(This article was originally released on May 4th 2022 but has been reduced to fit a shorter format)
On May the 4th 2018, I released a video called: Why I have concerns for a Female Doctor. For many years I believed the Doctor should be a male character and that changing the character to a female role would ruin the show. After the announcement of Jodie Whittaker as the Thirteenth Doctor in July of 2017, although I was initially very frustrated, I became more open to the idea, but I still had what I considered valid concerns and was doubtful whether it would work. I have never been against more female leading heroes as that’s something I’ve always firmly supported but I believed the Doctor should be a male role.
However, I have decided to make this article after I re-watched the video and I came to realise something, the concerns I had were not valid. It came from my preconceptions of the Doctor and trying to maintain a very specific version of who and what the Doctor is but, the Doctor can be anything and Doctor Who constantly reinvents itself. Opening the Doctor up to the regeneration of different genders, opens up new storytelling opportunities and new chances of representation. Doctor Who is a limitless show, and the Doctor should not be limited to a specific idea of who and what they should be.
Therefore, I wanted to make this article to cover my previous points and debunk why I don’t think my previous concerns on a female Doctor were valid. I think it’s important to acknowledge past opinions and points of view and acknowledge when you were wrong and acknowledge when those opinions and points of view weren’t coming from a positive place. If you want to for some reason visit my video, I have put a reuploaded version below with a disclaimer now at the front of the video. I want to be honest but at the same time, I don’t want to be promoting a point of view I actively and fundamentally disagree with now.
In 2017 Chris Chibnall cast Jodie Whittaker as the Thirteenth Doctor. Steven Moffat did pave the way for it and make it a possibility by introducing the concept of gender change so it felt like a natural progression and was more accepted by the media and also by the public. I still disliked the idea when it was initially announced and although I grew more open to it, I was still very worried and felt it would change the show and the character and looking back for stupid reasons.
I never used to understand fans who would hate the next Doctor because of being so attached to the last Doctor. I loved David Tennant, he was my Doctor who I grew up with and is my favourite Doctor to this day, but by the time he was leaving I was ready for him to leave. The same goes with Matt Smith as the Eleventh Doctor, by the time he left I was ready for him to leave. I felt at the time that the younger and sillier Doctors were getting tiresome, and I was ready for an older, more down to earth and serious Doctor. I was very happy with Peter Capaldi’s casting as the Twelfth Doctor and I ended up loving him as the Doctor and when he left, I wasn’t ready for him to leave, I still wanted more of his Doctor.
I think part of my reaction to Jodie Whittaker was due to this and it took me about four episodes of the Thirteenth Doctor to get used to the fact that Peter Capaldi was no longer the Doctor. I also think part of my reaction was that I just couldn’t see Jodie Whittaker in the role. I’d loved her in Broadchurch and over time I saw her in more roles like Black Mirror, Trust Me and Attack the Block and thought she was fantastic but couldn’t see her as the Doctor. I think if someone who I could see more as the Doctor had been cast, I would have felt more optimistic about the idea.
Looking back on my video on my concerns for a female Doctor I think my arguments were rather weak. The first was that it alters the relationship the Doctor has with past companions. This holds little merit. I spoke about their relationship with Susan and that it changes the dynamic because the Doctor is no longer a grandfather and that a grandmotherly figure is a different kind of relationship and dynamic. The Doctor is still a grandparent and even if their relationship is more altered, I think that opens up more possibilities and between regenerations, the relationship between characters and the dynamic is going to change anyway regardless of gender. I think my line of thinking was based on gender stereotypes which the show shouldn’t be married to. I also spoke about the romantic relationships the Doctor has had with Rose and River Song and how I argue it changes the romantic bonds into something the writers never intended by turning Rose and River into lesbian characters. I make comparisons to Missy as I argue the changes with Missy changed the dynamic of the Doctor and the Master by seeing the two kiss.
In response I would say in the Husbands of River Song River is shown to be a bisexual character anyway and neither River Song nor Rose or even Susan are an essential part of the relationships in the show anymore so it doesn't matter and it’s quite easy to avoid those characters in-universe and continuity. But who cares? Focusing on River and Rose it’s still a love story whether it’s a straight or a lesbian relationship, it doesn't change anything about their relationship, it’s exactly the same. Although the relationship between the Doctor and the Master had been altered previously to something romantic, it’s only because Missy snogged the Doctor and the relationship would be changed in the same way and have the same issues if the Master was still a male character and had snogged the Doctor. The relationship between the two characters didn’t change through simply gender-swapping one of them. This feels like quite simply an uncomfortable point to make with looking back borderline homophobic arguments with the implication that changing the gender or sexuality of a character in a relationship will automatically make radical changes to the dynamic which feels delusional in the argument to me.
I make other arguments about how Missy was rather badly handled which doesn't hold out much hope for a female Doctor. Missy being badly handled doesn't make a female Doctor more or less of a bad idea, it just means Missy is a badly handled character. I also dispute certain arguments for a female Doctor in the video.
I talk about how many have defended a female Doctor by talking about the fact that we’ve seen more women in lead female roles so why not have a woman in the role of the Doctor. In the video I dispute this comparison, I respond by saying Rey from Star Wars is her own character as is Wonder Woman and not regenerated versions of past male characters and that I support putting women in more leading roles. I say if Doctor Who has an issue with weak female characters in reference to some of the sexism under Steven Moffat’s run the answer is to have stronger female companions and the change to a female Doctor hardly seems necessary.
I agree the likes of Wonder Woman and Rey in the Star Wars sequel trilogy are not the same thing as the Doctor changing gender as Rey was a female character in the first place. When I spoke about the companions, I think I was rather short-sighted because the strongest roles are the leading ones and Doctor Who having more strong female characters over the years has paved the way for a woman to take on the leading role of the Doctor and there’s no good reason why it shouldn’t have happened. You can have strong female companions and a strong leading female Doctor, the two aren’t mutually exclusive.
I also in this dispute the correlation between being concerned about a new Doctor because they are too old or young and the gender-related concerns. I make the argument that we’ve seen the Doctor a variety of different ages but never seen the Doctor as a female, so I had more of a right to be concerned.
It's true a female Doctor was uncharted territory at this point and it’s at some level understandable but still not reasonable why many fans like me might have had doubts and concerns about it but just because its uncharted territory doesn't make it inherently a bad idea. This is the main reason I was concerned for a female Doctor which isn’t coming from a reasonable or valid place its coming from a fearful place which isn’t a valid place to make judgements. I know I claimed these were just concerns which is true and I wanted to give Jodie Whittaker a chance and was trying to be open-minded but to be honest with myself years later I wasn’t open-minded. I wanted it to work but at the same time I was very sure of myself that it wouldn’t work. The only part of this I do agree with is that I wish the reaction to fans concerned about it had been more reasonable in their responses as it feels like many like myself were automatically labelled which no matter what points we were making I don’t think was especially helpful because that as an approach isn’t going to convince anybody, win anyone over or change their mind over the issue. At the time I believed my reasons for being concerned for a female Doctor were based on valid foundations that were not sexist.
Although my intentions were hardly sexist in nature the reason I was frustrated was because of a change in tradition and my narrow minded nature in trying to retain that tradition. Therefore, as a result, I was rejecting the expansion of the casting of the Doctor and clinging onto the segregated nature of the casting of the past. This not only reinforces and contributes to an argument that women shouldn’t be playing lead roles which is an invalid and misogynistic argument, but my argument implies that no woman no matter how fit for the role should be cast to play this character which is incredibly limiting and simply terrible exclusion especially considering the character at play. My intentions may not have been sexist and simply looking at this one character I understand why I thought my arguments were valid, but they weren’t. In a wider context considering the representation of women in media what I was saying is very harmful. My argument when you break it down, I have to admit was a sexist argument contributing to a sexist culture.
I also make the argument that the Doctor as a character subverts the expectations of a traditional male hero. I say the Doctor goes against the characters you traditionally see in male role models. I make the argument the characteristics of the Doctor in a female role aren’t subverting gender stereotypes in the same way.
I can understand where I was coming from here, but I still think I had a narrow view of things. Many incarnations of the Doctor have subverted the expectations on what you expect from a traditional male hero with silly characteristics and behaviour, desiring peace and opposing guns and violence which is different to how you expect a male hero to behave in a fictional story and as such the Doctor is rather a positive role model for young boys in comparison to some others.
These are just obstacles for a writer to write around, it doesn’t make the idea of a female Doctor bad but simply challenging. As it turns out the Thirteenth Doctor displays many of the same characteristics but her character very much subverts the expectations of a female hero because you’re not used to seeing a leading female character with a quirky and silly sense of humour and that’s rather exciting as we are used to female heroes who tend to have more of a serious personality. That has been the expectation over the years to be a tough character to combat certain sexist attitudes, but the Doctor can show that a leading female character can still have humour. I think the Thirteenth Doctor has shown that you also don’t need to comply with a certain gender to be a role model for either young boys or girls. The character’s personality and motives are still similar to other incarnations and still subversive but subversive in a different way to previously.
A female Doctor may change the perspective of how we perceive the character. The character has been very subversive of male stereotypes rejecting a lot of the inbuilt gender expectations and stereotypes of men in society in the past but moving away from that isn’t inherently a bad thing because the perspective of how we see and interpret the Doctor as a character has changed before and can change again. It changes every time we have a drastic change in the age of the Doctor and every time, we have new qualities brought to a new incarnation of the Doctor that we haven’t seen in the character before or in a long while.
I was certainly hoping the idea would go down well and what I detailed was just concerns, but in my head I still thought the idea of a female Doctor was a bad idea because I thought we would lose certain aspects of the Doctor. I was rather short-sighted in that these things would refresh the show in many ways. It would allow us to see the Doctor in a new light quite naturally and the essential morals and characteristics of the Doctor would remain the same just viewed through a new lens and perspective.
My concerns were based on what could go wrong if written badly but the conclusion in my head of that means it’s a bad idea was naïve and was boxing women into specific roles. Women have been boxed into certain roles throughout history and that shouldn’t be the case. They should be let out of the box.
Even with the lack of quality scripts to back her up Jodie Whittaker has proven herself just as capable as any male actor in the role. She has very much worked as the character and been a Doctor I have enjoyed. Making the Doctor a female role presents new storytelling opportunities. A story like the Witchfinders I don’t feel would have happened with a male Doctor; exploring this Doctors vulnerability dealing with the sexism and persecution of women during the Salem Witch trials which was one of the eras stronger stories.
I think this could have been taken advantage of more with the Doctor dealing with the oppression and lack of equality for women across human history as she has previously been in a rather privileged male position. It would have been interesting to see how the Doctor would react in struggling to take the same authority she once easily had as a man with unfortunately less respect for female authority across history.
At the end of the day, I think I was rather imperceptive in being unable to see that gender just doesn't matter to the Doctor in the same way age doesn't matter. The Doctor had always been a male character so in my head, I internalised the idea that the Doctor always should be a male character and for some reason was trying to maintain a bizarre tradition that didn’t make sense and doesn't matter to the character. Even if the Thirteenth Doctor hadn’t worked for me that wouldn’t have meant it was a bad idea. It’s not likely she will ever read this, but I would like to apologise to Jodie Whittaker for the points I made that were not made with good intentions. I was never a NotMyDoctor campaigning for her removal from the part. I also even then never understood the argument that one female Doctor after twelve male Doctors was political correctness gone too far and represented a political agenda by the BBC. That seemed very silly and delusional even then. I also very much wanted to give the show my support in the change. I feel I still did contribute to this resistance against a female Doctor that I feel was wrong and I’m not proud of it.
Doctor Who can be anything and so can the Doctor and I was limiting the show to a very specific idea on what the Doctor should be but Doctor Who by its very nature constantly reinvents itself. I always felt a need for the show to acknowledge my concerns, prove me wrong and justify the change but it wasn’t anything the show needed to prove or deal with but with my preconceptions of the Doctor as a character that I needed to move past.
We’ve now technically seen two female Doctors with the introduction of Jo Martin’s Fugitive Doctor. It’s fair to say at least one of these Doctors works for most fans, the gender of the Doctor changes the character in some ways definitely but only ways that push the show forward to new possibilities and directions. Jodie Whittaker has now left the part with a new era ahead of us and I will ensure with all future changes I am more supportive and open than I was when the Thirteenth Doctor was cast. I think this quote from the Thirteenth Doctor herself is one we can all learn from:
“We’re all capable of the most incredible change, we can evolve whilst still staying true to who we are, we can honour who we’ve been yet still choose who we want to be next."
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