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Monday, March 18, 2024
March 18, 2024

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McCoy: Man should always star in ‘Doctor Who’

All 11 actors to play the Doctor have been white and male

The Columbian
Published:

The ninth season of “Doctor Who” will soon be upon us, and that means the show’s alumni have already started popping up and offering their thoughts on all things TARDIS-related.

Seventh Doctor Sylvester McCoy thinks the Doctor should absolutely remain a man and a man only.

“I’m a feminist and recognize there are still glass ceilings in place for many women, but where would we draw the line? A Mr. Marple instead of Miss Marple? A Tarzanette?” McCoy recently told the Mirror.

McCoy suggests making the Doctor anything other than male is beyond the realm of possibility, but he’s still an imaginary character. Marvel Comics made Thor a woman, Captain America black, and Spider-Man black and Latino and the earth seems to still be spinning on its axis. Isn’t it possible that a non-white, nonmale Doctor could exist without setting off a global nerd riot?

Current “Doctor Who” showrunner Steven Moffat seems to think so, though he’s resisted the idea of giving the Doctor a female body simply because of modern gender politics. Under Moffat, evil Time Lord The Master became The Mistress rather unceremoniously — and without comment from the Doctor.

“We’ve been laying in the possibility for an awfully long time, but you don’t cast that way,” Moffat said last year at the Sky Women in Television and Film Awards in London. “I know I’m going to get in trouble for saying that — you cast a person, you don’t cast the gender.”

It’s worth wondering why people such as McCoy cling so fiercely to this one detail when the Doctor is an alien polyglot who travels through space and time, and whose sexuality ranges from squishy (especially considering the homoerotic subtext of his friendship with Captain Jack Harkness) to asexual. Given the Doctor’s ability to essentially molt and shed one human body for another — which is how the show passes the role from actor to actor — what’s stopping a regenerating Doctor from becoming a woman or an ethnic minority? The traits that make the Doctor such a compelling character — wit, compassion, charm and ingenuity — are hardly constricted by race or gender.

“I’m sorry, but no — Doctor Who is a male character, just like James Bond,” McCoy said. “If they changed it to be politically correct then it would ruin the dynamics between the doctor and the assistant, which is a popular part of the show.”

Moffat, who took over showrunning duties from Russell T. Davies in 2009, has said he would also be game for reworking the Time Lord-human relationship — the Doctor’s companion has mostly been a young, impressionable, and attractive “20th century female” — which has also come under fire. The debate over the Doctor’s gender goes beyond just whether or not the character should remain white and male for perpetuity; it’s the way the supporting characters are written.

Not only are the usually always female, but they’re also always willing to drop everything in their lives that’s important to them to get whisked away by this mysterious man. They frequently pine for and fall for him, but don’t see their feelings truly reciprocated.

This is reinforced so heavily that when “Doctor Who” brought back Sarah Jane Smith (Elisabeth Sladen), who played the Doctor’s companion from 1973-76, there was an aura of jealousy and suspicion between Sarah Jane and Rose Tyler (Billie Piper) that eventually softened into the two women commiserating about the Doctor’s idiosyncrasies. Even though the Doctor practically abandoned Sarah Jane for her own good, she’s still longing for the Doctor and new adventures and willing to pick up and leave her life behind all over again.

There’s been some variation — Catherine Tate’s Donna Noble was probably the most willful and outspoken of the bunch — but generally the Doctor’s companions have offered superficial resistance and adoration that borders on the divine.

Playing with the identities of the Doctor and companion could really shake that up, and bring a 50-year-old show fully into the not-so-new millennium.

Moffat has also taken heat for the show’s dearth of female writers and directors despite “Doctor Who’s” significant female fanbase. Nerdy pop culture site the Mary Sue has consistently pressed the show, and Moffat especially, on this. “Torchwood” writer Catherine Tregenna will be writing for series nine, which debuts in the U.K. in September. She’ll be the first female writer on the show in six years.

“Female directors and writers have a tendency to turn us down,” Moffat told Zap2it. “There are fewer female directors and female writers — it’s a statistical fact — it’s shameful but it’s true. Most of the people who are desperate to do ‘Doctor Who’ are men.

“There’s a slight tendency to think ‘Doctor Who’ is not for them. Catherine was happy to write ‘Torchwood’ — she had a very good ‘Torchwood’ run — but wasn’t as keen to write ‘Doctor Who.’ I’m doing my best, despite what people say about me. There’s very much a culture of thinking about ‘Doctor Who’ as a boys’ show, but I’m always going to conventions and looking at fans and thinking there’s practically more girls than boys.”

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