Doctor Who and the Bechdel Test

[sarah531]

I started doing a project to work out how many times post-2005 Doctor Who passes the Bechdel Test. I did so by...collecting EVERY INSTANCE of when a pass occurred, in EVERY EPISODE! SeeThen I starting adding things up. So far, Doctor Who in general has a pass rate of 82%, with most episodes passing. Russell T Davis's era passes more than the Steven

Comments

[jaelle_n_gilla]

I hadn't heard of the Bechdel test so far and it's an interesting concept. More interesting though if you could provide the comparison for the other gender. I.e. how often do two men speak to each other and not about a woman. I'm guessing it would go towards 100% in a show that features a male hero. I would be interested to see the exact numbers though :)

[sparkymark]

I think there's only been two classic stories "Mission to the Unknown" and "Attack of the Cybermen" where a plotline does not impact the Doctor's story (I suppose a case could be made for the ones where the Hartnell spends most of the time unconscious so not strictly affect the Doctor, and Chris Boucher's first 4th/Leela novel has a plotline on a different planet that forgets to have anything to do with anything going on with anything else: he hit the minimum page count and gave up). Maybe Love and Monsters (Jackie) and Turn Left (Donna)?

[shyfoxling]

Iiii... Idunno about Turn Left. I mean, it's because of Donna, but isn't the whole point "If Donna hadn't done this, this would have happened differently to the Doctor, and then wow a lot of other shit because of an absence of the Doctor"? I mean, it's pretty squarely about supporting the Doctor's story, I think...

[oswulf]

The big difference that immediately strikes me is that The Russell T. Davies era hugely introduced companions' families, including their mothers, whereas neither Classic Who nor the Moffat era has.