Amy's action come across as inappropriate, which is fine.  But when demeaning comments or actions are made in Clara, Amy, or any female character's direction, there is no implied disapproval.  In fact, the Doctor exerting his manly manness over those silly women is constantly shown in a heroic light.

It's this dissonance between the reactions I expect and the reactions I'm given that constantly throw me out of immersion in the Moffat era.  Something I rarely had a problem with in the RTD era.

For example, in "The Angels Take Manhattan", River pulls Amy aside and tells her she can never let the Doctor see her grow old, because that would make the Doctor upset.  And since no one objected to this, apparently we're supposed to consider this solid advice.  But that's awful advice.  Amy is going to grow old, it's a fact of life, and it's the 1,000 year-old Time Lord who needs to accept the fact that people age, not demand to be coddled by pretty young women forever.

Or in "Asylum of the Daleks" where Amy revealed she divorced Rory because she can't have kids anymore, and simply assumed that he didn't want her anymore so dumped him preemptively, without having any kind of discussion with him.  And this was her "proof" that she loved him more than anything to settle their argument.  What?  Like the previous example, that is such an egregiously self-serving admission, and yet it's never called out.  It's treated like the audience is supposed to accept that as good and valid reasoning, when it's so far from it.

And just so many more little things peppered throughout his run.  Instances where the Doctor or someone says or does something unbecoming of a heroic character and no one calls them out on it.  That doesn't mean they can't do unbecoming things.  You're welcome to have a pervy character who feels up women's asses and tells them to get him sammiches, but you'd better not portray that character as some sort of saint by having every other character tacitly approve of his behavior.  If there's no one else around, even the direction, camera work, lighting, and music can convey whether or not the narrative considers this character's actions good or bad.  Characters need to make mistakes, they need to do the wrong thing sometimes, yes, but the narrative needs to show it recognizes when a character is in the wrong.  And Moffat's writing in particular seems to have a difficult time conveying that it understands when its characters are wrong.  Especially when it comes to how it treats women.

The Doctor exerting his mainly manliness?  Really what are you talking about?  If the Doctor exerts anything it is that he is the Doctor, not that he is a man.

The Doctor makes a comment about Amy's skirt after it is Rory who loses focus because she is standing over him on the glass floor.  At the end the Doctors comments that she should put on some pants.  The other comment about Amy wearing short skirts comes from Rory and how it was wrong of her to use that to pass her driving test.  All of this in the setting of a comic short.

River's comment to the Doctor in Angles was not about aging.  River told Amy not to let his see the damage.  The whole context of that conversation is about the fact that one of the Doctor's flaws is he can't accept he gets the people he loves hurt.  The Doctor also get promptly slapped after he kisses Jenny. 

As for Clair the Doctor makes a single comment, to himself, about her skirt being a little to tight.  This in itself was part of a list of quality regarding Clair.   If you feel that is inappropriate fine, but another character does not have to appear and correct him.

Amy was called out, by Rory that she should not have assumed he would be torn apart by not being able to have children with her.  So her behavior was called out.  Even if it was not I think people can make there own judgement if it was wrong or not.  This flawed action by Amy does not make for a badly written female character, just a female character that is flawed.

Your argument has gone from Moffet can write female characters to his other characters can't treat women right.