Hell, look no further than Carole Ann Ford.
Spoilers The Star Beast grade and discussion thread
- Thread starter The Nth Doctor
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It is a little strange that she is so much taller than what I think is supposed to be her friend/classmate, but then maybe she is just very tall for her age. That’s perfectly usual.
Am surprised Donna lets her wear the minis at fifteen mind you. Let alone run an online business.
Sean wouldn’t notice anyway — he seemed oddly complicit in covering up the Doctors identity too. Lots of clumsy here alas.
Am surprised Donna lets her wear the minis at fifteen mind you. Let alone run an online business.
Sean wouldn’t notice anyway — he seemed oddly complicit in covering up the Doctors identity too. Lots of clumsy here alas.
I'd like exact lines of dialog, please. Thanks to our fantastic board member @Chakoteya, we have a transcription of the episode [http://www.chakoteya.net/DoctorWho/40-01.html]. "Puppy dog tails" does not occur in dialog. "Or some such" ain't gonna cut it, either. There's the transcript. Show me, I want to see.
As far as the deadname Jason is concerned, RTD says [https://www.radiotimes.com/tv/sci-fi/doctor-who-russell-t-davies-rose-deadname-newsupdate/#], "... Donna actually named her child after the Doctor, without realising it, subconsciously, which was a nice fact in there," which asserts no "meta-crisis juju," whatever the fuck that is and it sounds rather pliable. Rather, it suggests and all but implies that there is a strong personal bond between Donna and the Doctor, a bond that existed long prior to the emergence of DoctorDonna, and that persists now after its dissolution, as if we didn't know that such a strong personal bond existed.
FFS.
Puppy dogs tails is me sarcastically paraphrasing.
This, however, copypastaed from that transcript is not:
DOCTOR: We're binary.
DONNA: She's not, because the Doctor's...
DOCTOR: ..male...
DONNA: ..and female.
There, in dialogue, are the characters outright saying, at the end of the shed montage, that Rose’s nature is down to the meta-crisis. Which is precisely what I am saying.
They outright say all this in dialogue, regardless of my humorous colloquialisms describing it as metcrisis juju. Would you feel better if I referred to it as ‘residual artron energy stored in the cerebral cortex, post-absorption during a regenerative metacrisis because the Doctor had vanity issues’.
edit: In fact it’s worse because at this point the dialogue is conflating Trans and Non-Binary, which are two different things. Just *clumsy*.
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Thank you, for being specific about what you were referring to. It wasn't actually all that hard to be specific, was it?
The thing is, being non-binary isn't the same as being transgender. From https://www.rainbow-project.org/what-we-do-mean-by-trans-or-non-binary/:
Trans or Transgender
Transgender people are people whose gender identity is different from the gender they were thought to be at birth.
[...]
Non-Binary
Non-binary is an umbrella term for people whose gender identity doesn’t sit comfortably with ‘man’ or ‘woman’.
[...]
Is being nonbinary the same as being transgender? Not exactly.
Being transgender is when you don’t identify with the gender you were assigned at birth.
Not all transgender people are nonbinary. Someone assigned male at birth, for example, can experience their gender as woman while someone assigned female at birth can experience their gender as man. Also, not all Non-binary people will feel that they don’t identify with either binary gender and some will experience gender in both male or female.
Some Non-binary will not identify as Trans either and this can be for a number of reasons. Some don’t feel comfortable identifying as being trans if they’ve faced animosity from binary transgender people.
Transgender people are people whose gender identity is different from the gender they were thought to be at birth.
[...]
Non-Binary
Non-binary is an umbrella term for people whose gender identity doesn’t sit comfortably with ‘man’ or ‘woman’.
[...]
Is being nonbinary the same as being transgender? Not exactly.
Being transgender is when you don’t identify with the gender you were assigned at birth.
Not all transgender people are nonbinary. Someone assigned male at birth, for example, can experience their gender as woman while someone assigned female at birth can experience their gender as man. Also, not all Non-binary people will feel that they don’t identify with either binary gender and some will experience gender in both male or female.
Some Non-binary will not identify as Trans either and this can be for a number of reasons. Some don’t feel comfortable identifying as being trans if they’ve faced animosity from binary transgender people.
So, the episode does provide a fantasy explanation for Rose being non-binary. I would agree with that.
In fact, poring through the transcript, the term transgender is not mentioned once. I'm pretty sure others have commented on the possible misuse of terminology in the episode.
In any case, the differentiation between being transgender and being non-binary in the real world is why I did not see the episode as commenting on why Rose is transgender, assuming in fact that she is.
Yes, and you edited in this as I was typing my post. That's the crux of it, I believe.
It's especially egregious when you consider how many mixed race trans 15-year-olds with acting experience on popular TV shows are out there looking for work right now.
The *whole character* is done dirty by that ending, with *every defining trait* becoming a function of plot, and an extension of the Doctor. Same way Donna’s ‘Noble’ act of giving the money away *also* becomes about the Doctor, and not something inherent in her. Funny scene. Undercuts the characters completely though.
In the same way, Rose is absolutely written, cast, presented in and outside of the episode as Trans. Who suddenly becomes non-binary for the sake of dialogue callbacks and some shonky stuff. Same way that the Doctor is *also* referred to as non-binary, but then also being somehow deficient for being ‘male presenting’ as though there isn’t at least *some* level of contradiction in that.
As to my specifics, I didn’t think it was necessary to quote chapter and verse for something that was so very clear on screen — especially not when making reference to things like puppy’s dogs tails, which is of course from a children’s rhyme at the heart of gender essentialism.
I had to edit in, as had to nip off to help my son with something when writing the original post.
Let's actually be clear. In the face of the probable misuse of terminology, the only hope for clarity relies upon quoting chapter and verse. How else can we hope to untangle misused terminology?
Well, it’s more than misuse of terminology that makes it clumsy. Sadly. And I had already paraphrased with use of the word nonbinary. So I did not think it necessary.
When the cracks first appeared I was all "how the hell is that going to be swept under the rug?" Then when the cracks magically sealed after the engine was shut down I just shrugged and said Ryan George's "that's what we're going with" line.
At this point, there are certain things you just got to accept and even expect with Doctor Who.
Oh, look at you, you found a few exceptions. The point is, there have been plenty of examples of people in their twenties playing teenagers, even some who look far more convincingly in their twenties than as teens.
There are various reasons for this, one of the more common is that actual teenagers fall under child labor laws and thus there are limitations on how many hours a day they can work. Another factor in this particular case is the character is transgender, and the number of transgender actors currently working is unfortunately small. I'd wager there's a good possibility there may not even be teenage transgender actors, so they had no choice but to cast an adult.
Besides, Yasmin Finney is currently 20, meaning she would have been 19 when this was filmed, so only four years older than the character. Four years between actor and character isn't that big an age difference with teenagers in show business.
Billie was 22 playing a 19 year old Rose wasn't she? And the actors playing Clyde and Rani in SJA weren't remotely school children. Young adults playing teenagers younger than themselves is something that happens all the time. And let's not forget 20 year old SMG playing 16 year old high schooler Buffy Summers
Yeah, 41 year old Eccleston playing a 900 year old Doctor is a way bigger disparity.
Obviously actual streaming ratings are by design impossible to definitively state but Doctor Who is currently in the Top 5 most watched programmes of the week on Disney+ worldwide. Which is pretty good when you consider they did virtually no promotion for it.
Can't remember if anyone's mentioned this yet but The Star Beast got an AI of 84, which is the highest Who has had...since World Enough and Time!
And according to Jane Tranter (who should know) the episode added two million viewers on Sunday alone and is expected to come close to ten million in the final consolidated figures, including iPlayer.
I know people have been saying for years that the live numbers don't matter, even when they've still been 75-80% of the final total, but it looks like they're finally correct about it.
How the hell did Sarah Jane take care of business?
Pilot was 2006, series one was 2007.
Tommy Knight was 14 in 2007.
Daniel Antony was 20 n 2007.
Yasmin Paige was 16 in 2007.
It only got worse from there with Matt Smith, a younger actor, playing an even older Time Lord. And now Ncuti! When will it stop?!