Chicks Dig Time Lords
Originally published at tansyrr.com. You can comment here or there.
I’ve been hanging out for this one for a long time! You know when you hear about a book and it sounds like it is completely designed for you? I’m pleased to say that Chicks Dig Time Lords, edited by Lynne M. Thomas and Tara O’Shea, is exactly what it says on the tin.
Doctor Who is my fandom; I have rarely participated in any actual fannish or community activities in the fandom itself, and yet I have never been more fannish about any kind of media in my life. And I do mean life - I have been a born and bred Doctor Who fangirl for as long as I can remember. My mother was an early adopter of the VHS technology (the one time in her life she has been an early adopter of any tech) and it seemed this was almost purely to provide me with an everlasting supply of Doctor Who, from the Tom Baker serials played endlessly through my childhood to the less common Pertwees, Davisons and occasional bootlegged 6 generation copies of obscure black and white stories.
But this isn’t about me. Except that it is. Because this is a book entirely devoted to the female side of Doctor Who fandom - and it does a marvellous job of covering all the bases. The subtitle of the book is “a celebration of Doctor Who by the Women Who Love It” which sums the book up beautifully. I’ve been reading about loving Doctor Who for a long time - through Doctor Who Magazine, through blogs and LJ, and more recently listening to podcasts on the topic. The male perspective on the show is well and truly covered, I have to tell you. Some of my favourite writers/people are male Doctor Who fans, and while I love hearing their points of view, I have always been searching out and enjoying a variety of female voices and perspectives, so having a bunch of them tied together in one book is very pleasurable for me. The book is also very nicely placed in time, between the Russell T Davies and Stephen Moffatt eras of Doctor Who, with several of the articles looking forward as well as back. New Who in this case means Davies Who - though the book shivers with the anticipation of Moff Who, just around the corner.
I think the one essay of them all which really makes this book exciting for me is the one by “Jackie Jenkins,” or rather the anonymous female writer who wrote the Jackie Jenkins column in DWM through the 90’s. I loved this column, and always wondered about the woman who wrote it - sad she still won’t reveal her identity! I particularly enjoyed her own analysis of the column, its successes and failures, how it placed the story of a female Doctor Who fan front and centre in a magazine mostly written by men, and what the fan reaction was to her. I particularly liked her assertion that while it was originally commissioned as a satire of Bridget Jones, she preferred to think of herself as Nick Hornby rather than Helen Fielding - writing about obsession and how it integrates into daily life.
Another lovely piece of meta is an original comic by the women who write & draw Torchwood Babiez, a cute & smart webcomic I recently discovered thanks to the Bridging the Rift podcast. This comic is about the creation of the comic, told using the distinctive ‘babiez’ art style for real people, and I laughed out loud while reading it, and read several parts aloud to my honey.
I also read aloud almost all of “Mathematical Excellence: a Documentary,” by Seanan McGuire, which had me laughing and crying at the same time as I read the pathos-ridden, hilarious, awful tale of a child whose childhood is coloured by the deeply held belief that Doctor Who was a documentary series. The scene of her mother coming home to find her in pieces mourning the death of Adric is a stunning piece of writing.
I kind of want to review every piece in this book, but I don’t want to deny people a chance to find out, piece by piece, the deliciousness inside! There are interviews with several actresses from the show or the Big Finish plays. Essays covering the wealth of fandom - conventions, fanzines, costuming, fan films, smutty fanfic, green rooms. Essays about companions, which was your favourite, why did she matter to you, which was your doctor, did you have a backpack ready in case he turned up to take you off through time and space?
The difference in the fandom experience in the US and UK is quite marked, with occasional snippets from other places such as Kate Orman’s perspective from Australia. The pre- and post-Internet fandom is revealed in bits and pieces. New and Old School Who are both covered in spades - though it felt as if the Sarah Jane-Ace period was the heaviest coverage of Old School.
So many favourites in this collection! Carole E. Barrowman’s tale of the presence of Doctor Who through her childhood (shared with baby brother John) is witty and evocative. Francesca Coppa’s “Nyssa of Traken: Girl Genius” reminded me just why this was my favourite 80’s companion. Amy Fritsch touched me deeply with her story of how she and her 5 year old daughter (gee, why would this affect me?) bonded over a shared love of Doctor Who and Sarah Jane, and what happened when the special little girl named after Elisabeth Sladen met her namesake.
Kate Orman says “if I can’t squee I don’t want to be part of your revolution” in her “crone-ology” of her own fandom experiences, shining a harsh mirror on the highs and lows of internet fandom in particular. K. Tempest Bradford analyses the positives and the problems of how Martha Jones is handled as the first black female companion in an essay that really made me think. Catherynne M Valente raises Doctor Who’s mythic status, and suggests reasons why the ‘girl companion’ is amalgamated in our consciousness, as well as discussing the way that women can identify with the Doctor as well as the companion.
And of course, there’s sex. Lots of sex. Or rather, discussions from all angles about how sex has been belatedly introduced into Doctor Who in recent years, and how that intersects with women and Who fandom - the mythical female audience who are blamed for said sexytimes, the squeeing fangirl archetype, whether or not the Doctor has a willy, slash, smut, hating Rose, regretting Martha, and being kind of hot for Captain Jack. It’s all there and then some. There’s minimal discussion about male fans apart from husbands and boyfriends (ha! is that awesome or what?) but the few articles such as Kate Orman’s, and Christa Dickson’s defence of smut, which do look at way women have been marginalised in the fandom, make very interesting reading. It was good that there wasn’t an overwhelming number of essays dealing with this, though - after all, the book isn’t about men. (why do I feel the need to keep repeating this point?)
Very few of the essays palled for me - a couple of the ones covering long periods of fan history grew a little tiring, though there’s no doubting they were informative and each had a different twist, theme or perspective to it. None of them are so long as to outstay their welcome, either. I did raise an eyebrow at the feminist analysis of the New Who companions by Shoshanna Magnet and Robert Smith? - firstly because the appearance of a male name, even as a co-writer, in the table of contents was glaringly out of place, and I was disappointed in it considering the premise of the book; secondly because, while I agreed with many of the topics they raised about feminist issues with the New Who companions, I balked at some of their choices. In particular, I think it should be possible to discuss Donna’s figure without referring to all previous Doctor Who companions as “emaciated” or “looking anorexic” which is, apart from being an unpleasant piece of thin-bashing (just as problematic as fat-bashing, for much the same reasons) simply not true. There’s also quite a bit of “but it doesn’t count because” argument of convenience running through the article, which is unfortunate because it does have some intelligent assertions.
Chicks Dig Time Lords contains a wealth and definite breadth of the female experience with Doctor Who - and how awesome is that? This isn’t one token woman on a con panel (ha, if that) or one girly podcast among dozens of blokey ones, this is 28 essays/interviews/articles which all have a different take or perspective on the topic. Many of the essays are deeply personal and intimate. There’s a joy in them which is very hard to be cynical about and it left me wanting more, more, more.
Women, after all, have a hell of a lot to say about Doctor Who.