Women and Their Stories in Doctor Who

[fauxkaren]

So, I ended up getting into a really great discussion with therealycats about RTD's Women in Doctor Who vs Moffat's Women in Doctor Who over in this post and while replying to her comments, I realized that I was basically writing the meta that I'd been toying around with writing, so I edited my comments together to create this post. If you want to see my

Comments

[shinyopals]

I am too sleepy to feel like making an intelligent comment rn, but IA with this essay.

It almost makes it worse that I legitimately like Amy and River a lot, because I want them to have these great stories and awesome lives but they do not. I also can't get over how horrifying/messed up River's life actually is and how unacknowledged that is.

[fauxkaren]

Yeah, River's personality grew on me a LOT in series 5, so it sucks that she's saddled with that convoluted and sucky story. And Amy had a lot of potential as a character (as witnessed in The Girl Who Waited), but the show just so completely failed to really capitalize on that. Basically for me, both of their characters are really missed opportunities.

[_thirty2flavors]

Yeah, after two seasons I can say I am genuinely fond of Amy Pond (not something I could've said mid-s5). But is that an accomplishment of the writing, or just Karen Gillan settling into the role and being really really likable? I don't know. Similarly with River, I started off s6 thinking "okay, okay, I'm finally into this character everyone else says is a BAMF, this is awesome".

But then neither of their storylines this season worked for me. Amy's story would have been stronger to me if she'd chosen to leave in God Complex rather than be left by the Doctor. River... everything there was a hot mess.

After two seasons I feel like I like Amy, but I don't feel like I really know her. She's a ..model now, I guess, but I don't know why, etc.

[sweet_anise]

Brilliant. I kind of want to print this essay out to show anybody who starts asking about my opinions on DW. :)

I feel like I spent two seasons waiting to get some real character depth on Amy, but by the end of season 6 I still felt like she was largely reduced to whatever the plot needed her to be. I think that's a big difference between RTD's and Moffat's styles as well: RTD created the character and built a plot to fit (I mean, he invented a series-spanning parallel universe arc just so that he could have a believable way to write Rose/ Billie Piper out), while Moffat builds the plots and writes the characters to fit. It's something of a trade-off-- Moffat ends up with arguably shallow characters, while RTD ends up with some pretty loltastic plots-- but just on personal preference I'd take character over plot any day.

(Or maybe, more accurately, Moffat prioritizes certain aspects of his plots, like timey-whimey twists and scary effects. As a whole, I actually think RTD's held water better.)

[fauxkaren]

I'm glad that you liked my tl;dr ramblings! And yeah, I agree that Moffat prioritizes certain aspects of his plots which is why a lot of the time it feels like the characters are serving the plot vs them developing organically.

[butterfly]

This was a really interesting read. I didn't watch S5 or S6 but what you're saying about River and Amy tracks well with part of why I didn't watch those seasons. And, of course, I agree with you completely on Rose, Martha, and Donna.

[fauxkaren]

Glad you enjoyed it! I think that there are individual episodes from series 5 and 6 that I enjoy a lot, but as a whole the character writing doesn't work for me and the larger series arc plots don't appeal to me either, so... yeah. I will rewatch some episodes for those series, but I won't ever love it the way I love series 1-4.5.

[kem_viva]

My ranking for favorite companions is a lot more about entertainment, and how good the episodes/seasons on whole are rather than just their stories. I am also not a huge RTD fan, but because I have not watched his episodes of Doctor Who in so long now I don't know if I can properly explain why. I like Moffat a lot more as a story teller, because as I have said like a million times lol, he was the writer for my favorite Doctor Who episodes. This season things just got far to carried away for me, but I think his first series is one of my favorites. I never noticed any of the problems with Amy or River really until what he did this season

[fauxkaren]

Oh there's nothing wrong in coming from that perspective. I think that there is a lot about Amy and River's personalities that are fun to watch. That's definitely one way to approach the show. It's just not how I experience and enjoy the show. So I just wanted to explore why Amy and River failed as characters for me personally. For me, it's about how much I connect to characters emotionally, and how much I "get" their stories. The fact that I found Amy and River's stories so problematic prevents me for really loving them as charactes.

[alexandral]

Oh, I see the whole thing totally differently. I am sort of a neutral observer - although I have watched the majority of Dr.Who episodes (my daughter likes it), I never went further than "this is a light family entertainment" with it, and I am definitely not in a place where I can discuss the show seriously because this is my impression about it - good fun, not too much food for thought.

But overall, I would argue that the show is ABOUT Doctor, and always have been (all 700+ episodes), it never was about the companions, by default - it is DOCTOR WHO show after all. The companions are .. companions, seasonal accessories, and all the drama is about HIM.

PS: this all to say, Dr.number 10 was the least of my favourites ever. He just was ugly/shouting/bad acting. I would expect David Tennant to disappear into insignificance now that his Dr.Who days are over.

[_thirty2flavors]

But there's a precedent in New Who that the show is about the companions, and is told through the companion's perspective. The first 4.5 seasons of New Who set this up. I don't think "he's the titular character so everything should be about him, always" is really a good excuse -- there's no reason the lead female can't be fully realized while also developing the Doctor as well.

[alexandral]

You see, this is where I disagree - I don't think 4.5 seasons of New Doctor Who were about the companions, Dr. Who was still the main character. I am not discussing how "fully realised" the companions in these 4.5 seasons were, it is just was still the show about HIM, not about THEM for me. This is just my view of things, and the way I saw it. I also don't think it should be this way (I think you misunderstand me here), but for me this is how it was.

[_thirty2flavors]

Well he was the main character, so he did have lots of development and was the constant whereas the companions changed. But the companions were hugely important, to the end that the specials were about how bad things get when there isn't a companion