For any readers unfamiliar with 'Doctor Who'... er... well, where do I start? It's a British science-fiction TV show, broadcast on the BBC, that started in 1963. The brilliant opening premise was that the lead character (usually called just 'the Doctor', but 'Doctor Who' gets used, too) was a being, not of this Earth, whose spaceship was also a time machine. In line with the old-school BBC remit to educate as well as entertain, this meant that he - and whoever was travelling with him - could go to a distant planet in one story, then a known historical event in the next. Wherever they landed, there would be problems to be solved, wrongs to be righted, people to be saved. The possibilities were endless.
I would guess that two key decisions in the programme's early days sealed what we'd now probably call its immortality. First, there was a weekly cliffhanger - even between the end of one story and the start of the next - to keep the youthful Saturday tea-time audience in suspense for a whole week. Then, three years into the series, it became clear that the ailing actor playing the Doctor, William Hartnell, would need to retire. In possibly one of the most inspired ideas ever in the history of TV, the show's writers reasoned that - as an alien (a 'Time Lord', to be exact) - there was no reason why the Doctor couldn't have several lives, and 'reboot' himself into a new actor - at the time, second Doctor Patrick Troughton. This came to be known as 'regeneration', and because of it, 'Doctor Who' has been going in one form or another ever since. Because the current Doctor 'dies' (usually after a particularly extreme or emotionally resonant sacrifice), regenerations have always been surrounded by publicity. Equally, the next Doctor is an entirely new incarnation and the actor can bring whatever they like to the role, giving the show regular fresh starts and shots in the arm.
The version of the show as most people know it now has been going since its triumphant re-launch in 2005. One TV movie aside, it had been off the air since cancellation in 1989, but its astonishingly loyal fanbase (and I include myself here!) had always kept the show 'alive' through their insatiable appetite for video and DVD releases, novels and audio dramas, often starring original Doctors and companions.
The 'new' version of the show kept the old one's continuity - so it kicked off with the Ninth Doctor (rather than a new 'First'). Leaving aside film spin-offs, parodies and so on, there have been twelve 'official' Doctors, plus, well, an extra one. I'm going to list them because they all share the credit for the show's longevity. Also, you may notice a couple of things they all have in common.
- Doctors 1 to 7 (the 'old' series): William Hartnell, Patrick Troughton, Jon Pertwee, Tom Baker, Peter Davison, Colin Baker, Sylvester McCoy.
- Doctor 8 (the mid-90s TV movie): Paul McGann.
- The 'War Doctor' (an incarnation between 8 and 9 that we met in flashback, so to speak): John Hurt.
- Doctors 9 to 12 (the 'new' series): Christopher Eccleston, David Tennant, Matt Smith, Peter Capaldi.
(Photo of Jodie Whittaker is by Colin Hutton, copyright the BBC.)
Changing the sex of the Doctor might not seem very controversial to a casual observer, and God knows, in this day and age it shouldn't be. Yet here we are. Reactions have been, shall we say, 'wide-ranging' - some easier to classify than others. Clearly, there is sexism in SF fandom (as there is everywhere) - those people moaning that the Doctor simply 'is' a man, without really articulating why they object, are openly sexist full stop, or struggling with a sexist impulse they may or may not be able to recognise within themselves. What doesn't help is the extremity of some of these reactions - they'll 'never watch again', or even more bewilderingly, 'their childhood has been ruined' - as if Whittaker's Doctor really CAN travel back in time and retrospectively make their young lives a misery. But not all the reactions are so easy to explain, or so clear-cut. I was interested to see responses lamenting that the Doctor would still be white. I was also curious to see far more women than I expected lambasting the gender change and using much the same language as the chaps when doing so. Luckily, by far the most numerous reactions I saw were just thrilled by the whole idea. I don't think Whitaker will want for support when she takes over.
It is a strange circumstance that a kids' TV show is expected to carry all this on its shoulders. If the writers hadn't come up with regeneration all those years ago, the issue wouldn't even be there to discuss. And because the show is so ancient, its earlier years in particular bear all the sexist hallmarks you'd rather wish it didn't - not only is the Doctor always a bloke, the companions are mostly women who had to do a lot of screaming in between having things aliensplained to them. Attempts were occasionally made to get away from this. A female Time Lord called Romana travelled with Tom Baker's Fourth Doctor, even regenerating herself from Mary Tamm into Lalla Ward. And before that, Third Doctor Jon Pertwee's first series, to my mind, is a wonderful anomaly from start to finish - longer, more complex stories overall, in some cases lasting for 7 weeks, with a scientist Liz Shaw (played by Caroline John) as the Doctor's companion - with the two characters developing a healthy mutual respect. But this was seen as a failed experiment and for the next series, the more 'traditional' Jo Grant (Katy Manning) was introduced. At least, to the writers' partial credit, the Doctor was openly annoyed by Liz's departure.
But no-one that today's show is actually aimed at are like me, getting all misty-eyed about the early 70s. Many children watching Who will just drift in and out of it as they please, and like all us 'old' fans, will probably remember 'their Doctor' - man, woman, animal, vegetable, mineral - with the most affection. People of my vintage who for some reason have been glued to this show for decades - not just 'fans', perhaps, but 'The Fans' - are surely a little different, and the ludicrous reactions to major change in the programme say, I think, far more about fandom than they do about 'Doctor Who'.
Because this is the risk, the terrible investment of being a Fan, isn't it? We put so much of our hopes, our dreams, our lives into the thing we obsess about, that we want it to go on reflecting those parts of ourselves back to us. (And this applies to anything it's possible to become geeky about - I don't want any reader getting all sneery over this devotion to a TV show, because you see EXACTLY the same thing in opera fandom, for example, or any artistic genre or discipline.) For the most seriously afflicted (and I think I've managed to largely dial myself back from this), it becomes harder and harder to actually like what you love - your vast knowledge and carefully amassed bank of opinions put you into 'judgement' mode ahead of a more simple 'enjoyment' setting... and breaking out of that spiral is so hard. There are those who haven't enjoyed a single episode of Who in about three or four years - they don't like the current showrunner, say - but still struggle on as eternally-suffering Fans. You just want to say - relax. You're clearly not a fan anymore. It doesn't matter - let it go. So easy to say. So difficult to do.
I've nearly fallen into this trap. Back when Peter Capaldi was cast (a move that itself was 'weighted' at the time against ageism accusations - Tennant and Smith had very much cemented the idea of the 'young' Doctor), there had been speculation about a woman taking over the role. For the time being, this would remain just a notion. I wrote a post, just thinking through what I made of this. First and foremost, I love the show so much that I knew if they cast a woman, I'd be totally on board - seeing what the showrunners and new Doctor would do would just be utterly irresistible. But because of my 'old fart' fan status, I also saw the issue in term's of the show's continuity - as if that matters a jot. Lalla Ward's Romana had left the show in the late seventies by going off into an alternative universe to have her own adventures. I speculated that instead of casting a woman in a role that had been played by 12 men - which could be seen as tokenistic and force her into a performance that somehow had to reflect their 'maleness' (most Doctors have had moments when they reflect or refer to older versions of themselves), how would it be if we had a spin-off following up Romana's story, which would carry none of the same baggage?
A few years down the line, I realise how daft that is. (Although I'd still watch it!) The programme makers, clearly sensing a change was long overdue, have carefully laid the groundwork for it. In a guest return appearance, Paul McGann's Doctor was offered a choice of genders to regenerate into - and in Capaldi's tenure we've had a female incarnation of the Doctor's arch-enemy the Master (Missy, superbly played by Michelle Gomez as a kind of Satanic governess), as well as a military general on the Doctor's home planet switch sexes on regeneration.
By taking that kind of care over the internal workings of the programme, the showrunners are looking after us - the old-timers, the 'Fans'. They're being nice - but listen, we don't matter. Not anymore. We're the viewers from yesterday, not today. Today's kids - all those girls, as well as boys - the Doctor belongs to them all. (S)he is TV's ultimate role model, whose sole mission is to do good wherever - and whenever - it's needed. How second-rate my old idea was - giving the woman a spin-off. How embarrassing.
Now that it's actually happening - the new Doctor IS a woman - I only have to register and acknowledge how excited I am about the whole scenario to realise that they've finally done what needed to be done. Of course, she has to be the Doctor herself - the main event, the hero. Anything else would be 'less', and nothing less will do. Jodie Whittaker is a great choice, too, I believe - yes, she's been fantastic in everything she's done so far, but she also has the Doctor-ish quality of combining a slightly off-kilter CV which prevents anyone pinning her down or stereotyping her, with a certain element of mystique: a feeling that we don't yet know what she's capable of. Rightly or wrongly, we are asking her to be a pioneer: but in fact, isn't the truth simply that she's perfect for the role?
I still don't want this to be tokenistic. I am a firm believer that creative people should be allowed to do what they like, but I hope for several things: 1 - I hope they don't fall over themselves to try and 'explain' the change: we've seen it a couple of times now, it happens, let it be 'normal', so that JW is 'the Doctor', rather than 'a female Doctor'. 2 - Keep casting women: people who refuse to get used to the idea need to get used to it. 3 - And of course, surely the Doctor will be non-white one day, too.
Only a matter of time.
No comments:
Post a Comment