Geek Syndicate Issue 7 | Page 43

Geek Syndicate
at the best of times. With a show as diverse as Who has been over the years, everyone has their idea of what it should be, and many fans dreamed of how they would do it. In every Doctor Who forum across the internet, you will find valid critics of some the changes wrought by the new show, but you’ll also find some fans who just can’t forgive Davies for being the one that managed to resurrect the show in the first place. Enough of the fans! Go back to the sexy! Well, the ninth Doctor himself, Christopher “Lots of Planets Have a North” Eccleston, isn’t that sexy, but when he regenerated into David Tennant the show sort of exploded. We’d had younger Doctors before, but genteel, polite ones, not bouncing balls of energy and spikey hair spouting rapid dialogue and shouting and....well, you get the picture. Even I know what David Tennant looks like! Exactly. Tennant probably still defines the modern Who as much as Tom Baker defined the Classic run. It was a hard act to follow, and when Tennant left to be followed by Matt Smith’s eleventh Doctor, Russell T Davies left too, to be replaced by Stephen Moffat. It heralded another change to the show; secrets and mysteries became a big part of the series, as did Moffatt’s trademark “timey-wimey” plotting. This year, of course, Matt Smith is leaving the show which will bring a new, twelfth Doctor. It is likely that the show will gain a new feel yet again. A new Doctor....maybe a woman? Ah this. It always comes up. It’s a fair question. If the Doctor can be an old guy, or a young guy, or a sexy guy, or a grumpy guy, why can’t he be a black guy, or a woman guy? or a totally alien guy? No, it is a fair question, and one that divides people. There is a school of thought that says whilst Time Lords can regenerate seemingly freely, the Doctor “identifies” as a White Human Male, and that’s just how he is. There’s another school of thought that says he tends to react to what’s around him as his old form is dying and mostly he’s in an environment where being a White Male is an advantageous form, so it’s a type of survival mechanism. Or the show just likes casting White Male actors. Well if you’re going to be like that then I guess so. In-universe. regeneration has never really been detailed, although it has been implied that Time Lords can exert some degree of control over it, as both Romana (a Time Lady Companion from the Tom Baker era) and the Master did. So there’s no reason that the Doctor couldn’t be a Woman for a change, or a different ethnicity, but even in this day and age it’s maybe too big a property for the BBC to take on scaring the fan-base too much. For good or ill, Doctor Who’s fanbase remains vocal on such matters, even if it rarely speaks with one voice. Still, there is always all those good looking, young companions, right? That has been a bit of a trend. Of course, by always casting a male Doctor then in order to keep some semblance of gender balance in the show (there’s a great book on it, incidentally, called “Chicks Dig Time Lords”) the vast majority of companions have been, yes, attractive young women. In the modern era they’ve tended to have more equal billing, but the record in the Classic era is a little more patchy. You mentioned a Time Lady? Romana, yes. A character very much the Doctor’s equal in many ways, and the second Romana (the first regenerated) played by Lalla Ward had a great, partnerin-crime relationship with Tom Baker’s Doctor. Elisabeth Sladen’s character Sarah-Jane Smith was a reaction to the rise of seventies feminism on the behalf of the shows producers, but is a proactive and capable character that remains on of the great Companions, even getting a successful spin-off show after appearing in a post-re-launch episode. You’re going to tell me they’re not all great though? Sadly, there is a strong undercurrent of Companions being there to point at things and need them explaining, or to get grabbed by monsters and need rescuing. Nicola Bryant, who played the fifth and sixth Doctors’ companion Peri once claimed she was hired pretty much because

Joanna Lumley IS THE DOCTOR!

Image © BBC, 1999

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