The Doctor Is a Woman

We are about to enter a new era, boys and girls:  we can watch movies on our phones, we can watch Ant Man and The Wasp without having seen any prior Marvel movie (other than Ant Man) except for the last two minutes, and The Doctor doesn’t have a penis.  Oh what an age we live in.

In case you’ve been living under a rock, you probably know that the new Doctor Who debuting this Fall will have actress Jodie Whittaker portraying the venerable Gallifreyan.  A lot of people are making a big deal about this, but I’m sort of meh.

Don’t get me wrong, it clearly is a breakthrough in gender equality casting.  I think the only argument for making The Doctor a man for the past 55 years is that The Doctor frequently fin ds himself in situations where he has to take command and bark orders, and until recently a woman doing that would have had to carry some extra baggage.  It’s the age-old conundrum for women; men are commanding, but women are shrill.  However, we are well past the Margaret Thatcher era, and a woman won the popular election for President in the United States in 2016.  So yay us, we may now accept a woman as a leader.

The reason I am loath to treat a female Doctor with wild abandon is that I always considered The Doctor a rather asexual character to begin with.  Given that the show was originally conceived as a children’s educational program, he’d almost have to be.  During the entire run of the “Classic” Doctor Who series, there was never any discussion, speculation, or recognition of The Doctor’s love life.  He traveled with mini-skirted Jo Grant with nary a leer.  Sarah Jane Smith was nothing more than a good buddy.  Peter Davison’s Doctor traveled with an attractive Australian stewardess and a teenaged girl without any speculation about hanky-panky.  Colin Baker showed no interest in Peri’s, um, attributes, and Sylvester McCoy was nothing but avuncular with Ace.

This changed in the revived series, when Rose Tyler, an attractive London teenager, joined the Doctor and clearly had a thing for older men (much older, since he was over 900 years old at that point).  The Doctor physically changing into David Tenant only increased the attraction, and eventually it became mutual (there was also the episode where The Doctor became trapped in France with Madame Du Pompadour and the first thing she did was offer to show him her bedroom).  The Doctor’s next companion, Martha Jones, was even more overt in her finding The Doctor to be physically appealing, but he was rebounding from Rose and never reciprocated (personal aside: what an idiot!).  Amy Pond indicated several times that she thought the eleventh Doctor was sexy, and at her wedding she enthusiastically told The Doctor that he could “absolutely, definitely kiss the bride,” but he demurred. 

The only time the Doctor did seem to have some interest in someone of the opposite sex was when Peter Capaldi’s Doctor spent one night with River Song, but they’d been previously married and it was on a planet where the nights lasted twenty-four years, so presumably they found some way to pass the time.

So, to sum up, over the course of 55 years the Doctor has travelled with a number of extremely attractive young women, and until recently there was never any hint that he had much of a libido (to quote the lyric of the song One Night in Bangkok, “I get my kicks above the waistline, sunshine”).  Since the character was never defined by his masculinity, the gender switch shouldn’t engender (sorry) much of a change.

The switch is obviously partly motivated by the successful transition (sorry again) of The Master to Missy.  It’s all about the casting; personally, I thought John Simm made a HORRIBLE Master, so anything was bound to be an improvement.   Michelle Gomez was able to embody the qualities of the old Master, a sort of restrained but cheerful sociopathy, that Simm took over the top and then some.  Part of what I disliked about Simm’s portrayal was that his Master had a sexy trophy wife, something no previous incarnation of The Master ever gave a second thought to.  The Master didn’t care about sex; he just wanted to rule the universe.  What’s sex compared to that?

If new Doctor Who showrunner Chris Chibnall is smart, then the scripts for the next season of Doctor Who should treat the new Doctor exactly as the old one was treated. That’s why the show has lasted since the early 60’s; The Doctor, however different each incarnation is, is essentially fungible.  Their MOs may vary somewhat, their senses of humor get tweaked, their physical skills range from klutzy to expert at Venusian aikido, but in the end the Doctor is The Doctor.

Gender doesn’t enter into the Doctor’s persona, nor should it; unless the show wants to get into the nitty gritty of where little Time Lords and Ladies come from, and frankly that is TMI.