Tag: Rose Tyler

How sexist is Doctor Who?–Part Nine

The David Tennant years

Tennant1

Welcome to Part Nine of my attempt to analyse the sexism in every Doctor Who story ever, using the Bechdel Test – and my wits. For a reminder of the rules, check the Intro here. Then, going by Doctor:

  1. William Hartnell
  2. Patrick Troughton
  3. Jon Pertwee
  4. Tom Baker
  5. Peter Davison
  6. Colin Baker
  7. Sylvester McCoy / Paul McGann
  8. Christopher Eccleston

A quick reminder of the Test:

  1. It has to have two named female characters
  2. Who talk to each other
  3. About something besides a man.

 

The Tenth Doctor. David Tennant. Skinny suit. Converse sand shoes. Long coat. And endless cries of squee. Yes, Christopher Eccleston may have made the revived show a success, but Tennant made it a phenomenon. Clearly far more at home in the part than Eccleston ever was (not that Eccleston ever let that show on screen, to be fair), Tennant became Russell T Davies’ best asset in selling the show, both onscreen and off.

In his four years in the part, David Tennant notched up almost as many stories as Tom Baker managed in seven – 37 stories all told, as opposed to Baker’s 41. That’s mostly due to the fact that the new show has self-contained episodes, or at most two-parters. It also means that Tennant’s era offers a better balanced sample for the Bechdel Test than the mere ten stories of Christopher Eccleston. It also means that this is one monster of a blog post, made even longer by a combined Ninth/Tenth Doctor summary at the end to sum up RTD’s era as a whole. Ready?

Continue reading “How sexist is Doctor Who?–Part Nine”

How sexist is Doctor Who?–Part Eight

The Christopher Eccleston weeks

Eccles1

Welcome to Part Eight of my attempt to analyse the sexism in every Doctor Who story ever, using the Bechdel Test – and my wits. For a reminder of the rules, check the Intro here. Then, going by Doctor:

  1. William Hartnell
  2. Patrick Troughton
  3. Jon Pertwee
  4. Tom Baker
  5. Peter Davison
  6. Colin Baker
  7. Sylvester McCoy / Paul McGann

A quick reminder of the Test:

  1. It has to have two named female characters
  2. Who talk to each other
  3. About something besides a man.

Having now covered all of the classic series (and the Paul McGann interlude), it’s time to get up to date as we start to look at “Nu-Who”. This is where the idea for this series really began, with Rebecca Moore’s determined attempt to prove that Russell T Davies was more inclusive than arch-sexist Steven Moffat, as mentioned in the Intro.

I’m not going to do this by showrunner (yet), but continue by Doctor – though there’ll be a combined look at Doctors Nine and Ten after the Tennant post, if you want to assess RTD as a whole. In the mean time, as a nod to the new series tendency to harp on about the Doctor himself at often tedious length, I’m including a new check at the conclusion – how many stories that failed the Test might have passed if you don’t count the Doctor himself (a 900 year old non-human) as a “man”? There’s also a count of the trend that emerged for the Doctor to not actually resolve the plot himself, often leaving that to his companion (and sometimes other women). So, let’s take a bold stride into a new, hopefully less chauvinist era (though McCoy and Cartmel will be hard to beat)…

Continue reading “How sexist is Doctor Who?–Part Eight”