New Who 8.11 Dark Water

[strange_complex]

Cor, is it really season finale two-parter time already? This season has gone fast! And although there have been two episodes which I found weak (Kill the Moon and In the Forest of the Night), on the whole it has been pretty strong - above all for the key themes and motifs developed and explored from different angles from episode to episode

Comments

[parrot_knight]

I think, though, that Missy is credibly the person the Jacobi-Master and Simm-Master would become as a woman; the misogyny those two displayed leads the Master to become this frilly flirty-motherly performance, as if (in the words of one of the Verity! podcasters) the Master studied femininity through [early] Julie Andrews films.

[strange_complex]

I definitely agree that Missy's characterisation was great, and a perfectly-convincing continuation of where the Simm-Master had got to. The problem on the wider gender front is that because this is the first time we've seen that change, and thus the only data-point we have, we have ended up with a pretty regrettable model.

Obviously this is a common difficulty when trying to analyse fantasy programmes, which deal only with a small range of characters and in very unusual situations - you can't easily tell whether one character's personal circumstances represent a wider paradigm or not. But if Moffat had a stronger background of portraying LGBT characters positively and equitably, it might make me more inclined to chalk this case up to the particular circumstances of the character. He hasn't done enough to earn that lassitude from me yet.

[kernowgirl]

I can't decide how I feel about Time Lords changing gender. I like the fact that it sets up a precedent to have a female doctor in due course, but it feels like a very casual way of dismissing gender identity. Maybe time lords are all gender fluid, I don't know... but... should gender be represented as nothing more than a lifestyle choice?

[strange_complex]

We have seen Time Lords change a lot of other things during their regenerations, though - hair-colour, height, age, accent, skin-colour (remember Mel, an earlier version of River Song). In Romana's regeneration scene, she literally comes out at one point as a creature with silvery-blue skin and antennae. So if they can't also change their gender, that would seem like a very pointed omission from the list.

[kernowgirl]

But gender and gender identity are more than a physical construct. It is entirely logical that they would be able to change their *sex*, but can they change their gender too? Is Missy meant to be the Master as a woman, or the Master in a woman's body?

The fact that he's calling himself 'Mistress' suggests that he is readily identifying as a woman, and the precedent is certainly that Time Lords undergo personality changes with each regeneration, so maybe this does make sense... it's just a much bigger leap for me than changing age, race or even species.

I do think there's the potential to do this very well, and to use a gender-changing regeneration as a vehicle for exploring transgender issues. But that's not what they've done here, I don't know if they'd do it for the Doctor either, and I'm not sure how comfortable I am that they're just glossing over that aspect.

[strange_complex]

Sorry, yes - you're quite right that sex and gender identity are different, and I should have drawn that distinction properly in my previous comment. Still, though, I think we're already used to a similar thing happening when the Doctor changes his age. There, a physical change also forces an identity change - a Doctor who has been used to thinking of himself as an old man, or a young man, may suddenly become the opposite, and have to readjust to the new identity (including things like how other people respond to and interact with him). I don't think a sex change is fundamentally different from that

[danieldwilliam]

Time Toffs.

[strange_complex]

Haha - yeah, I can see the Chancellery Guards calling them that behind their backs!