Doctor Who: 10 Crazy Internet Reactions To The 13th Doctor
7. The Doctor Has Always Been A Man
there's really no fucking need. the dr is male. hate how it's fashionable to make male characters female. it's utter poop
— darren pop (@DX_1) July 16, 2017
The essence of this argument is that it’s
like changing Harry Potter to Sally Potter or James Bond to Jane Bond. But the
Doctor is a special case, and not just because he happens to be an alien. This
is a show that thrives on change and would have been dead in the water long ago
had the concept of regeneration not evolved over time.
For those concerned about continuity, whilst all the actors to have played the Doctor have been male, it was never established in the show that the Doctor couldn’t change gender as part of the regenerative process. It was an assumption that said more about society at the time than it did the imaginations of the writers. Logically, there is no reason why he couldn’t change gender. It was therefore a form of institutionalised sexism.
Ever since Tom Baker first suggested it, most viewers have thought to themselves ‘why not?’ When it did eventually happen, albeit briefly in 1999’s Comic Relief parody “The Curse of Fatal Death” it was dismissed by some as a gimmick, though many fans were saying that Joanna Lumley would have made a great Doctor.
The latest evolution to the concept of regeneration clearly establishes that a Time Lord can change gender (The Doctor’s Wife, Dark Water, Hell Bent) and perhaps the only gender based question worth exploring in series 11 might be why (or indeed whether) the Doctor has always regenerated into a male form.