Doctor Who: 7 Most Unfair Criticisms Of Steven Moffat

3. Steven Moffat Misrepresents Women

Some of the most vociferous complaints about Steven Moffat's tenure as showrunner have come from feminist critics. This is hardly surprising given that a key task of such analysis is to expose latent misogyny within society. Doctor Who, like any other media output, is fair game for such deconstruction. Like it or not, the programme has undoubtedly denigrated women throughout its run. But without doubt, Moffat has come under far greater scrutiny than any of his predecessors. The depth of debate gives the misleading impression that he is particularly sexist. In truth, Russell T Davies escaped lightly because the focus was all about the difference between the revived series and its original run. Fans are supposed to believe that Steven Moffat cannot write rounded female characters and instead betrays his prejudices by a recurrent 'strong' female character trope. But is there really any noticeable difference between, say, Russell T Davies€™ Miss Foster and Mrs Hartigan and Moffat's Madam Kovarian and Ms Delphox? The issue hasn€™t been helped by the anti-Moffat brigade jumping on the bandwagon and largely misunderstanding and misappropriating the misogynist readings. To counter accusations of subjectivity, some have taken a statistical approach by using the Bechdel test (an analysis of numbers of female characters, their screen time and how often they talk about men) which allegedly reveals that Moffat€™s tenure has been far more misogynist than Russell T Davies€™. But the test itself is a flawed measure of how women are characterised in film and TV. Among the films that fail the test is Gravity, whilst Sex and the City 2 passes. Speaks for itself, really, doesn't it?