But he's not sexy.
Happy is better than sexy.
Although he's more manic than happy.
Why Doctor Who is a MESS
- Thread starter Shaka Zulu
- Start date
But he's not sexy.
Happy is better than sexy.
Although he's more manic than happy.
I mean, Laura Kinney, who replaced Wolverine for a few years or so over at Marvel, was an established character and she too got backlash. Same for Sam Wilson as Captain America and Jane Foster as Thor. I mean, Jane Foster is such an established character, she's actually older than Doctor Who, but people still complained a whole lot.
And all the exact same comments seem to apply here AFAICT
I think there is definitely a big element of it for sure.
It is slightly different...The Doctor has been changed, we aren’t following a different character as in the 007 example. All the Who spin offs have been female led. People tend to forget Torchwood actually Stars Gwen Cooper technically.
Me either. You get the impression Rose has an unrequited thing going on. But after the controversy over McGanns snog moment, you could see Russell dancing around holding back on anything like that till a season in...not that he didn’t tease, with things like the Jabe kiss.
I am not sure she is older than Who. But maybe, I am fuzzy on non X book Marvel.
I think the thing was...people loved X23, but didn’t love having Wolverine replaced with her. Which didn’t work out (it is silly, it’s not like she needed the identity as it were...she was doing fine being her own thing.)
I mean...I don’t follow the spider books, but I hear spider Gwen is great. I can imagine the backlash if main Spider-Man (and the various others...no wonder I never read that shit...) was killed off and Spider-Gwen took over the identity. It’s that.
It’s also a bit sexist IMHO...the female characters can’t build a following unless we give them and established Male character identity for brand recognition? Dumb, and messed up perfectly good characters.
The Thor thing? Meh. Again I only read about it, but it looked like a good arc, good stuff, perfectly in keeping with the established mythology, the kind of thing that happens now and then in comics (mainly when DC kill the big guns) but again the political fight merchants got their hands all over it and the media stirred up some shit.
Journey into Mystery 84, September 1962.
I always saw it that Rose was in love with Nine, but the Eccleston Doctor is basically a much older man who knows he could fall for her but also knows it would be completely inappropriate to do so.
The Daleks, the ###cking Daleks ANNOUNCED that the Doctor loved Rose.
(Like their judgement of character can really be trusted.)
She loved Nine, but Rose wanted to Bang 10 for hours and hours.
(Like their judgement of character can really be trusted.)
She loved Nine, but Rose wanted to Bang 10 for hours and hours.
Exactly my point. The argument @starsuperion put forth was in favour of making the show female led by introducing a plot which led to that situation, a la Bond, perhaps using Jenny or Susan.
My counter is that experiment led to much the same complaints aimed at the Bond franchise just reworded slightly to accommodate the attempt. People just aren't going to re evaluate their positions that lightly/
I think that in Who’s case...the politically motivated side of the shitstorm would have been at least partially avoided. But...it likely wouldn’t have worked. There was enough anger when people thought Clara was basically the lead, and it’s the same now, the Doctor not exactly leading her own show. It’s almost like Chibnall can’t write a female lead characters *squints at where Torchwood skidded off piste* yup. Almost like that.
But yup, we are where we are cos polticomonkeys came with spanner’s to geekdom, and now we all get to heed the Seventh Doctors words on the Cheetah planets, more less. Except it will just be the stories that die. Shame really. I am quite fond of the stories, like the one about the girl and her dotty grandfather on the run, picking up a couple of teachers by accident, and the ensemble of young and old, male and female, went on a great adventure through time and space.....still. It changed as it went. The old were young, and the young were old. Something about a huge conflict changed it all, sometimes for the better, sometimes not.
Erm.
It isn’t fandom doing that to characters?
I mean some are demanding it happens sometimes....
I am not sure you got the sentence mon ami.
I'm agreeing with your point, mon ami. That fandom has a hard time accepting female characters as leads.
That’s half the point.
The other half is that in an attempt to get the female leads up there, people seem to think gender flipping an existing character will work out...without thinking its bit sexist to think people will only watch/read a female superhero if she takes on the mantle of an existing male character.
That you can never build as much of a following for a female character as these Male characters already have, so just flip them, and hope you keep most of the audience.
Personally...as someone who has been a Buffy fan, an Alien fan, something of a Terminator fan (and really liked the TV series) and probably currently has Voyager in at least joint first place for favourite Trek overall, (ENT in last match, though DSC is fighting hard for that spot. Hard.) As someone who probably enjoyed the Tomb Raider films as much as Bond, and certainly has way more Lara march than 007, I think they are wrong.
That’s the other half.
It's a twofold thing.
1. Fandom can be both shockingly sexist and racist--like at all the shit Elba got for his role in Thor. And if a man of color had been cast as the Doctor, there would be the same fucking conversations "But, the Doctor is WHITE!"
2. The TV business is risk averse--hell, all entertainment at certain levels is risk averse. It costs a lot of money to launch a new show, a new character. How many of them fail, starring both men and women?
The reality is Doctor Who, and other things created a long time ago, are beginning to show their age. Society has changed dramatically since the 1960s. Doctor Who has a franchise has a wonderfully built in system to keep up with the time, regeneration. The BBC would be fools to ignore it and not use it to be a part of ... well, the conversation.
For every Buffy, Ripley, and Sarah Conner, that succeeded how many failed? How many were tried compared to male characters? Hell, it's STILL hard to launch a female lead action franchise... How many people (men) tried to get Captain Marvel to fail? How many years did it take to finally get a Black Widow movie made?
I'm not saying that gender flipping is the only way to go in all circumstances, of course not.
But, with Doctor Who, went you literally have it built into the show, why not take advantage of it.
The BBC isn't looking at how Doctor Who was done IN THE PAST, they are looking to the future. They don't want Doctor Who to be frozen in time, they want a franchise that will continue to go on.
This is SF&F...cancelled shows and failed film franchises, or films that flopped are ten a penny. Some of them with Male leads, some with female. A sure sign is if I liked it, it was probably cancelled. Folk should be glad I was never into firefly, it would have been cancelled after its first episode.
Thing is, some of these we just tend to forget about.
Heck, even Who and Trek were both cancelled.
And how do we factor in Killjoys and Dark Matter? One survives, one cancelled, female leads in both.
I get your point, and even agree tbh, but when I look at the sheer number of things I have watched over the last twenty or thirty years...it is t quite so clear cut a picture.
Except in Hollywood for films perhaps...and even then...
Sometimes I wonder if it really is something happening now nerdom has gone mainstream. Back in the day no one gave enough of a crap about genre flicks to worry about the demographics of the lead.
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