Doctor Who: 6 Reasons Why It's Time For A Female Doctor
It's time for something completely different...
Doctor Who has been around for more than fifty years with over a dozen changes in the title character,and yet, in that time not one actor to portray the omni-intelligent alien Time Lord has been a woman.
Partly due to the show’s own structure of having an elderly father figure held the TARDIS, the desire to not step on continuity, and, yes, sexism - Doctor Who has yet to strike towards progress. But that doesn't mean there hasn't been significant call for it.
The campaign for consideration of a female Doctor has been going on for decades now, with Steven Moffat acknowledging it in the 1999 charity comedy special The Curse of the Fatal Death with a sole, non-canonical female regeneration.
Ever since the 2005 revival, the call has been even louder: tons of articles and fan voices have exploded in unison, calling for a female actor to be cast every time the current generation is announced as ending.
Okay, so we've seen some impressive actors and performances hired in place of one, but that doesn't make it any less important for the BBC to actively consider hiring an actress to play the next Doctor.
6. Atonement For The Show's Past Bigotry
Doctor Who has a rather controversial history of bigotry. Did you know that a guest character in The Celestial Toymaker (1965) sung “Eeny, meeny, miny, moe” with the original lyrics containing the N-Word?
Are you aware of the numerous times white actors played characters of other ethnicities? Yes, The Aztecs (1964) featured white actors playing Aztecs, and The Talons of Weng-Chiang (1977) featured the main villain actor wearing makeup extensions to make him look Chinese.
How about the causal subjugation of black actors? Yes, bit parts played by black actors in The Tomb of the Cybermen (1967) and Terror of the Autons (1971) featured them as nothing more than dumb brutes.
Sexism has also plagued the series’ past. Take Jo Grant for instance, who would frequently want to join in the action and the military men around her would ask her not to - out of some keen moral superiority (she was a UNIT employee just like them and the Doctor’s right hand). Then the Doctor would agree with them and leave to fight the good fight. But Jo would sneak out, get involved, get captured and bound up, and then get rescued by the Doctor and/or UNIT.
Sure, this formula played with female independence, but truthfully it also toyed with sexism. Christopher Eccleston acknowledged as much in an interview in 2005: “I feel the old series, I think what we’ve jettisoned is the sexism of the underwritten female role.”
To some extent it makes sense: the show is a product of its time, but it’s still bad for this sexism/racism to be apart of the thing we love and go unchecked by the series itself. The exploration of these ideas in the show itself could prove beneficial to the morality of the show.
How would this happen? First off, the female Doctor should not be treated any different than her male counterparts. If the show does cast a female in the lead role, the show should juxtapose the very racism/sexism it has included in the past against a female and progressive Doctor via the time periods she meets.