Ripley acted like a parent in Aliens. And fought with another parent for the life of her new-found child. Of course being a mother colours things much, but with good writing a fatherly figure would have worked fine and would have been as believable and moving. To say that her gender is so central that you couldn't fit in a male Ripley in Aliens is an overstatement. It would have been different, but not less resonant – what really resonated about her and her gender was that she was still being a strong character, written like a real parent and a real person, and written differently from how women roles are usually written. And I find calling the fight for protecting the life of the kid a "catfight" cheapening. And yeah, I get that the queen was a giant killing machine protective of her young, otherwise known as a big female cat. Still not a catfight. The gender of the role becomes critical when you have a story that actually deals with gender inequality or heavily features issues women face. The Alien 3 story with the rapists in the prison, the growing xenomorph inside Ripley's body, particularly given her backstory and the recent death of Newt... That might be a better example, although I do not remember those issues being particularly highlighted, so it is still not true. But it did alter the atmosphere for me considerably. (Even then, role reversals are also strong exploration devices for issues like this, so even in a scifi story dealing with inequality, you could get away with a man playing the part of a woman role. It can be an eye-opener.) And damn, I just noticed the next episode is called Into the Dalek. I guess my dalek journeying fantasy is going to be realised after all, in whatever way that's going to be.
Again, it's completely misreading my post to see it as "Ripley could be male." The point is that she wasn't written as just "the girl," and thus was allowed to be a more fully-fledged character than most movie heroines have historically been allowed to be, even after the sequels wrote her with her gender in mind. Because that first film established a solid foundation for her character, one that wasn't exclusively about what sex she is. That's the key. To paraphrase David Gerrold, words like "male" and "female" describe characters rather than defining them. Gender is one out of many attributes. It's not the only one that determines what a person is, and so it's a mistake to treat it as if it were. Historically, Hollywood writers have written men as fully realized characters and women as just "the girl," with little attention paid to any aspects of their personalities that aren't about their sex. Ripley was a character who avoided that double standard. Yes, it's because she was originally scripted as a man, but the point is that writing good female characters means writing them the same way you'd write male characters -- treating their gender as just one attribute rather than the single overriding one.
While it would be great if actors all had an even shot at any role, that's just not how it works, and it would probably be too creatively confining if it did. It's not the kind of profession that lends itself to affirmative action type logic. There's another thread that mentioned Gene had DeForest in mind for the ship's doctor from the start. That visualization feeds into the writing. Once you actually have your actor (or actress) chosen, then the writers start to play to what they feel the actor's strengths are. So routinely, writers think not just of gender for their characters, but specific actors they're modeling off of or want to have in their cast. Sergio Leone was notorious for conceiving his characters by first thinking of the actor he wanted to play the role, and not always getting his first choice. Take actors like Johnny Depp. You have directors like Tim Burton who seems to always want to use him again and again. And Sigourney Weaver has a strong enough bond with James Cameron to not just wind up in Avatar but have a role in the sequels too. In other professions this might be construed as nepotism, but no matter how versatile actors may think of themselves, they all have their own vibe they give off. That's why great actors can become victims of miscasting, as many (including myself) feel was the case with Cumberkhan. However, to keep harping on the social-engineering angle, about how it's such a pity women don't get good roles, is anachronistic. Films like Alien/Aliens were groundbreaking, but since then we've had tons of female action-heroes in its wake, and the current crop of superhero movies have their share of female ass-kickers. We also have "nontraditional" roles for men, like Brokeback Mountain. I think it's important to place some constraints on how varied regenerations can be, otherwise The Doctor loses any sense of being a unique individual and it becomes more of a set of blank-slate reincarnations with some foreign inserted memories. Personally, I was never happy to see The Doctor go young with Peter Davison, nor skew younger and hipper with the new version of the show. To me, that smacks of pandering to a target demographic. I always visualized him as occupying the archetypal space of the "Mad Scientist" with an inexplicable predisposition to Edwardian fashion. I see his personality shifting between cranky eccentricity (Tom Baker) to more of a straight hero with a paternal softness towards his companions (Pertwee). That's still a pretty wide canvas in which to work, but they broadened it further and to me, broadening it all the way to gender is taking it too far. Capaldi is more of a classic late-middle-aged choice for The Doctor and I'm glad to see a return to something more old-school.
So being rigid in casting is less creatively confining? Besides, we're not talking about the profession in general, we're talking about the Doctor, a character with attributes that are exceptional among fictional characters. We're talking about a character who has been established for 48 years as being capable of periodic physical transformation, a character whose whole identity is now rooted in being played by multiple actors who are often different from their predecessors in surprising ways. And it has now been canonically established that his species is capable of changing sex during such transformations. Prior to "The Doctor's Wife," there could have been a valid question of whether it was even possible for the Doctor to change sex; I myself tended to come down on the side that he probably couldn't, since there was no evidence that any Time Lord had ever done so. But now we do have unambiguous evidence that it is possible, so that objection is gone. Exactly! Each Doctor is written differently in response to the new actor's personality. The Doctor changes as the actors change. So if you're trying to claim that the Doctor's personality is somehow fixed and unchangeable because of who's played him in the past, I'm sorry, but it's rather ridiculous to claim that about this particular character. It's the nature of the Doctor that the character is transformed to fit the actor, regardless of how different that actor is from the previous ones. And sometimes they discover an actor who's totally unlike what they had in mind and realize it works even better. Some of the best casting choices ever made have been ones that were completely unexpected by the creators themselves. A really good actor can bring a role to life in a way that the writer never contemplated. Don't make the mistake of assuming that a writer's first idea is automatically the best one. That's not the way writing works. The quality of a creative work comes from the process of refinement and change as the original ideas are improved upon. And in a collaborative medium like film, it's frequently possible for a new idea to come along that changes the writer's mind completely and points the way to something far better than they originally had in mind. If you're trying to convince me this is a good practice, you've chosen a poor example. But only in supporting roles. We have yet to see one get her own name in a movie's title. It's laughable to claim it's an equal situation. It's better than it was, but the system is still intolerably biased in favor of men. See, the problem here is that you're evidently assuming that a change from male to female is somehow enormously and fundamentally greater than a change from, say, Patrick Troughton to Jon Pertwee or Matt Smith to Peter Capaldi. As I've been saying, the difference between male and female is one of degree. There are plenty of differences within either sex, and plenty of overlap between them. There are surely women out there whose personalities are closer to, say, Peter Davison's than William Hartnell or Sylvester McCoy was to Davison. And there are surely women whose personalities are closer to Hartnell's than McCoy's was. There is no impassable chasm between male and female, because the width of either bell curve is significantly greater than the distance between their averages. They aren't separate, they're intermixed. Here's the thing, though: The series does not exist to pander solely to your personal tastes. It's ridiculous to base an argument about a show's creative choices on what you as a solitary viewer would prefer, because no show is ever going to survive by considering only a single audience member's tastes. A show needs to appeal to a wide range of audiences in order to flourish. Doctor Who has thrived as long as it has by changing its identity and its approach, and that's inevitably cost it viewers with each regeneration, while also bringing in new viewers to balance out the loss. As I keep telling you, it's a series defined by change. If you lose interest in the show and stop watching, it will still go on without you. Of course there are always going to be traditionalist fans who don't want a female Doctor or a black Doctor, but there are more and more fans who are clamoring for change, and the show's makers will be foolish to ignore that audience. You "male-only" types have had your way for half a century -- so it's long past time someone else got their way. And if you don't like it, tough. You've had your turn, and then some.
Yes, depending on who you want to have the most creative-control. You don't cast a show like electing a public official. It's collaborative, but it's not a democracy. Some people should have more sway than others. Let's not lose sight of the fact that regeneration was a contrivance to compensate for actors not being willing or able to continue the role. It wasn't originally conceived as a way to give The Doctor an intentionally amorphous sense of identity. That was retconned later. I'm with you in theory, but it doesn't necessarily strengthen the case for a female Doctor. I don't want to get dragged into a statistical battle over how many women are getting lead roles or portraying characters men usually play. I have my own sense of the status-quo and you have yours. It's about expectation and perception, which is a personal thing, and can sometimes be very nit-picky. For instance, the news was aflutter this week that Obama wore a tan suit. That made me scratch my head wondering what all the fuss is about. I guess it's a little unusual for a president not to wear something in the blue or gray family. But for some weird reason, to some people, this totally freaked them out. There are Who fans who obsess over whether The Doctor incorporates the scarf into his outfit, or whether he does or doesn't hand out jelly-babies. How important are these details? Are they really rational or superficial? For fans, the minutiae can take on a lot of importance. So even if The Doctor had a totally traditional personality, but a gender-swap, it would create a big reverberation through fandom. The question then is, why do it? Let's bring this back to the Capaldi debate. People are much more interested in the age debate than the sex debate, now that we HAVE a new Doctor and his defining characteristic is him being older. You could make the same arguments you are now about casting actors over 40 to casting women as the Doctor. Why does age have to matter? To some younger fans, a few of the Doctors have become teen-idol fodder. And so they define the show around being physically attracted to the leads as prettyboy metro-sexuals or at least in the geek-chic end of the scale. Capaldi doesn't fit that mold because he doesn't look like a kid right out of college. So again, it's a personal expectation and there's no way to please everyone equally. Considering that the role was just cast with an old white guy and not a woman, I'd say the series is in-sync more with my taste than yours of late. So you can define what it should or shouldn't be all you want, but I've got nothing to complain about in this choice.
For one thing the demographic for Doctor Who had shown that the audience were getting older not younger and since the Davison era was shown at a later time it was meant to attract that older audience not the younger one. Davison modeled his Doctor from Troughton and Hartnell's Doctors, he was meant as something of a throw back from how dominate Tom Baker and Jon Peerwee's Doctor had been. Truthfuly though while Doctor Who's producers over the years seem to reading how the show from a book that never been written. The casting of a black, Asian or female Doctor has as much to do with high-ups than it does about the people running the show. JNT asked Davison to become the fifth Doctor because he wanted somebody as different from Tom Baker as he could get and the picture of Davison in a cricket outfit on his wall stood out for him.
In other words, fans who share your tastes should have more sway that fans who disagree with you? Or are you saying that men should have more sway than women? Again, how an idea originated isn't as important as what it's evolved into. For decades, the fact that the Doctor has been someone new every few years, that we never know what to expect next, has been part of the central appeal of the character and the series, a regular focus of the publicity and storytelling. It's one of the best gimmicks in television history because it periodically brings new attention and keeps audiences and journalists from getting too complacent about the show. Which is why the producers would be foolish to base their decisions on only a single type of fans' preferences. They do what they think is best for the role and the series. They can't avoid making changes for fear of offending someone, because every creative decision offends someone. What a contradictory paragraph. Do you really think the producers of a television show wouldn't want to create a big reverberation through fandom? TV shows need ratings to survive -- even on a commercial-free network like the BBC, they're not going to invest in a show that isn't popular. Publicity is a good thing for a TV show, and that means controversy can be a good thing. Look at the "big reverberation through fandom" caused by casting someone as old as Peter Capaldi. By your argument, they should've cast some 25-year-old who looked and acted as much like Matt Smith as possible, because heaven forbid that the makers of a television show broadcast to the public should risk doing anything that might attract attention! Yes, that's exactly the point! That it's no greater a change, and so there's no reason to be against it except sexism. Again, the whole point is that age or sex shouldn't matter. If the casting were egalitarian, then we would automatically have older Doctors and female Doctors and nonwhite Doctors in the mix simply because they were good actors with good personalities. You're the one insisting sex should matter. The only people saying sex or race or age or whatever should matter are the people who insist on discriminating against people of the wrong sex or race or age. To those of us who don't believe that such things matter, the unfairness of trying to exclude people on such grounds is self-evident. Again, you completely misunderstand me because you think my preferences are as narrow as yours. I don't care if the Doctor is male or female. That's why I want there to be both. It's not about favoring one narrow category of humanity over the other -- it's about recognizing that everyone deserves a fair shake. I don't mind a white man getting the part based on merit as long as other categories of person are given an equal chance to win the role based on their merits. As I said, if it were truly fair, then we'd get Doctors of all types, and naturally white men would be one of those types. They just wouldn't be the only type anymore.
Yes it does odd enough, the only reason we get a new Doctor if when the current Doctor wants to leave for whatever reason or in Colin Baker's case his contract isn't renewed. It might all seem rather routinue nowadays, but whomever they get still has to be OKed by the people above the showrunner/s.
I don't think this would've been a good time to switch sexes. If the new set of regens was given as the reason, that might lock them into ALL female. Doctors for this whole set if my next point is a possibility. I believe the Doctor should stay male because his original incarnation was male (XY). Female Timelords have an initial incarnation as female (XX). Since memories are retained, I don't see why chromosome sets wouldn't be. Now, Timelords like The Corsair may be XXY so that at regeneration, selection can vary. Just my opinion, of course.
Neither. I'm not sure how much "sway" any of us really have. I'm not part of BBCs ratings statistics, for instance. You want to start a petition or something? I'm emphasizing that it's a matter of personal taste and you seem to insist on reading this casting choice as a women's-rights socio-political issue. I don't think casting The Doctor should be done by first rolling dice like D&D to see if it comes up male/female or this or that ethnicity. And also an equal source of trepidation for those who grow fond of the previous incarnation. So I guess you support their choice to cast an older white male? Great! Controversy over! Capaldi isn't a left-field choice within the entire history of Who, but a female Doctor would be. No. It's my own personal taste. Please stop short of name-calling to prove your point. Because my inner vision of the Doctor is a guy and I wouldn't like it. It's as simple as that. The argument keeps running around in circles. I don't view The Doctor as a case of casting in an "egalitarian" way. I view the Doctor not as a completely amorphous "anybody" but as a range of "types" that seem to fit the mold. That range precludes women, and if I had it my way, any actors younger than 40. Women are still welcome to be time-lords, if they were established as female, like Romana. Have you ever looked at a casting call sheet? Discrimination is baked into the cake of casting. Right off the bat they usually specify age, gender, body-type. Then they look at head-shots and do a lot of superficial filtering before anyone even gets to read a role. It's NOT FAIR. It's NOT EGALITARIAN. And actors know this when they enter the profession. Why did Chris Pine get the role of Kirk? A big part had to do with him being young and good looking. If he hadn't met the superficial criteria, his acting ability wouldn't have mattered. I just don't view The Doctor as someone you cast without any sense of "type" going into it. I have a preconceived notion of "types" that work best, ones that exclude young guys that look like they walked off the set of Twilight or Dawson's creek. If other people want that kind of Doctor, fine. But I don't feel like I'm being bigoted by having my own preferences. Part of the ritual of every regeneration is the fanbase bifurcating into those who like the new choice and those who don't. But it's a cheap-shot to call those who don't like it names like "sexist". So if The Doctor is NEVER female, you won't care? And you won't accuse the producers of sexism? If so, you're engaging in a rather abstract debate here that seems to be disconnected from reality.
See setting aside the gender thing, even pinning the Doctor down agewise seems inherantly opposed to the nature of the character. I just don't see how you can draw an arbritary line in the sand at 40 and say no one younger? That means, I take it, that you hate Smith, Davison, McGann and, presumably, only just about bring yourself to like the Baker boys and Eccleston? Would Tom suddenly have become a terrible Doctor if he'd got the gig a year earlier at 39? Of course not. I'm not saying their shouldn't be upper and lower limits. I don't want an 18 year old Doctor and I'd have issues with a Doctor in his sixties, but even so there are exceptions to every rule. Matt may have been the youngest actor to play the role but in my, and a whole lot of other people's, opinions, he nailed both the alien and the old man aspects of the character. Similarly you could say an older actor might not be up to the rigors of production but Patrick Stewart still looks pretty spry for a man his age...in fact he doesn't remotely look like a man his age. If a character who can go from being played by Pertwee to Tom to Davison, and from Tennant to Matt to Capaldi tells us anything it's that, even if you invariably narrow your casting call down, you're still potentially looking at trawling a wider area than just about any role. Factor in a character whose entire DNA reforms when "he" regenerates and is it so much of a stretch to imagine him changing gender? I guess the answer is yes for some people, but I have to say, sooner or later I think it will happen, and as with Matt 'he's too young' smith or Peter' he's too old Capaldi' the horrified screams from the fans won't actually stop it from happening, what might happen is that, if ratings plumeted, she'd be regenerated after one or two series and considered a noble failure. But that's always assuming the ratings went down...
I don't think we should project human physiology on fictional alien species just because we don't like something their alien physiology might allow.
And River could make herself seem younger and regenerate, which is something no human can do (that I'm aware of)