Comments | fauxkaren: Women and Their Stories in Doctor Who

fauxkaren

Women and Their Stories in Doctor Who

Oct 09, 2011 02:46

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 ( Read more... )

meta, doctor who

Comments 61

_thirty2flavors October 9 2011, 16:12:34 UTC

I think the absence of home life is a big thing for me. I don't think giving Amy a homelife would've solved everything, but I think one of the strengths under RTD is that we saw the companion as a person with a family and with a life they were leaving behind and we saw the consequences, good or bad, of leaving that life and those people behind. With Amy, the only person we ever saw her with really was Rory, and then he comes along so there's no mention of the life they've left. Rory's a nurse! SURELY HE MUST HAVE LOST HIS JOB BY NOW RIGHT ( ... )

fauxkaren October 9 2011, 17:32:50 UTC

I wish we'd at least gotten some concrete examples in series 6 of how parents had affected her and changed her from series 5 Amy, but the show never really addressed that. Amy not having a home life makes it hard to see her as having an existence outside of the Tardis, if that makes sense. She seems completely defined by her interactions with the Doctor.

_thirty2flavors October 9 2011, 18:04:27 UTC

Yeah. I liked Amy more in series 6 generally, and it'd be nice if there was more textual evidence that Amy-with-parents was just a more well-adjusted person than Amy-sans-parents, but her parents were a total nonentity and she might as well have just been a real orphan, which would've honestly made more sense and been more poignant than "she lost her parents btu she doesn't even remember them so whatever".

BUT ANYWAY my point is that yes, Amy's absent home life in s5 was at least excusable by plot; in s6, it wasn't, and I found that very irritating and it made Amy hard to believe. One of the reasons I was so annoyed that Rory was killed and immediately erased in s5 was because he was the ONLY tie to Amy's life beyond the Doctor, the only thing that made her relatable and human to me. In s6 I guess her relationship with Rory was a bit more solid and that helped, but then her total non-reaction to having her child stolen relegated her into cartoony territory again.

dqbunny October 9 2011, 17:28:22 UTC

So, wandered in from therealycats LJ because I was curious and find that I agree with both of you. I wound up posting my own look last week right after the series 6 finale when I kept seeing both of them trashed. I think your post drives home the fact that I'm disappointed with the fact that we see Rose, Martha, and Donna all develop into the strong, amazing women and have that unraveled ( ... )

fauxkaren October 9 2011, 17:55:02 UTC

I think Rose was completely in character in "The Stolen Earth". Rose has always had a slight tendency towards pettiness, but I think the main reason it fits her character is because well, Rose is FRUSTRATED. She spent however long, jumping through however many universe, trying to find the Doctor. And she's SO CLOSE to him. She can see him! But she can't talk to him. When she sees all the people up on the screen who can talk to the Doctor, she recognizes all of them except for Martha. So yeah, it makes sense to me that Rose is like "Um, who is she? Why does she get to talk to the Doctor while I am stuck here unable to communicate?" I agree that I would have liked it better if Rose had been more obvious with her choice in "Journey's End", but I don't think your scenario would have made sense for her character. Rose loved the Doctor and wanted to be with him, and I think that there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. She was intrigued by the idea of Cloen, but she basically knew him for 5 minutes so for her to be like "I am choosing ( ... )

(The comment has been removed)

fauxkaren October 9 2011, 20:57:23 UTC

I will totally admit that when River was first introduced, I was a butthurt Ten/Rose shipper. But the way that you outlined how a relationship between the Doctor and River could develop is something I could have gotten behind. The way it actually played out though... WHAT WAS THAT EVEN?

orange_crushed October 9 2011, 20:34:32 UTC

I am glad that you've written this all up. I'm having a lot of the same feelings re: character development and writing approaches.

I like Amy. I like River. I've written fic about both of them. But I've never felt that I know them the way I knew Martha and Donna and Rose. And frankly, the recent treatment of River's character (and by extension Amy's) disturbs me. Here's someone who has had their life (and largely their agency) stolen away from them, and I feel like the show is barely talking about it. Rory was going to be a dad, Amy was going to be a mom, River was going to be a daughter. Instead River is turned into a weapon, she's used for a purpose, and she's locked up to wait until she can be used again. (There's an uncomfortable metaphor about a writer's treatment of character in that.) Her whole life is twisted in a knot around one person- not because she chose him, not because she was ever free to choose- but because someone showed her his face from the cradle and said, "him." I want the show to deal with it, and I also don't ( ... )

fauxkaren October 9 2011, 21:15:32 UTC

I completely agree with you about River. If the show really acknowledged how messed up it is, I still wouldn't be a huge fan, but it would bother me a lot less. Instead the show seems to just gloss over it and is trying to pass it off as some sort or epic romance.

And I think you're right about Rose. Falling in love and being in a committed relationship does not automatically make her a weak woman. Rose decides what she wants to do with her life, and I find that to be incredibly empowering. She's a real woman with complicated feelings and emotions. If she'd just gotten over the Doctor, it wouldn't have rung true. I think the moment it seemed like the Doctor and Rose loved each other, Rose was damned if she did and damned if she didn't by fandom.

(The comment has been removed)

fauxkaren October 9 2011, 21:35:56 UTC

the real joy was knowing the characters and seeing how they would REACT to the situation.
I completely agree. That's part of why I love the series 3 finale so much. It's a basic "evil mastermind takes over and destroys the world" type plot, but what makes it brilliant is that it's not actually about that at all. It's about Martha coming into her own and recognizing her brilliance. It's about the Doctor's Master Issues. The plot is a way to explore the characters.