Dancing with the Doctor

Dimensions of Gender in the Doctor Who Universe

Lorna Jowett

• Publisher: I.B. Tauris
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781786721464
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Popular Culture
• Index: Social Sciences

Lorna Jowett delves into the distinctive stories and characters, including the Doctors themselves, their female and male companions, Captain Jack Harkness, Missy, Sarah Jane and her young comrades. She considers the showrunners, directors, producers and writers and the problems this flagship science fiction series has had in offering alternative gender models. Constructions of masculinity, the author function, and how gender intersects with the other facets of identity, race, ethnicity and age, are just some of the areas explored in this accessible and wide-ranging re-view of these hotly debated elements of the successful BBC franchise.

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Main Man?

While the irascible Twelfth Doctor may have attracted criticism during his initial season (8), season 9 suggested a slightly different approach. As Vanity Fair reported, ‘When Capaldi’s Doctor entered this season riding a tank and wailing on a guitar, audiences knew the Time Lord had undergone a major overhaul’ (Robinson 2015). Yet both the tank and the guitar signify traditional constructions of masculinity, suggesting that the ‘major overhaul’ is relative only to the previous season, and not to the Doctor’s long history.

This chapter examines the leading characters in Doctor Who, Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures, focusing on how the Doctor and Jack Harkness offer variant masculinities and comparing these male protagonists with Sarah Jane Smith’s version of mature femininity. The centrality of the Doctor, and the nature of Sarah Jane and Jack as companions and recurring characters who eventually take the central role in their own spin-off series, is also considered. As the Introduction has outlined, Doctor Who is in a rather unique position in terms of its main character and ‘his’ representation. The science fiction conceit of Time Lord regeneration means that the Doctor’s personality can be rebooted every time a new actor takes on the part. However, the Doctor will always be at the centre of the series and, at the time of writing, has always been presented as ‘male’. The first part of this chapter aims to examine what kind of protagonist the Doctor is and how this is gendered. Inevitably, the series is ‘stuck with’ the Doctor and, while its science fiction premise suggests this is not strictly necessary, its own structures and mythos dictate that its protagonist will continue to be male.

Of course, it is neither the only TV series nor the only contemporary BBC family drama to maintain a male hero. A mainstream TV product does not necessarily have to conform to conventional gender structures even if it is stuck with a premise that seems to uphold them. BBC One’s other recent prime-time family dramas like Merlin (2008–13) and Robin Hood (2006–9) had to negotiate this too, often attempting to impose twenty-first-century models of gender on stories that are, however loosely, set in earlier historical periods and focus on male heroes. Anyone familiar with the complete run of Robin Hood knows that the characterisation of Marian as an independent woman was effective. Over two seasons we saw her challenge Robin’s authority and heroism, and act the lady by day and a masked superhero fighting for social justice by night. In fact, this representation was so effective it became problematic for the show’s narrative and its positioning of Robin as hero: her story concludes by repositioning her as a love object fought over by two men (Robin and Guy) and eventually as Robin’s dead true love. In the case of Merlin, fantasy allows some latitude in reinterpreting the traditional story and its conventional gendering of heroic king, uniquely powerful wizard and evil witch queen, and a shift in focus from Arthur to Merlin also potentially displaces conventional models of heroism. Merlin included the sword-wielding Morgause, but of course she was sister to Morgana and thus more of a female action villain than a hero. (Notably, both Morgause and Morgana have effectively been ousted by Uther and his establishment of a male dynasty). This is a fairly typical strategy: women who have power are positioned as evil. In addition, the colour-blind casting of Guinevere was not entirely well received and, given her role in most versions of the Arthurian story, the series worked hard to give Gwen a real role in the drama, mostly as the working-class (servant girl) moral conscience to Arthur and even sometimes Merlin. She did have one or two fight scenes, but she was never up to Morgause’s standard. And once Arthur was king and they were finally married, Gwen had very little to do. Except turn evil at Morgana’s behest, of course. The fate of Britain rests on the shoulders of a young man, after all, not a young woman.

Doctor Who has some of the same problems to contend with, and similar strategies are apparent in the rebooted series, as outlined below. The second and third sections of this chapter explore the main characters of the spin-off series Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures, as Jack Harkness and Sarah Jane Smith move from being companions of the Doctor to protagonists in their own right. Jack may appear to be a regular hero, cast in a typical – perhaps even stereotypical – mould, yet his representation complicates the notion of masculine heroism and offers a more direct critique of traditional masculinity than the Doctor, something partly possible because the series was intended (at least initially) for a niche rather than mainstream channel, and it addresses adult viewers rather than a family audience. Jack also shares Torchwood top billing with Gwen Cooper, indicating that this series is not reliant on standard male heroes. The Sarah Jane Adventures offers us the first female lead for a series in the ‘official’ Doctor Who universe, and Sarah Jane’s age and gender provide new ways to look at heroism and leadership, especially given the series’ positioning as a children’s drama.

The Doctor: a different hero?

‘If only he wasn’t so different.’

‘Evolution of the Daleks’ 3.5

The Doctor is not a traditional hero, but seems to be a very British one. He tends to prevail through ingenuity, intelligence and persuasion rather than strength and superior firepower. While he is confident, even arrogant, about his own abilities, he often seems rather unassuming until he has scoped out the situation and starts to take charge. The Eleventh Doctor tells Clara that he generally wins through by being able to ‘talk very fast, hope something good happens, take all the credit. Generally how it works’ (‘The Time of the Doctor’ 8.X). While this statement is slightly self-critical, it encapsulates the Doctor’s low-key ‘heroics’.

He is a time traveller, for example, yet his vehicle is far from impressive. It is made of wood and its camouflage mechanism or ‘chameleon circuit’ is broken. When seeing another spacecraft Donna Noble, companion to the Tenth Doctor, readily points out, ‘That’s what I call a spaceship… You’ve got a box, he’s got a Ferrari’ (‘Planet of the Ood’ 4.3). Although the TARDIS that transports the Doctor always appears as a blue wooden police box, which makes blending in difficult in some of the places visited, the ability to adapt to surroundings is part of the Doctor’s character. He is not a ‘big damn hero’, he is a ‘madman with a box’ (‘The Eleventh Hour’ 5.1). When he carries the Olympic torch at the end of ‘Fear Her’ (2.11) this signals both his exceptional qualities – torchbearers are often successful athletes – and his ability to appear relatively ordinary: in this instance, the Doctor steps in, literally as a man on the street, to continue the relay when a torchbearer collapses. Likewise, his challenges to the domineering Mr Connolly in ‘The Idiot’s Lantern’ (2.7), which eventually encourage Mrs Connolly to throw her husband out, show that he seeks to effect change on a personal scale, as well as in large-scale political conflicts.

As a product of 1960s science fiction, the Doctor is a reasoning protagonist, an extension of the scientific ‘boffin’, and his rational and intellectual approach distinguishes him from the typical action hero. His apparent pacifism also works to present him as a different kind of hero. While Star Trek’s Captain Kirk is aligned with the American action hero and carries a phaser, the Doctor’s signature hardware is a screwdriver, not a weapon. When Vincent van Gogh expresses surprise that the Eleventh Doctor will face a monster alone, objecting, ‘You’re not armed,’ the Doctor responds that he has ‘overconfidence’ and a ‘small screwdriver’ (‘Vincent and the Doctor’ 5.10). This, and many similar incidents, reinforce the notion that while the Doctor may be ‘unarmed’ he is definitely not ‘powerless’, as he points out to his arch-enemies, the Daleks, in ‘Doomsday’ (2.13).

The rebooted series upholds and routinely draws attention to the fact that the Doctor is particularly averse to guns: ‘People with guns are usually the enemy in my book,’ he heatedly tells companion Martha Jones in ‘The Sontaran Stratagem’ (4.4). Yet this attitude is sometimes challenged; here Martha retorts, ‘If anyone got me used to fighting, it’s you.’ Later in the same episode, she points out, ‘It’s alright for you, you can come and go,’ referring to the Doctor’s ability to move on while others are left to deal with the aftermath of whatever violent action ensues during his latest intervention. The way those around the Doctor often ‘get burned’ by being ‘too close’ is emphasised in this and other episodes, and Martha in particular is reminded that although she is the one who actually travels with the Doctor and therefore chooses to put herself in danger, she is not alone in suffering the consequences. Her family also feel the effects of being associated with ‘the oncoming storm’ (‘The Parting of the Ways’ 1.13) and have been imprisoned by the Master (‘Last of the Time Lords’ 3.13).

At times, his attitudes to those who carry guns and fight for what they believe in make the Doctor arrogant. ‘I’m trying to stop the fighting,’ he says with exasperation in ‘The Doctor’s Daughter’ (4.6), and is rather nonplussed when his ‘daughter’ – the genetic anomaly derived from his DNA whom Donna names Jenny – counters, ‘Isn’t every soldier?’ The Doctor’s attempts to avoid violence often mean his companions engage in it on his behalf, as pointed out strikingly in season finales such as ‘Journey’s End’ (4.13) and the mid-season finale ‘A Good Man Goes to War’ (6.7). This becomes a season-long cause of tension between the Twelfth Doctor and ex-soldier Danny Pink in season 8.

While not a typical hero, the Doctor’s exploits saving worlds and people across time and space inevitably make him the object of hero worship and myth-making. This is made apparent early in the rebooted series during ‘Love and Monsters’ (2.10), which follows Elton Pope’s attempts to track and record the Doctor’s appearances. This is one of the first ‘Doctor-lite’ episodes, featuring the Doctor and Rose Tyler only briefly, as a means of emphasising the elusiveness of the Doctor’s appearances on Earth. In the very first episode of the rebooted series Rose tries to find the Doctor after meeting him briefly, and is shown visiting Clive, who has a website tracking and recording sightings of the Doctor (‘Rose’ 1.1). This establishes his ability to appear and disappear throughout history right from the start. In ‘The Snowmen’ (8.X), Madam Vastra tells Clara that the demoralised Eleventh Doctor ‘is not your salvation. He is not your protector,’ but this is the role he repeatedly takes in successive episodes and seasons, especially in relation to his female companions. Those who come into contact with the Doctor are often dazzled by his ‘overconfidence’ and his take-charge attitude, as well as his ‘difference’ to the standard male hero. ‘You make them want to impress you,’ says Rory to the Eleventh Doctor in ‘Vampires of Venice’ (5.6), his tone implying that this is not always a good thing.

Certainly, despite refusing to carry weapons, the Doctor has a dark side, derived from his alien perspective. The series tends to present him as a male human, and his physical appearance reinforces this: ‘You look human,’ Lady Christina de Souza observes in ‘Planet of the Dead’ (4.15), and the Doctor simply replies, ‘You look Time Lord’. At times, though, episodes signal a fundamental distinction from human experience. In ‘The Lodger’ (5.11) the Eleventh Doctor reveals his plan to go undercover and investigate strange happenings in a house in Colchester, telling Amy, ‘All I need to do is pass for an ordinary human’, eliciting outright amusement on her part. The Doctor’s ability to travel through time and space, leading a life very different to most of those he meets, often makes him feel ‘naturally’ superior. ‘I’m a Time Lord,’ he reveals to Martha, at their first meeting. ‘So, not pompous at all,’ she observes (‘Smith and Jones’ 3.1). When he does have to experience ‘ordinary’ life, as in ‘The Poison Sky’ (4.5) or ‘The Power of Three’ (7.4), he complains about it bitterly: ‘I’m stuck on Earth like an ordinary person,’ he whines to Martha in ‘The Poison Sky’. Donna often challenges the Doctor about this arrogance, and her willingness to do so helps define their relationship, which is characterised by a bickering sibling dynamic. She complains that he has an ulterior motive in choosing companions: ‘It’s not so you can show them the wonders of the universe, it’s so you can take cheap shots’ (‘Planet of the Ood’ 4.3). Likewise, in ‘The Time of Angels’ (5.4) Amy realises that the Eleventh Doctor is visiting museums and looking at ancient artefacts as a means of demonstrating that his life is vastly different to that of most people. ‘Oh, I see – it’s how you keep score.’ Without the baseline of others’ lesser knowledge and experience, the Doctor’s abilities would seem much less impressive. He does, as is acknowledged more than once, like to show off. Rarely is this arrogance dented, though every now and again it does happen. In ‘The Doctor’s Daughter’ Jenny confidently instructs him to ‘Watch and learn, father,’ before showing off her own impressive skill set (4.6) and leaving him momentarily speechless.

His alien nature is most often identified in relation to emotion. In the very first episode, Rose marvels, ‘You are alien,’ (‘Rose’ 1.1), when the Ninth Doctor apparently ‘forgets’ that Rose’s friend Mickey is dead. (In fact, Mickey is not dead – though he has been turned into an Auton and Rose does not realise the process is reversible. Nevertheless, the impact of the Doctor’s attitude to Mickey’s apparent death is still felt by Rose, and by the viewer.) Likewise, in Donna’s debut episode, ‘The Runaway Bride’ special (3.X), she is taken aback by the Doctor’s reaction to human suffering: ‘They were dying and you stood there like a stranger,’ she berates him. During the season 6 opener, ‘River Song’, Amy and Rory, confused by different time streams, witness the Eleventh Doctor being shot only to meet him shortly afterwards, behaving with carefree abandon, in a diner. Outraged, River slaps his face and tells him: ‘This is cold. Even by your standards this is cold’ (‘The Impossible Astronaut’ 6.1). Here the Doctor is not being callous and insensitive; he is a different version to the Doctor they just saw killed, yet ‘even by your standards’ reminds viewers that the Doctor does frequently disregard human emotions and views of relationships. In fact, Emma Grayling, the empath who meets the Doctor and Clara when they investigate a supposedly haunted house, tells Clara, ‘Don’t trust him. He has a sliver of ice in his heart’ (‘Hide’ 7.9). This ice rarely melts.

However, in the two-part story ‘Human Nature’ and ‘Family of Blood’ (3.7 and 3.8), the Doctor hides out on Earth by concealing his Time Lord essence and memories in a watch and effectively becoming human. As John Smith, teacher at a boys’ school in 1913, he loses some of the Doctor’s qualities – ‘God, you’re rubbish as a human,’ complains Martha in ‘Family of Blood’ as she has to rescue him – but gains others. He gradually develops a romantic relationship with the school’s matron, Joan Redfern. ‘He gave me a lot of things to look out for,’ Martha reflects. ‘That wasn’t one of them. What sort of man is that?’ Once he regains full awareness of his Time Lord nature, this emerging love withers almost immediately: Joan fell in love with John Smith, not the Doctor, and sees a real difference between them. When the Doctor asks her to travel with him, to ‘start again’, she asks whether anyone would have died had he not appeared ‘on a whim’ and then dismisses him when he cannot answer: ‘You can go.’

Thus, part of the Doctor’s role as male hero, however ‘different’, is a reluctance to form lasting emotional attachments. He is a lone traveller, moving through time at a different speed to most, without even the reassurance of family ties. ‘I don’t do family,’ the Ninth Doctor tells Rose in ‘Aliens of London’ (1.4). When the Tenth Doctor becomes a genetic parent in ‘The Doctor’s Daughter’, it is no surprise that he is highly dismissive of any claim that Jenny is his daughter and that therefore he should behave with parental responsibility and even love. It is Donna, not the Doctor, who names Jenny, yet when she tells him he has ‘dad shock’ she is shocked that he confesses to having been a father before, presumably because she cannot see any sign of it. Generally speaking, the Doctor is not averse to interacting with children, but this tends to happen more along the lines of the Eleventh Doctor wallowing in the role of eccentric ‘uncle’ during ‘The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe’ (7.X). (The latter, being a Christmas special, is adm...

Table of contents

• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 • Main Man?
• 2 • Companions and Allies
• 3 • Multidimensional Identity
• 4 • Paratexts
• 5 • Production
• 6 • Reception
• Afterword
• Notes
• Work Cited
• TV and Filmography