General Ongoing Doctor Discussion

bluewolf wrote: »

Lol the dramatics of it all
Never be the doctor
Go way outta that

"Dramatics" now eh? From my reading it's others falling over themselves to be Right On about the whole thing.

So nope, merely a statement of my feelings on the matter. As for clawing back the drop in ratings? I suspect an initial curiosity followed by an even more parlous fall in the ratings. The Fonz has just strapped on his water skis.

TICKLE_ME_ELMO wrote:

Except the original comment you made was about them "playing up to gender" and that kind of "nonsense" so it seems you have an issue with something other than the new Doctor.

I have an issue with hamfisted gender politicking by the Beeb. End of.

Lord TSC wrote:

Is it so wrong to think you can tell boys that women can be role models too? Or is it because they don't have the correct genitalia, they are automatically discarded as role models?

You can "tell them" all you like, but if they're getting a drip drip of "men a bit silly/women always great" you don't think that has an effect? Really? Cast your mind back when women in most media were very rarely heroes and mostly either damsels in distress or comic relief or morality themes dressed up all nice and would you have told young women "Is it so wrong to think you can tell girls that men can be role models too?". I doubt it and you'd be dead right.

alchemist33 wrote: »

I've lost track fo who means what, but McGyver and The Mentalist come to mind.

A failing reboot of an ancient show(where women were usually damsels in short skirts) and a cancelled one.

pixelburp wrote: »

Dr Who has been 'dying' since Eccleston left in 2005.

'Fraid not PB. It was going up and up from the reboot. Tennant was the peak and it slipped a little during Matt Smith's tenure, but still high. Second only to the old Top Gear in the Beebs pantheon of moneymakers IIRC. However the figures have been consistently dropping since Capaldi's turn at the helm. Them's the facts, not conjecture. It was starting to feel stale for the want of a better word. Again IMHO this casting gimmick and yep I see it as a gimmick is an effort to reboot the show along with the new production team and show runner. Maybe even a somewhat cynical one. Think Star Wars reboot with Lucille Skywalker.

So here comes the latest: the actor swaps gender and suddenly this! THIS is the moment the show tanked because its audience of predominantly CHILDREN won't cope with their favourite show being led by a woman! All that merchandising and overseas success will shrivel because this bastion of male heroism has succumbed to that most deadly of threats to civilisation .... gender politics.

Wait and see, but I bet I'll be more right when I say, yeah, pretty much. Oh and it's not just boys who benefit from a good non violent cerebral male role model, but girls too. It does nobody any good when either gender is labeled a sidekick or an idiot. QV the past.

The_Valeyard wrote: »

If they make it 'look I'm a woman now, go progress' it will ruin the show. Needs to be doctors a woman, time to stop Daleks. Otherwise they might as well add some breasts to the cyber men while there at it.

Careful, BBC writers may be reading. Unlikely though, breasts might be seen as "sexist".

TICKLE_ME_ELMO wrote: »

It can be done, but again, to me it seems your issue is with bad writing.

Oh I have always contended hereabouts that Moffat was great for plot but pretty low rent and clunky when it came to character(men and women for that matter) and fostered writers like him. RTD was far better at character and we saw that from the very first episode of the reboot. He wrote women well too. Still if RTD had gone with a woman after Eccy had left I'd still be thinking WTF? Maybe even moreso as the series was flying up the ratings so it would have looked like an even bigger gimmick. I strongly suspect it would have killed the series dead then and would have been vetoed by all concerned. There's less to lose now I suppose, but I can see it going a similar trajectory to Marvel comic's decision to go more diverse and swap out genders in their comics. Sales fell off a cliff, including within the demographics of the very people they were trying to be inclusive about.

pixelburp wrote:

it's only going to figure into the narrative given that 99% of Western history treated women like objects / second class citizens / property.

You do understand that for "99% of Western history" men were generally treated the same? The vast majority of people were vassals and a high born woman was far above a low born man. A male Doctor Who if he sniffed of being poor would have been ignored too. Though I strongly suspect the Beeb will whitewash the whole women as lesser thing, or actually maybe not, given the previous experience more likely to hammer it home in the usual clunky way.

CastorTroy wrote: »

But how often did race or gender come into it when the companions travelled to the past? Hard to think of too many hindrances they encountered

Martha when she went back to Elizabethan England IIRC. Her colour was remarked upon. I seem to recall a couple of the female companions getting the woman angle too. That Tennant one where they go back to the 1950's?

flazio wrote: »

When Catherine Tate was announced as the full time companion we thought she'd be a disaster,

Actually I liked her.

when Matt Smith was announced we thought the show might take a dip, it became bigger than ever.

It did. And it didn't. The ratings dropped after Tennant.

So lets just wait and see what she does. Some, including myself struggled to see the Mad man with a box we had come to love over the years once Capaldi came across all grumpy and uncaring, but most soon came round.

And the ratings dropped again.