The Cray Twins

Doctor Who - 'Fear Her' or 'Heaven Sent', Jodie Whittaker is Doctor 13

With the announcement of a female Doctor Who, I admit that I could not help but look for the comedy angles. I started imagining Peter Capaldi starting to regenerate, growing a pair of boobs, and then getting second thoughts. Along with all the predictable suggestions of a pink Tardis, and the idea that she might have trouble parking it, my social media contained a lot of negative comments, but a lot of these were more noticeable because people were responding to them, and thus giving them more exposure than maybe they deserved. There was possibly more furore from those unwilling to put up with the naysayers. There were a lot of people ready to try and shut down those insistent that the Doctor must be a man, and that we would end up with bras flying out of the Tardis.

It would be very easy to get too bogged down in discussing if a female Doctor will be able to cope with 'The Visitation' from 'The Stones of Blood', or how she might fare against The No-Penis Patrol. But I suspect a lot of the negativity that was highlighted in the last couple of days will die down as time goes on. I am sure that jokes at the expense of a female Doctor will persist. There has always been a wealth of humour to be derived from Doctor Who, and that will not change. There will inevitably be criticism from some if jokes are seen to be sexist, but the programme is going to have people take the mirth anyway and will have to put up with it. It has coped in the past.

Doctor Who? by Tim Quinn and Dicky Howett

One thing that is not going to change is the casting decision. People can moan all they want, but the Doctor is going to become a woman at Christmas, and then presumably some time next year we will find out what stories the production team want to tell us. Some enthusiasts have pointed out that the moment has been prepared for, and they are right. The introduction of Missy, a female regeneration for The Master, was the clearest indication that the way was being prepared for a female Doctor. In 'The World Enough and Time', the Doctor's chat with Bill has him tell her that he was 'fairly sure' that he was a man back when he had a man crush on The Master. Avoiding all the possible discussion about how The Doctor could not have been a woman at that time, as all the iterations of his self in his regeneration cycle are male and accounted for, this line simply allows The Doctor to acknowledge very clearly that he could be a woman. With this build up, it would have been a travesty if the new Doctor had not been announced as a woman. (Of course, the Time Lords are able to dish out new regeneration cycles, so we have no guarantees that William Hartnell's Doctor was not simply the first of a new set of regenerations, so there could easily have been a female Doctor before - someone would simply have to write the story).
I would have been astounded if there had not been those that were horrified at the announcement of a female doctor. This is fine, and to be expected, even though there have been umpteen strong female fantasy lead characters in the past.

Every time the actor changes, there are bound to be some people that are unhappy. I confess to being horribly disappointed that Tom Baker was going to be replaced with the young idiot from 'All Creatures Great and Small'. I am old enough to have watched Jon Pertwee in the role, so Tom was not my only Doctor, but he was in it for so long, and had had so many great stories, that the idea of him leaving was a wrench, and I was not happy at the suggested change. What the hell was The Watcher about? Much of the tenures of the Doctors that came later left me terribly disappointed, but that was after their runs had started and I had seen what was on offer. With Peter Davison I was dismissive before an episode had been aired. The BBC messed about with the schedules too, so instead of cosy Saturday teatime viewing, I was missing episodes due to being ferried to midweek piano lessons. This impeded any chance of warming to the new interloper. So I get how some people will not think this gender revelation will be bad for the show. But a lot of them will still be curious enough to watch. It is up to those making the programmes to produce a show that will intrigue and deliver.
The issue of The Doctor being a woman as part of the stories themselves is something that needs to be balanced. Each new episode cannot have someone saying 'Oh my god, you've got tits'. Yet the show will clearly need to address aspects of the change in some way. As has already been said elsewhere, this is not about the character becoming a woman, it is about what she is going to do. Very soon we need to get away from the labouring the point that The Doctor is a woman, and start wondering how the stories will unfold. And to be pedantic, The Doctor is not actually a woman, she is an alien being played by a woman. For all we know, this regeneration will have two penises.

The issue of 'simply having to write the story' is key for me in terms of my enjoyment of the programme. I felt the original series declined from Tom Baker's final season onward. Given that this show is about someone that can go anywhere and do anything, the scope for stories is near infinite. Not withstanding limitations of budget, the only things holding Doctor Who back were imagination and talent. There really was no excuse for the weakness that ended up permeating at all levels. Good ideas were swallowed up by the lurching man-in-a-suit monster of mediocrity. Michael Grade should be ashamed he did not have the vision to seek out those who could elevate the show to deserved heights rather than limp on as a dead show walking. Still, that's history, and a fixed point in time. Without it, we would not be at this exciting juncture today.
For anyone still reeling at the idea that the last (although not quite actually really) of the Time Lords is going to be played by a lauded member of the acting profession that has garnered praise and accolades from all quarters since the announcement, and just happens to be female, it is worth remembering that other properties have switched to a female lead or major character without it doing them any real harm.

And it's not as if we haven't had a female Doctor before.

Admittedly one of these was a joke, and lots of people will not have heard of the other, but the ground has been broken. And with record downloads for the reveal it seems that there is a lot of curiosity and excitement about the potential for the new Doctor. Please tell us a good story.

And let us all pray that we don't have to go through all this type of stuff again when Doctor 14 turns out to be Muslim, or dare I say it, American.

The Partridge Family

Spider-Man: A Bitter-sweet Homecoming

Re-hashing the old Spider-Man/Black Widow team-up thing for the MCU.

Pronoun

When you use a pronoun to identify a specific person or thing observed or heard by the speaker, or refer to a specific thing previously mentioned, known or understood, or
to single out someone or something and ascribing a distinctive feature to them, or (British informal) express strong agreement with a description just given, or introduce a defining clause, especially one essential to identification.
Yeah, that.