Brilliant, Brilliant blog post FAO @stevenmoffatt

[miss_s_b]

I read this this morning, and my immediate thought was YES!

Part of the reason I never got on with Russel T Davies' vision of Doctor Who was that it was so clear he had grown up wanting to be the Doctor's COMPANION. I never wanted to travel WITH the Doctor; I wanted to BE the Doctor. I wanted to be Dennis the Menace and Batman and Mr Spock and Judge Dredd too. And I wanted to be Freddie Mercury and Alice Cooper and Bruce Dickinson. And later I wanted to be Rumpole, or Paddy Ashdown. Like the first commenter on that post, it never occurred to me (and I thank my Dad for that) that because all my heroes were boys, I wasn't supposed to want to be like them, I was supposed to want to be WITH them, to be their soppy female helpmeet.

My Holly wants to be a Green Lantern.



At least that's a narrative possibility - there ARE female green lanterns, even if they are generally peripheral to the male ones.

I hate this world, that it tries to frustrate her dreams of awesomeness and give her dreams of playing second fiddle instead. My little girl is amazing, and she deserves to have amazing heroes to look up to and dream of emulating. Why is there still, after so many years, only a handful? Why do Ripley and Wonder Woman have to shoulder this burden alone? DAMMIT, WORLD, GIVE ME MORE FEMALE HEROES!

Comments

[trialia]

Honestly, I think this is why it's taken me until very recently to be interested in Who at all - because it was River Song that captured my interest and actually got me into the fandom at last. I adore the woman, and a good part of why I watch her episodes is because she is such an equal to the Doctor, so much more than any companion I've ever seen. She doesn't always follow him - sometimes she even drags him kicking and screaming where SHE wants to go, and I love that about her. That and, unf, Alex Kingston always was really hot and age just seems to be intensifying that in her.

[miss_s_b]

River is ace. And Holly adores her. Interestingly, she's gone off Amy since Amy became a baby factory. She LOVED Amy last series. 8 year olds can be so perceptive.

I have been watching Doctor Who from being tiny, and my first love is Six. He's big and brash and loud and not ashamed of his ginormous brane, and he Gets Things Done and he fights injustice (look, I can see the flaws in Trial of a Timelord NOW, but when I was Holly's age? I just loved seeing him rail against suthority). His gender never even entered my head.

[trialia]

Mm.

It's not really about the Doctor's gender in itself, so much as that I like feeling I can identify with characters, and I could never really identify with the Doctor until recently. I think part of it could be that Matt is also a lot closer to my age than any previous Doctor has been. That said, I'd kill to have them write the next one as female-identified - that would be a departure and pretty damn cool. There's some wonderful fanfic out there that writes the Doctor as a woman and married to River. Though I'm sure there would be howls from some quarters. But this queer woman wouldn't mind that at ALL.

[miss_s_b]

Yes.

Or, you know, a lesbian Silurian Victorian adventuress spin-off could be cool too.

[trialia]

*grins* That, too. I definitely liked Vastra and Jenny.

[andrewhickey.info]

There were plenty of companions in the classic series who were every bit the Doctor's equal - Liz Shaw, Romana and Zoe spring to mind. While the old series had companions stereotyped as screamers, it's really only in the new series that they've seemed completely dependent on the character calling himself the Doctor.

[trialia]

The only one I've ever seen from the old series that I liked was Sarah Jane, but I really haven't seen that much of the older episodes. I detested Rose, Martha seems a bit too much of a follower, Donna is patchy and Amy ... well. But I've heard a lot about Romana and she sounds like someone I'd like.

River, however, is a really good summary, in herself, of my tendencies in liking female characters - strong, mature, confident without being arrogant, can be kind, is not a follower by nature... and she's fantastic.

[andrewhickey.info]

Watch City Of Death. I think you'll fall in love with Romana.

[trialia]

Thanks for that. I'll look it up :)

[londonkds]

Romana varies with the story in how much she gets to do. All the old-school female companions who were conceived as being some use in their own right do still have moments or entire stories where writers do them as "generic thing to get into trouble and be rescued". For Romana, I'd recommend in particular "City of Death" and "Warrior's Gate". Do NOT under any circumstances watch "Power of Kroll", although that one is generally crap.

[telegramsam]

Some of the earliest companions were pretty useless (Hartnell & Troughton era, though even then that's only some companions some of the time), and I think it was also a few of the JNT-era companions who were responsible for that stereotype like Peri & Mel.

Though even Peri could be rather defiant toward the doctor and was hardly a pushover, and Mel... well she definitely screamed, and she's not my favorite companion but her successor, Ace, is probably one of my all-time favorite companions. She beat up daleks with a baseball bat. :P

Really with the old series, the companions tended not to be all that consistent between different writers. Some gave them stronger roles than others, so it's all over the map...

[andrewhickey.info]

Yeah, on paper Mel's actually an interesting character - she's a computer programmer, after all, and could have been another Zoe. But... definitely wasn't.
Peri had all sorts of problems, but I think Nicola Bryant managed to give her some sort of consistent personality that wasn't just dependent on the Doctor.
But yeah, they varied enormously with the writers.

[telegramsam]

I think it's worth mentioning that Peri & Mel have both fared much better in recent years as Big Finish companions.

Peri's one of my favorite BF companions even though I didn't really take to her much on screen (not having to look at those ridiculous outfits they used to put her in anymore helps enormously, as well). Nicola Bryant is actually a pretty damn good actress I think. But a poorly written part, well you can only do so much with it.

[andrewhickey.info]

Nicola Bryant was also saddled with that ridiculous accent, which she moderated on audio. But I agree, she's done some *VERY* good work for Big Finish - I think Peri And The Piscon Paradox is one of the best things anyone's done with Doctor Who in any medium.
But she was surprisingly good in Trial, as well. Despite some horrible scripts, the body language she and Colin Baker use manages to convince me at least of the relationship between the two.