netgirl_y2k (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
netgirl_y2k) wrote2013-12-26 07:36 pm
netgirl_y2k) wrote2013-12-26 07:36 pm
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Today's Post is About Doctor Who x2
The Doctor Who special was... well, it was trying to be a Christmas episode, a rousing send off for Matt Smith, and to round up all the dangling plot threads from the last four years, and as a result it didn't do any of these things particularly well. Which is exactly the same problems as Tennant's final episode had. So.
That said, I wept at the regeneration, and I say that as somebody who never more than intermittently warmed to Eleven. I am desperately looking forward to Capaldi.
Today's meme post comes in the form of a response to a question: The female doctor. who would you cast? how would you write her? etc etc. And you shall be pleased to know that I will not be answering this one in the form of poetry, and probably not at great length, as I am dreadfully hungover (damn 7% Belgian beer) and really ought to be in my pyjamas, watching The Deathly Hallows under a duvet.
I have at different times said that Lena Headey, Miranda Richardson, Miranda Hart, Indira Varma, Sheridan Smith, or Sophie Okonedo would be interesting choices to play the Doctor. But I think my first choice would be Olivia Colman. Her name came up a lot when people were discussing the possibility of a female Doctor last time, and with good reason, I think.
As an aside, if the possibility of a female Doctor wasn't at least discussed at the BBC, then playing the pronoun game prior to the announcement of Peter Capaldi was a dick move.
Anyway, Olivia Colman, great actress, can do comedy and drama and darkness, which you need to play the Doctor. She's interesting looking, which I say with the very best will in the world, in a very Doctor-ish way. She's old enough to do it; because I don't think you could have an actress in her twenties playing the Doctor, not only because she'd be judged that much more harshly than anyone else, but partly to keep the Doctor distinct from the recent run of companions, and partly for the same reason I don't want another bloke in his twenties, there's a sense of age and gravitas that the Doctor needs, I think.
The other thing about Colman is that she's extremely well liked by the public, at least in the UK. You know how when people are talking about their fantasy female Doctors, and the conversation quickly turns to the likes of Maggie Smith or Judi Dench? And I don't think that's pure wish fulfilment, I think people know that there would be a lot of shit talked about any actress in the role, but that it would be less, and more quickly shouted down if it was someone considered a national treasure, you know?
That said, I don't think the objections to a female Doctor would be as strong as a lot of people think they would. At least, not among casual viewers. Fandom... well, fandom will always be fandom, god love it. Almost every time I get to talking about the possibility of a female Doctor somebody brings up that story about Steven Moffat asking a room full of fans at a convention if they'd stop watching if the Doctor was a woman and they all said yes. And I don't really see the relevance. It was a self selecting audience, a bunch of people invested enough in the show to go to a convention, asked a leading question by a man they presumably admire. It's the inmates running the asylum. I mean, imagine prior to Elementary asking a roomful of people at a Holmes convention how they felt about Lucy Liu playing Watson, and look at how that turned out.
I would write the female Doctor as the Doctor. I've been thinking about the reasons I never really got Eleven, and yeah, a lot of it is related to the writing, but also Eleven is, to me, the first Doctor whose maleness was ever more than notional, if that makes sense? Where he was an alien, and unimaginably old, but also unquestionably male. I feel like with any of the others you could have cast a woman, changed the pronouns and carried on much the same, you'd still have the Doctor. Eleven, with his I like bad girls and I don't understand women, was not only the first Doctor that felt specifically male to me, but he felt male in a way that drove me away from the character.
I'd also never mention the fact that the Doctor was a woman. I mean, I'd mention it once in the regeneration episode, in a I'm a woman! New teeth! New kidneys, I don't like them! type way. But never after that. I'd think I'd give her a boy companion, or at least a boy and a girl. My first choice for a boy companion to a female Doctor would be Clyde off SJA.
That said, I wept at the regeneration, and I say that as somebody who never more than intermittently warmed to Eleven. I am desperately looking forward to Capaldi.
Today's meme post comes in the form of a response to a question: The female doctor. who would you cast? how would you write her? etc etc. And you shall be pleased to know that I will not be answering this one in the form of poetry, and probably not at great length, as I am dreadfully hungover (damn 7% Belgian beer) and really ought to be in my pyjamas, watching The Deathly Hallows under a duvet.
I have at different times said that Lena Headey, Miranda Richardson, Miranda Hart, Indira Varma, Sheridan Smith, or Sophie Okonedo would be interesting choices to play the Doctor. But I think my first choice would be Olivia Colman. Her name came up a lot when people were discussing the possibility of a female Doctor last time, and with good reason, I think.
As an aside, if the possibility of a female Doctor wasn't at least discussed at the BBC, then playing the pronoun game prior to the announcement of Peter Capaldi was a dick move.
Anyway, Olivia Colman, great actress, can do comedy and drama and darkness, which you need to play the Doctor. She's interesting looking, which I say with the very best will in the world, in a very Doctor-ish way. She's old enough to do it; because I don't think you could have an actress in her twenties playing the Doctor, not only because she'd be judged that much more harshly than anyone else, but partly to keep the Doctor distinct from the recent run of companions, and partly for the same reason I don't want another bloke in his twenties, there's a sense of age and gravitas that the Doctor needs, I think.
The other thing about Colman is that she's extremely well liked by the public, at least in the UK. You know how when people are talking about their fantasy female Doctors, and the conversation quickly turns to the likes of Maggie Smith or Judi Dench? And I don't think that's pure wish fulfilment, I think people know that there would be a lot of shit talked about any actress in the role, but that it would be less, and more quickly shouted down if it was someone considered a national treasure, you know?
That said, I don't think the objections to a female Doctor would be as strong as a lot of people think they would. At least, not among casual viewers. Fandom... well, fandom will always be fandom, god love it. Almost every time I get to talking about the possibility of a female Doctor somebody brings up that story about Steven Moffat asking a room full of fans at a convention if they'd stop watching if the Doctor was a woman and they all said yes. And I don't really see the relevance. It was a self selecting audience, a bunch of people invested enough in the show to go to a convention, asked a leading question by a man they presumably admire. It's the inmates running the asylum. I mean, imagine prior to Elementary asking a roomful of people at a Holmes convention how they felt about Lucy Liu playing Watson, and look at how that turned out.
I would write the female Doctor as the Doctor. I've been thinking about the reasons I never really got Eleven, and yeah, a lot of it is related to the writing, but also Eleven is, to me, the first Doctor whose maleness was ever more than notional, if that makes sense? Where he was an alien, and unimaginably old, but also unquestionably male. I feel like with any of the others you could have cast a woman, changed the pronouns and carried on much the same, you'd still have the Doctor. Eleven, with his I like bad girls and I don't understand women, was not only the first Doctor that felt specifically male to me, but he felt male in a way that drove me away from the character.
I'd also never mention the fact that the Doctor was a woman. I mean, I'd mention it once in the regeneration episode, in a I'm a woman! New teeth! New kidneys, I don't like them! type way. But never after that. I'd think I'd give her a boy companion, or at least a boy and a girl. My first choice for a boy companion to a female Doctor would be Clyde off SJA.
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I did write an SJA story once where Maria's granddaughter went to travel with a female doctor.
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Olivia Colman has a great face! I totally agree about the National Treasure argument - the first actress in this role is going to have to have a lifetime of STFU behind her to deal with it, which is why Helen Mirren is high on my list. Indira Varma, too, because although she's younger, she has Who fandom experience.
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It's definitely not a case where you could cast an unknown, I don't think, it would have to be someone established, and ideally with some accumulated goodwill.
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Personally, my choices have always been Anna Chancellor and Jennifer Saunders.
It's funny about what you said re: Eleven's maleness. I'd never really thought of it that way before. But yes, it's all Steven Moffat's femdom fantasies bleeding through. And hey, sometimes I am right there with him (like last night...intergalactic sexy space nuns hit me square in the id)...and sometimes I find it incredibly icky. I wouldn't want them to make a big deal out of the Doctor being female either--although I can totally imagine a newly regnerated female doctor having some interesting wardrobe choices and not being comfortable in female dress after centures of presenting male.
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I'd heard Jennifer Saunders suggested before, not Anna Chancellor, although I suspect she'd be brilliant!
I was talking to someone the other week, about how what's changed about DW during Moffat's tenure is that we've gone from the companions being the characters the audience are meant to identify with, to the companions as the mystery, and the Doctor as the point of audience identification, specifically as a character Steven Moffat identifies with. And that makes me uncomfortable in lots of ways that I find difficult to articulate.
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i was thinking something similar myself after watching Eleven's sendoff. i much preferred Eleven's regeneration to Ten's- i thought it was a better farewell to his doctor. But Ten's regeneration ep was a better sendoff to his companions. who were more interesting companions IMO. i didn't really like the hallucination of older Amy at the end- seeing little Amelia felt right, but hallucinating Amy right in front of Clara just felt kind of forced and crappy to Clara. i'm not opposed to changing the structure now and then, but i'd rather have the focus be on the companion's character development than on her "mystery."
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