[DWISPCCRAP @replies]

Bluesqueakpip, maybe you are right and Dr Who isn’t the programme for me anymore. Even without the Doctor’s change of sex I have found myself increasingly expecting to be disappointed. In the 12 years of the new show the stories have become less exciting and less memorable.

For me narrative consistency is not contradicting yourself and I think after over 50 years of the show as a Time Lord (and hundreds of years in DW terms), not a Time Person it’s a bit late in the day to be making such a radical change to his identity. A Time Lord, as distinct from a Time Lady, the first of which saw and named as such in the Key to Time series with the late and much missed Mary Tamm.

The ability to regenerate, existence of Time Lords and Gallifrey were all later additions to the story without contradicting what had gone before.

I have not heard of this word retcon before please explain? And why would Gallifreyans favour male identity over female?

To Thane15

Maybe the fact that nobody at your school is even talking about it (other than the couple of comments you mentioned) is a bad sign, a symptom of a programme in terminal decline.?

All words and expressions have multiple meanings and I don’t believe that “PC” is so well defined, that it would be right to imply that anyone that uses the expression other than in glowing terms is a racist/sexist/homophobe/islamophobe etc. My username derives from a distinct feeling that the programme makers are more interested in showing how modern, forward thinking and “cool” they are in changing the main character than making the show better. It’s arrogance and virtue signalling. Then we have all the sycophants going on the net trying to out do each other in their praise for this “brave” decision.  PC, if it simple meant doing the best for minorities, would never be crap and I’m clearly not using it in that way.

Put simply Doctor Who was one of my favourite fictional characters, he was my hobby, I invested a lot time and money into it and I don’t like the character being messed about with. I think I could have lived with a female taking on the part if they had got someone a little less bland and girl next doorish than Jodie. She just looks so dull. She may not have said two words on DW yet but I’ve seen her on lots of other dramas and I can’t see her range being so great that she can raise her game to the new role.  I never liked Matt Smith maybe because he had no gravitas? Tom Baker was the best of course. There hasn’t been much discussion on here of the different personalities of the various incarnations of the doctor which is surprising given the topic heading. Maybe gravitas was the wrong word. Certainly he needs charisma, an otherworldliness, peculiarity, something alien. Jodie just doesn’t cut it. I think I might have been ok with a female taking it on if they’d chosen someone like Phoebe Waller-Bridge, now that would have been brave, someone that looks a bit unhinged and volatile. Yes, she would have been good I reckon.

 

[DWISPCCRAP @replies]

I was rather saddened but not surprised at the announcement of JW as the new Doctor. I think it was first hinted at  the end of DT’s run when we saw a cloaked female figure leaving the scene of John Simm’s Master’s demise and the ability of Time Lords to change sex has been reinvented in the last couple of years. You could see it was coming a mile off, but it wasn’t a “brave” decision. Western society or at least Western media types seem to be obsessed with “transgender issues” and people involved in producing the show will no doubt think that they have been very brave and forward looking in their decision. The thing is I like narrative consistency and he was after all a “Time Lord” for hundreds of years and if they were always transgender/transsexual they would have been called Time People wouldn’t they? And the Doctor you would think would have given it a whirl already if he had always had that ability rather than wait hundreds of years.

I agree with PD’s point about male role models. I think some little boys will be confused by the Doctor changing his sex after all this time, I know I would be. Confused and a bit disappointed. And the irony of JW in the first episode of a drama (Trust Me)about a woman pretending to be a Doctor.

I have seen JW in dramas before, I like her she is a good actress. I like “Trust Me” but I just don’t think she has sufficient charisma/gravitas to take on the Doctor. I think ratings will plummet. They can of course just reincarnate him again if that happens, but I think it’s a bit of a shame anyway

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