Why Are You Sad That There’s No Female Doctor?

Much of the internet has feels (this blog included) about the lack of female Doctor. I personally do not have such an opinion simply because Moffat has proven time and again that he is incapable of writing a decent female character, specifically his female companions.

Too frequently Moffat treats his female companions like an audience for the Doctor: that they should just smile, nod, and take everything that is given without question. It’s getting to a point where the Doctor is hero-worshipped by his companions as opposed to the companions balancing him out. I’ve discussed before how the companion’s job is to, in a sense, keep the Doctor from losing control of himself. Eleven, in my opinion, has had too much freedom and not enough checks. And it is the writers who didn’t give us strong female companions.

I also think that Clara and Amy are too similar when you get right down to it, and that I can most definitely attribute to poor writing. Our first female companion is Amy, a plucky Scottish girl with a supposedly impossible problem, a crack in her bedroom wall that keeps following her around. And then we have Clara, a plucky English girl with a supposedly impossible problem: multiple lives/existences. For me, they’re just way too similar in initial concept. I honestly don’t think that Amy had much of a personality while she was a companion and so far Clara hasn’t exhibited much of a personality either. Amy’s personality came out in her relationship with Rory. And when you need a male character to give your female character personality, that’s wrong. And I blame Moffat.

Now I know a lot of you are saying “What about River? She’s got a personality!” right about now, but Moffat hasn’t exactly done her justice either. First, he made her entire world revolve around the Doctor, just like the other companions. Then, Moffat couldn’t even figure out a way to work in her sexuality to the series for goodness’ sake. If that doesn’t demonstrate an inability to write, well then I don’t know what does. Not to mention if you’ve ever seen something else with Alex Kingston (the actress who plays River Song), such as her guest starring roles in NCIS and Upstairs Downstairs, you know she plays practically the same character every single time. So any personality River has I attribute more to Kingston as an actress than to Moffat’s writing ability.

So we have three female protagonists and three failures for decent character writing. One could say that Moffat is bad with characters in general, but Moffat can write a good male character. Take Rory for example. So many people liked Rory more than Amy simply because he had a stronger character that was much better written. So it’s only the ladies who are suffering from bad writing, not the gents.

Now imagine if Amy was the Doctor. Or Clara. How boring would Doctor Who be? It would be a snoozefest! I’d go so far to say a female Doctor under Moffat’s leadership would kill the show. For more information, check out this link to Saika’s Tumblr and a plethora of discussions on the topic.

What do you think? Am I spot on or losing my mind? Let me know in the comments!

Eleventh Doctor: The Rewatch

So I babysit a seventh grade girl, whose best seventh grade friend happens to be a Whovian. This friend has been trying to sit my (umm…) child down and get her to watch Doctor Who for some time. The friend was failing. So I took it upon myself to right this wrong and get this girl to watch some Doctor Who. And I’ve gotten her hooked. We started with the first episode of Eleven, “The Eleventh Hour”, because it was available for free on demand. We just watched “Vincent and the Doctor” and are at a standstill because the TV doesn’t have the next two episodes (the one with Craig and the first part of the season finale). Here are my feels upon rewatching. 

Fanfiction Fridays: The One Where the Master is an Octopus(!)

Okay, first of all, let me say I’ve been meaning to use this story for a Fanfic Fridays for months, but I can never find it in my seemingly-thousands of fanfic bookmarks, and ‘Let the Fire Somehow Get In’ is a bit of a serious-sounding title for a fanfic where the Master is an octopus. This time I just went to AO3 and searched octopus until I found it.

So here’s what I love about this fic: it is crackfic done extraordinarily right. It is funny because it is presented in such a serious and straight-faced way. It never breaks down and laughs at how silly it is. It just presents the reader with a ridiculous situation and lets the reader come to the realization that it is ridiculous.

The premise is this: The Doctor receives a message from a mysterious source, and dumps Amy and Rory off on a romantic ‘vacation’ so he can go investigate. When he picks them back up, there is another person on board the TARDIS: the Master. But he is, for some reason that stymies even Eleven himself, an octopus.

This idea has the potential to be mind-blowingly stupid, but instead it’s just perfect and hilarious, because the writing is so good. It’s told from Rory’s POV, and Rory’s inner monologue is just so in character, and the Doctor’s relationship with the Master meshes so well that you stop for a second and think: “If the Doctor ever found the Master and the latter was an octopus, this is actually exactly what would happen. He would melancholically hand-feed him crabmeat and wonder about the ethics of trying to turn him back.”

At this point my review is probably longer than the fic itself, so I’ll stop talking and give you a link instead. Without further ado, Let the Fire Somehow Get In by Snow. Enjoy!