Doctor Who Sexism

[shipperx]

This is one fandom debate I rarely enter, mainly because I have no particular horse in this race.  I think, though there are differences of specific incidences, Davies and Moffat aren't so very different as to merit such heated debate.

(That said, I'm never forgiving what happened to Donna.  That still grates.)

Anyway, over on i09, someone appears to agree with me that it's six of one and half a dozen of the other.

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From i09:

The great debate in Doctor Who fandom these days is between fans of "original" showrunner Russell T. Davies and his replacement, Steven Moffat.* And one of the focal points of that debate comes down to the notion that Davies was better at writing female characters. Not so fast, says one college professor.

Piers Britton tried to teach a class on Doctor Who at University of Redlands for the show's 50th anniversary — and he found that it was hard to break out of fannish debates and into what he considers serious analysis of the show's themes, including gender roles. But ask Britton, who prefers the classic series, whether Davies handled women better than Moffat, and he replies:

I'm afraid I must disappoint you. Suffice it to say that I don't like crass, reactionary sexism and essentializing 'humor,' and I don't like the ongoing reinscription of women's lack of agency, especially when it's a function of mawkish writing that's emotionally manipulative. Doctor Who was endemically guilty of the latter for the first five years of the revival [Davies], and has intermittently exhibited the former in spectacularly appalling and painful ways in the years since [Moffat]. I wish that this were not the case.

For what it's worth, [i09 writer's] take on Davies vs. Moffat is increasingly that they're the same. Moffat has more or less duplicated Davies' approach to the program, with a few minor tweaks and some attempts at stronger arc-based storytelling. But Davies has the benefit of having come first and thus seeming fresher. It's true that Davies is better at writing scenes where two women talk to each other, which (as the Bechdel Test reveals) is often a cornerstone of believeable female characters. But it's also true that Davies tended to turn his women into deus ex machinas and then disempower them.

The reason why I think Moffat should probably leave sooner rather than later is not because he represents too much of a change from Davies — but because he's not enough of a change from Davies. After nine years, the show needs a fairly radical reinvention, of the sort it regularly received during its original run. Otherwise, it'll start to look like Supernatural and Smallville, two shows that ran for ten years and showed their age.

Comments

[elsaf]

I have to agree with Britton. And this is why I've become disenchanted with the series. Right now, I have four episodes on my DVR that I haven't gotten around to watching. It's only a matter of time until I take it off my record list. (I'll probably watch a couple of the recorded episodes to give it another chance before I drop the axe.)

I like Cipaldi in theory, but nothing that has happened in the new episodes I've watched made me want to watch any more.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

Totally agree. Something in this isn't working for me. Episodes linger on my DVR until I'm bored with nothing else to watch. (And I groaned when the Cybermen arrived last week).

The new Doctor still hasn't gelled for me. The Clara/Mr. Pink thing, while nice, seems both telegraphed and rushed (and 'killing' him ala Rory seemed old).

There are problems. I just don't know that they boil down to "sexism."

[flake-sake.livejournal.com]

I guess "attempts more plot focused writing" hits it on the head. I was very dissappointed in Moffat's season plots, they are not nearly as great as some of his old individual eps (blink) would have suggested.

I like the new Doctor though. I wish they would switch to Neil Gaiman though.

As for Clara. I just don't get her. There are very few instances when I understand her. I kind of have the impression the writer don't get her either and consequently she's a different person every other episode. She's okish and sometimes I like her, but she is no Martha or Donna.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

I think she may have worked better as a 1 season companion. I thought "The Impossible Girl" mystery was interesting, it's trying to make her a real live one that is less so. I have no problems with her, and think she is lovely, but I still have problems reconciling the impossible girl with the school teacher.

[flake-sake.livejournal.com]

I was a bit dissappointed with the resolution of the impossible girl plot.

Thing is that love a lot of the minor characters, like River Song and Vastra and jenny...I wish they could have a companion more like them.

[shapinglight]

I don't care if Moffatt goes, as long as Capaldi stick around.

That said, I've enjoyed most of this season - way, way the best season since the one with Donna - and I think Capaldi and Coleman have chemistry.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

He still reminds me more of House. I'm not sure why.

And, yes, I loved Donna best, I think.

[beer-good-foamy.livejournal.com]

Honestly, I'm starting to think that the problem is less that Moffat can't write women than that Moffat can't write characters, period. Or at least isn't interested in writing them (I'm rewatching his first series Coupling, and while it's very dumb in a lot of ways, it gets more out of bouncing its characters off each other in a single 30-minute episode than Who has managed the whole season). He writes concepts, he writes Doctor Who meta, he writes about heroism and responsibility and fate and... forgets to actually tell a story. Which is a shame because I'm loving a lot of the parts this season (Capaldi is excellent), but as a whole, it just fizzles out every week.

[mrs-underhill.livejournal.com]

I'm a very recent convert and like both RTD and Moffat in different ways. I don't think either of them is sexist, and also it seems that Doctor Who being conceived by a female producer and a POC director has played a role. Old-school Who had great female characters right from the start. It is a progressive show, in general.

However, I just relate to RTD female characters more and enjoy them more because they are just more relatable, there's just such a variety of of appearances, ages, personalities, and they are all treated with respect, as proper story participants. And I'm not just talking about Rose, Donna and Martha - I have irrational love for Jackie, and then there's Adelaide Brooks, and the cast from Midnight, and that pair from Gridlock, Penny Carter etc, etc. - you see women who show their age, who are not model-looking, but who are great characters.
With Moffat it's either pretty girls, or fairy-tale archetypes, or his standard kinky dominatrixes which all look the same and which seem to be like this just because they're his type. (And then there's River Song! :)) They are all interesting and powerful in their own right but I just feel safer as a woman with RTD stories.
Moffat tends to ridicule women for not being up to standards of appearance etc. - like that slash fan in Sherlock or Osgood in Day of the Doctor. It's not about women in the stories having or not having an agency (RTD and Moff both had their missteps) - it's a judgement I feel which is passed on the viewers from inside the story. If you're not fit and don't look like a model you're fair game.

But saying that, I'm not eager for Moffat to go. Because there's no one right now to take over, no one of same calibre. I think both RTD and Moffat are geniuses in their own ways and Doctor Who is incredibly lucky to have them one after another. What they did with the show was amazing.
On the other hand, if someone were to take over from Moff, maybe it'll be a woman, going back to the roots, so to say. That would've been awesome!

[londonkds.livejournal.com]

My problem is that unless they go with someone totally new, the most obvious candidates after Moffat are Gatiss, whose decent episodes have all been ridiculously derivative with nothing distinctive about them, and Chibnall, who is the same but often with, to my eyes, absolutely grotesque and blatant misogyny that makes anything Moffat is blamed for pale into insignificance.

[mrs-underhill.livejournal.com]

Exactly. If Moffat gets tired and decides to go now, there's just Gatiss and Chibnall who are absolutely not up to the job. So if Moffat goes now, the show either stops or pathetically drops in quality.
And I don't want that... Hope Moffat has some fire in him yet (and hope Capaldi gives him inspiration), until someone new and fresh appears, with new passion and new vision.
And seriously, I'd love to see a female showrunner.

[londonkds.livejournal.com]

I can see where Moffat falls down, but I just get furious with people who claim that Davies's era was some kind of perfect wonderland of respect for women. (As well as the horrible endings his companions get, there's his tendency to make all his villains women over thirty who aren't primarily wives and mothers and therefore are all either monsters or heartless power-crazed bitches who need a slap.)

I tend to suspect that the majority of the "Moffat is a hateful misogynist" crew are Ten/Rose shippers who are pissed off that the series continued after "Journeys' End" and that they didn't get the Ten/Rose happy ending to the entire show that they felt they were "promised".

[frelling-tralk.livejournal.com]

Good points. I find it interesting that Martha is now so frequently brought up as an example of RTD getting it right in a way that SM never has, yet at the time I distinctly remember fandom being a very unpleasant and argumentative place during that series because of how Martha was being treated by the Doctor. And neither Rose or Donna's endings were as positive as Martha's as they both had their fates more or less chosen for them by the Doctor

[londonkds.livejournal.com]

I'd like to know who thinks making the first black companion the first one to be consciously written as "the one the Doctor didn't like as much as the previous one" was "RTD getting it right".

[frelling-tralk.livejournal.com]

That's what confuses me, at the time fandom was very much calling out RTD for Martha being treated as second-best, yet when I read commentary from self-described Moffat haters today it seems that the RTD era is remembered through rose-coloured glasses as always getting it right with his kickass female characters like Martha and Donna, completely ignoring how problematic the writing of them was considered at the time with Donna's exit or Martha's unrequited pinning