thats the thing, everybody sees it as being pc, cos people are fighting back against being pc. hows about, i dunno its just time? its been over 50 years of being a man, maybe its just time? rather than being some weird authoritarian pc thing?
If thats the case you could rail against any change as being pc Oo where does it end?
Of course it's PC. The DW casting people admit that they went in wanting to cast a women, not that they went in with an open mind and cast the best actor, who happened to be a woman. Instead, they chose to cast a female actress even though it makes very little sense in the program's lore or history, and even though lots of hardcore fans would find the decision at best worrying.
! Standby alert !
“There are four lights!”
Step up to red alert. Sir, are you absolutely sure? It does mean changing the bulb!
Looking forward to summer in Somerset later in the year :)
I could be wrong (and I certainly hope I am, like I was wrong about Daniel Craig or Matt Smith, who both turned out to be fantastic as Bond and the Doctor, respectively), but this is more than thinking the actor is wrong for the part, this is about the gender itself being a problem.
They've already stalled filming the new series because she can't park the TARDIS.
Does it really matter if its a female lead? Wasn't it already known a timelord can be any gender or species? Her episode of black mirror was good.
It was never specified in the past, but continuity has always been a flexible thing (originally no mention of Gallifrey, regeneration, more than one heart, looming - yes or no?, past regenerations before the first (Morbius) and more...) - but The Corsair was implied to like variety in his/her regenerations in The Doctors Wife. Missy was the first Male/Female implied regeneration - and Hell Bent gave a female/male/female regeneration (well - the first part wasn't shown, but was implied).
Like it or not - it's cannon. Cannon evolves and changes. One can even say that it regenerates.
I'm more concerned with the writing hopefully being more consistent in quality, (and that's spoiled what could have been some great performances with all the Doctors) than what the Doctor has in his/her underwear.
Besides Jack Harkness would always be interested either way :)
If the writing is good, then there's potential for a good "season", whoever is behind the console controls.
Someone on IRC suggested that the term for people outraged about the new Dr. are being referred to as "Broflakes"
I think that's pretty appropriate - the only reason anyone can have logically for getting this upset is sexism. It can't be the quality of the writing (unknown at this point), the fact that Timelords can switch genders (Missy) or that the actress is crap (we've had Matt Smith). That leaves "PC" complaints, the last refuge of the abusive mind.
I think it's a brave choice but it may back-fire on them. Outside of WoS the vast majority of the people I know who watch DW are women and appealing to a female audience with a female lead may well be the wrong move. My missus, who's a big fan, is 50/50 as she adored Tennant and Smith. Personally I couldn't care less as I've only ever seen two episodes since the reboot.
Wasn't there a big hoo-hah when it was announced Billie Piper was going to be the assistant and didn't she end up being the most-revered of all?
Be interesting to see how it goes. Sometimes it works (Galactica, House of Cards), sometimes it fails miserably - look at V, Chris Evans' Top Gear and Ashton Kutcher's Two and a Half Men.
Umm... I don't get it. Why is it being considered PC if a woman is cast? Dr. Who, as I understand, can take any human form, right? Would he be really worried about trifling things as human gender when there are far bigger things to worry about like, say, saving the bloody human race every week or so?
I mean, color and gender shouldn't really matter unless we have already established that the doctor will always be a white male - now and forever and till the end of time.
This term, political correctness, should be put to bed. The writers have a new dimension to play with, that will excite and encourage them to put some life into a worn out TV series. It's all good surely. And the people who are up in arms about it not being a bloke, live a little. It's a big old world out there and it doesn't end at the tip of your nose.
Umm... I don't get it. Why is it being considered PC if a woman is cast? Dr. Who, as I understand, can take any human form, right?
And has previously taken the form of a white male every time for half a century... something has changed however you want to rationalise it ;)
Looking for an in-universe reason, if the doctor's form after regeneration is random then either there's a very low chance of being a female form (this doesn't sound very progressive and diverse so I think that one's right out), it's been an incredibly unlikely sequence of coin tosses so far, or there's something different about this new doctor that breaks the previous "defaults to male" pattern. That last one seems like the easiest to explain away with some handwaving space mumbo jumbo to me, but at the end of the day, it's fiction, the writers can make up anything they like. They could just do a massive retcon and say that timelords are all blob shaped and the TARDIS has been making them look like humans based on our expectations to us for 50 years or something if they wanted. :)
It's far too early to be judging whether the new series will be any good yet, we know nothing. People are having tantrums and arguing about the 'rules' of regeneration on Twitter etc. when it's not clear if the next doctor will even be a 'normal' regeneration whatever that is.
Didn’t he already run out of "normal" regenerations years ago? In one of the "old" series, something happened (maybe something to do with The Master) which reduced The Doctor's number of remaining regenerations to a very low figure (maybe one/none). Too long ago for me to remember the details...
Then in a later series, something else happened, which allowed more regenerations.
Anyway, it may be that the outcome of a Timelord regeneration is not truly random, but biased depending on where and when it happens. Just like some species on this planet are affected by the environment (the environment affects the percentage of males vs. females).
Or maybe with Timelords, the sex runs in long patterns instead of random or alternating changes.
! Standby alert !
“There are four lights!”
Step up to red alert. Sir, are you absolutely sure? It does mean changing the bulb!
Looking forward to summer in Somerset later in the year :)
! Standby alert !
“There are four lights!”
Step up to red alert. Sir, are you absolutely sure? It does mean changing the bulb!
Looking forward to summer in Somerset later in the year :)
I disagree with the 'interesting choice' title - I think she's a rather bland choice, but time will tell.
If there's anything to complain about it's the pile of sh*te that was the last episode or two where it just seemed like everyone and anything decent was just abandoned.
I disagree with the 'interesting choice' title - I think she's a rather bland choice, but time will tell.
If there's anything to complain about it's the pile of sh*te that was the last episode or two where it just seemed like everyone and anything decent was just abandoned.
Or when they decided Matt "one expression" Lucas would be a good choice for an entire series.
Someone on IRC suggested that the term for people outraged about the new Dr. are being referred to as "Broflakes"
I think that's pretty appropriate - the only reason anyone can have logically for getting this upset is sexism. It can't be the quality of the writing (unknown at this point), the fact that Timelords can switch genders (Missy) or that the actress is crap (we've had Matt Smith). That leaves "PC" complaints, the last refuge of the abusive mind.
Carry on, chaps.
It's not sexual prejudice as such, at least not for most fans (and I doubt many true sexist men or women watch Doctor Who, they'd probably consider it to be beneath them), it's that a female Doctor just won't (in their and my opinion) work. The Doctor has always been male, and story-wise and character-wise a change will be jarring and wrong.
Yes, Missy could be taken as evidence that Time Lords can change gender, but to me and many other people it's bad writing, and should be reverted and forgotten about as soon as possible, just like in the Paul McGann film, where the Doctor is revealed to be half-human. Like most fans, I hated that idea, and am extremely glad that it was never mentioned again in any canon story.
Plus Doctor Who's continuity has always been bad to non-existent. They've given two contradictory histories of how the Dalek's came to be, Mawdryn Undead completely screws up the third Doctor's supposed story dates, Atlantis is destroyed at least three seperate times by different causes, the Doctor's age seems to randomly increase or decrease by centuries whenever he mentions it, and so on. There are many more examples, and that's just from the original (1963 - 1989) series. Doctor Who and continuity aren't on close terms, which maybe isn't surprising given how many stories there are. We fans tend to just ignore some of the continuity, or find it fun to discuss but don't take it too seriously.
They was a recent story where the Earth's moon was shown to be a massive egg (I'm not making this up), even though the Doctor, with all of his knowledge and experience hadn't realised this, and the egg hatches, the creature departs, and leaves an egg of it's own that is the exact size and mass of the original moon, conveniently explaining how Earth's tides are still the same as before the Moon/egg hatched. So are we to take that as canon, since it was in a TV episode, or should we forget about it as it's so staggeringly stupid? Definitely the latter for me, and every Doctor Who fan I've spoken to about it agrees with me.
To suggest we're just being sexist is not only missing the point (that we honestly think the character won't work as a woman), but is insulting too.
And Matt Smith was a great Doctor, his acting was really good, I thought.
This term, political correctness, should be put to bed. The writers have a new dimension to play with, that will excite and encourage them to put some life into a worn out TV series. It's all good surely. And the people who are up in arms about it not being a bloke, live a little. It's a big old world out there and it doesn't end at the tip of your nose.
It's not "all good". It's a terrible idea. And saying "It's a big old world out there and it doesn't end at the tip of your nose." is patronising and unfair. We are allowed (a) to have our opinions, and (b) to be able to discuss our opinions, *especially* if we believe that something will impact negatively on something we love, and for ou r concerns to be dismissed as unimportant and prejudicial is neither right nor fair.
Or maybe it has nothing to do with time lord physiology and the BBC just wanted to have a female actor in the role this time (spoiler: they did, duh), and do something radical to reinvigorate the show before it ends up cancelled again.
It's not "Political Correctness Gorn Maaaaaad and attention seeking!", but to pretend this is business as usual for the character just to better enable ridiculing Daily Mail readers is intellectually dishonest in my opinion. If you think it's good to cast a female Doctor because there aren't enough women in lead roles then own that rather than making weak excuses that it's normal because the doctor's an alien.
For the avoidance of doubt I have no issues with casting a woman as the Doctor. I will be mildly irked if the scriptwriters make a hamfisted job of introducing the change, but the show has been full of inconsistent stories and dumb retcons for decades so one more wouldn't hurt.
I disagree with the 'interesting choice' title - I think she's a rather bland choice, but time will tell.
If there's anything to complain about it's the pile of sh*te that was the last episode or two where it just seemed like everyone and anything decent was just abandoned.
I think Peter Capaldi (who I think has been great in the role) has had some fantastic and some terrible stories to deal with. The writing has been all over the place. Heaven Sent was fantastic, definitely one of the best Doctor Who stories ever, and it was immediately followed up by the flaw-after-flaw mess that was Hell Bent. There was that three parter, where the first part was great, and ended with the virtual Doctor saying that the real Doctor would stop the invasion, then in the next episode the it was boredom ending with the Doctor failing to stop them, and then in the last episode the Doctor is kept prisoner for sixth months and employed as the Alien's mouth-piece, then when he escapes he has to ask the Master how to beat the aliens, even though he (the Doctor) has presumable had six months to study the aliens, and even then the Doctor fails to beat them, and it's left to Bill to beat them, as much by luck as anything.
The Doctor has always been male, and story-wise and character-wise a change will be jarring
It's certainly a change, It'll be interesting to see how they write it. I'm not sure it's really that much more jarring than, say, a youthful exuberant Englishman turning into a grumpy old Scotsman.
It's certainly a change, It'll be interesting to see how they write it. I'm not sure it's really that much more jarring than, say, a youthful exuberant Englishman turning into a grumpy old Scotsman.
exactly, they might be all male but theres only one thing that they have in common, quirks. hopefully the next dr after her will be a dog lol, like lassie
Professional Mel-the-Bell Simulator................"So realistic, I found myself reaching for the Kleenex King-Size!" - Richard Darling
by the way on another forum i frequent, somebody posted some factoids, no idea if theyre true or not.
Back in 1989 towards the end of Colin Bakers run as the Doctor, the series creator Sydney Newman wanted the next Doctor to be female, Michael Grade rejected the idea apparently.
So the idea's only been around for about 27 years & the creator of the series thought it should happen.
Also the series boasts the first ever female producer in Verity Lambert in 1963 and the first ever director was Waris Hussein, who was a gay Asian man at a time when homosexuality was still a criminal offence for men.
Professional Mel-the-Bell Simulator................"So realistic, I found myself reaching for the Kleenex King-Size!" - Richard Darling
Comments
Of course it's PC. The DW casting people admit that they went in wanting to cast a women, not that they went in with an open mind and cast the best actor, who happened to be a woman. Instead, they chose to cast a female actress even though it makes very little sense in the program's lore or history, and even though lots of hardcore fans would find the decision at best worrying.
Repair Guides. Spanish Hardware site.
WoS - can't download? Info here...
former Meulie Spectrum Archive but no longer available :-(
Spectranet: the TNFS directory thread
! Standby alert !
“There are four lights!”
Step up to red alert. Sir, are you absolutely sure? It does mean changing the bulb!
Looking forward to summer in Somerset later in the year :)
You think the BBC only did it to annoy me? Well, I am a pretty important person, being WOS's most popular member and all
;)
Does it really matter if its a female lead? Wasn't it already known a timelord can be any gender or species? Her episode of black mirror was good.
It was never specified in the past, but continuity has always been a flexible thing (originally no mention of Gallifrey, regeneration, more than one heart, looming - yes or no?, past regenerations before the first (Morbius) and more...) - but The Corsair was implied to like variety in his/her regenerations in The Doctors Wife. Missy was the first Male/Female implied regeneration - and Hell Bent gave a female/male/female regeneration (well - the first part wasn't shown, but was implied).
Like it or not - it's cannon. Cannon evolves and changes. One can even say that it regenerates.
I'm more concerned with the writing hopefully being more consistent in quality, (and that's spoiled what could have been some great performances with all the Doctors) than what the Doctor has in his/her underwear.
Besides Jack Harkness would always be interested either way :)
If the writing is good, then there's potential for a good "season", whoever is behind the console controls.
I think that's pretty appropriate - the only reason anyone can have logically for getting this upset is sexism. It can't be the quality of the writing (unknown at this point), the fact that Timelords can switch genders (Missy) or that the actress is crap (we've had Matt Smith). That leaves "PC" complaints, the last refuge of the abusive mind.
Carry on, chaps.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/doctor-who/8052694/How-Doctor-Who-nearly-became-the-Time-Lady.html
...people think it's wrong for the DOCTOR to be a woman - not any of the other characters.
Personally, I'll reserve judgement until I've seen her in action.
My games for the Spectrum: Dingo, The Speccies, The Speccies 2, Vallation, SQIJ.
Twitter: Sokurah
Wasn't there a big hoo-hah when it was announced Billie Piper was going to be the assistant and didn't she end up being the most-revered of all?
Be interesting to see how it goes. Sometimes it works (Galactica, House of Cards), sometimes it fails miserably - look at V, Chris Evans' Top Gear and Ashton Kutcher's Two and a Half Men.
I mean, color and gender shouldn't really matter unless we have already established that the doctor will always be a white male - now and forever and till the end of time.
Bytes:Chuntey - Spectrum tech blog.
Looking for an in-universe reason, if the doctor's form after regeneration is random then either there's a very low chance of being a female form (this doesn't sound very progressive and diverse so I think that one's right out), it's been an incredibly unlikely sequence of coin tosses so far, or there's something different about this new doctor that breaks the previous "defaults to male" pattern. That last one seems like the easiest to explain away with some handwaving space mumbo jumbo to me, but at the end of the day, it's fiction, the writers can make up anything they like. They could just do a massive retcon and say that timelords are all blob shaped and the TARDIS has been making them look like humans based on our expectations to us for 50 years or something if they wanted. :)
It's far too early to be judging whether the new series will be any good yet, we know nothing. People are having tantrums and arguing about the 'rules' of regeneration on Twitter etc. when it's not clear if the next doctor will even be a 'normal' regeneration whatever that is.
Then in a later series, something else happened, which allowed more regenerations.
Anyway, it may be that the outcome of a Timelord regeneration is not truly random, but biased depending on where and when it happens. Just like some species on this planet are affected by the environment (the environment affects the percentage of males vs. females).
Or maybe with Timelords, the sex runs in long patterns instead of random or alternating changes.
Mark
Repair Guides. Spanish Hardware site.
WoS - can't download? Info here...
former Meulie Spectrum Archive but no longer available :-(
Spectranet: the TNFS directory thread
! Standby alert !
“There are four lights!”
Step up to red alert. Sir, are you absolutely sure? It does mean changing the bulb!
Looking forward to summer in Somerset later in the year :)
Repair Guides. Spanish Hardware site.
WoS - can't download? Info here...
former Meulie Spectrum Archive but no longer available :-(
Spectranet: the TNFS directory thread
! Standby alert !
“There are four lights!”
Step up to red alert. Sir, are you absolutely sure? It does mean changing the bulb!
Looking forward to summer in Somerset later in the year :)
If there's anything to complain about it's the pile of sh*te that was the last episode or two where it just seemed like everyone and anything decent was just abandoned.
- IONIAN-GAMES.com -
Or when they decided Matt "one expression" Lucas would be a good choice for an entire series.
It's not sexual prejudice as such, at least not for most fans (and I doubt many true sexist men or women watch Doctor Who, they'd probably consider it to be beneath them), it's that a female Doctor just won't (in their and my opinion) work. The Doctor has always been male, and story-wise and character-wise a change will be jarring and wrong.
Yes, Missy could be taken as evidence that Time Lords can change gender, but to me and many other people it's bad writing, and should be reverted and forgotten about as soon as possible, just like in the Paul McGann film, where the Doctor is revealed to be half-human. Like most fans, I hated that idea, and am extremely glad that it was never mentioned again in any canon story.
Plus Doctor Who's continuity has always been bad to non-existent. They've given two contradictory histories of how the Dalek's came to be, Mawdryn Undead completely screws up the third Doctor's supposed story dates, Atlantis is destroyed at least three seperate times by different causes, the Doctor's age seems to randomly increase or decrease by centuries whenever he mentions it, and so on. There are many more examples, and that's just from the original (1963 - 1989) series. Doctor Who and continuity aren't on close terms, which maybe isn't surprising given how many stories there are. We fans tend to just ignore some of the continuity, or find it fun to discuss but don't take it too seriously.
They was a recent story where the Earth's moon was shown to be a massive egg (I'm not making this up), even though the Doctor, with all of his knowledge and experience hadn't realised this, and the egg hatches, the creature departs, and leaves an egg of it's own that is the exact size and mass of the original moon, conveniently explaining how Earth's tides are still the same as before the Moon/egg hatched. So are we to take that as canon, since it was in a TV episode, or should we forget about it as it's so staggeringly stupid? Definitely the latter for me, and every Doctor Who fan I've spoken to about it agrees with me.
To suggest we're just being sexist is not only missing the point (that we honestly think the character won't work as a woman), but is insulting too.
And Matt Smith was a great Doctor, his acting was really good, I thought.
It's not "all good". It's a terrible idea. And saying "It's a big old world out there and it doesn't end at the tip of your nose." is patronising and unfair. We are allowed (a) to have our opinions, and (b) to be able to discuss our opinions, *especially* if we believe that something will impact negatively on something we love, and for ou r concerns to be dismissed as unimportant and prejudicial is neither right nor fair.
It's not "Political Correctness Gorn Maaaaaad and attention seeking!", but to pretend this is business as usual for the character just to better enable ridiculing Daily Mail readers is intellectually dishonest in my opinion. If you think it's good to cast a female Doctor because there aren't enough women in lead roles then own that rather than making weak excuses that it's normal because the doctor's an alien.
For the avoidance of doubt I have no issues with casting a woman as the Doctor. I will be mildly irked if the scriptwriters make a hamfisted job of introducing the change, but the show has been full of inconsistent stories and dumb retcons for decades so one more wouldn't hurt.
I think Peter Capaldi (who I think has been great in the role) has had some fantastic and some terrible stories to deal with. The writing has been all over the place. Heaven Sent was fantastic, definitely one of the best Doctor Who stories ever, and it was immediately followed up by the flaw-after-flaw mess that was Hell Bent. There was that three parter, where the first part was great, and ended with the virtual Doctor saying that the real Doctor would stop the invasion, then in the next episode the it was boredom ending with the Doctor failing to stop them, and then in the last episode the Doctor is kept prisoner for sixth months and employed as the Alien's mouth-piece, then when he escapes he has to ask the Master how to beat the aliens, even though he (the Doctor) has presumable had six months to study the aliens, and even then the Doctor fails to beat them, and it's left to Bill to beat them, as much by luck as anything.
*runs away*
It's certainly a change, It'll be interesting to see how they write it. I'm not sure it's really that much more jarring than, say, a youthful exuberant Englishman turning into a grumpy old Scotsman.
Why?