Well, it’s over. After four years, thirty appearances, more perilous situations, impossible dilemmas, and wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey stuff than you could shake a stick at, the Jodie Whittaker era of Doctor Who has come to an end. Whittaker chose to stick to the show’s fabled “Troughton rule,” which is explained by Wales Online as:
Although leaving the role after three seasons, in that brief time, Whittaker turned the show on its head, offering a characterization that polarized the fandom. As a fan, whether you enjoyed Whittaker’s portrayal or not, one fact is indisputable: her tenure has moved the needle on the show’s representation of gender. Here’s where the series may go next.
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Outmoded Gender Politics Left Behind
BBC
Though some claim that Doctor Who always had strong female characters, it’s fair to say that when the venerable sci-fi show first hit our screens back in 1963, it hardly blazed a trail when it came to the issue of gender. The Doctor’s first companions, such as teacher Barbara and the Doctor’s own granddaughter, Susan, had their moments of bravery and derring-do but were mostly present in order to scream at monsters, get into trouble, or simply make cups of tea and stand around while the Doctor and the other leading male of that week’s story did the interesting stuff.
Things did improve in the 1970s and early 1980s, with companions such as Sarah Jane Smith (Elisabeth Sladen) and Ace (Sophie Aldred) doing their bit to challenge perceived gender norms. Sladen’s Sarah Jane was a go-getting journalist who was also a crack shot with a rifle and was a highly effective foil to Tom Baker’s Fourth Doctor. She was so well remembered that, more than two decades after she departed from the show, she got her own spinoff series.
Ace, meanwhile, was a tomboyish runaway in a leather jacket with a penchant for blowing things up. Her destruction of a Dalek with a baseball bat in a 1988 episode is an iconic part of the show’s mythology.
Nevertheless, “screamers” were still surprisingly prevalent as the show entered its third decade. Although actors such as Billie Piper (Catherine Called Birdy), Catherine Tate (Hard Cell), and Pearl Mackie have played empowered companions since the show’s return in 2005, Whittaker’s Doctor operated on another level. Simply having a woman driving the narrative on a weekly basis rather than having it constantly explained to her transformed the show’s representation of gender in ways that will resonate for many years to come.
Changes in the Relationships Between the Doctor and Other Characters
In truth, this dynamic had already begun to change before Jodie Whittaker took over the reins. The relationship between David Tennant’s Tenth Doctor and Rose Tyler, which ultimately segued into something like romance (they got together, sort of - in true Doctor Who fashion, the vagaries of the time-space continuum mean it’s complicated), an unthinkable state of affairs in the 1970s and 1980s, set the tone.
And back in 2013, Peter Capaldi’s Twelfth Doctor spent much of that year’s season confronting Missy (Michelle Gomez) – a female incarnation of the Doctor’s long-running archenemy, the Master. This placed the hints of homoeroticism in the scenes between Tennant’s Doctor and the Master of his era, John Simm (Collateral), in a whole new light.
Whittaker’s Doctor may not have done much in the way of flirting with either companions or villains, but the subtle change in power dynamics marked her Doctor out. Frequently coming up with can-do solutions to issues instead of being a bystander (as some Doctors have been accused of being in the past) puts the Thirteenth Doctor firmly in the realm of female leads with the ability to make things happen instead of hoping for the best.
The Appearance of Female Time Lord May Become the Norm
When the Time Lords first appeared in 1969, they were all men. Female Time Lords were so unusual that it was deemed worthy of being employed as a talking point in 1978, when a “Time Lady,” Romana (Mary Tamm, Lalla Ward), became the Doctor’s companion.
Since then, female Time Lords have been featured from time to time, such as Lynda Bellingham’s Inquisitor in 1987 and the aforementioned Missy. In 2015, we saw a male-to-female regeneration on screen as T’Nia Miller took on the role of the General.
Nevertheless, male Time Lords still outnumber female ones by a large majority. The next time the Tardis pays a visit to the Doctor’s home planet of Gallifrey, will we see more Time Ladies? Perhaps we will now, considering Doctor Who has a new showrunner in the guise of the mastermind of the show’s return in 2005, Russell T. Davies. His interest in the Doctor’s people extended to putting them center stage in the finale of the David Tennant era.
