Female Ass-Kickers Does this thing actully make any sense?

huddygirl2 posted on Jan 16, 2012 at 08:49PM
It's from a Doctor Who article about gender issues. Okay I will say it. Doctor Who does have

a history with making woman look bad. But two things.
1.It's not all about making woman look bad. They are actually coo companions. Cool scenes with them.
2.Parts of it it's just bloody stupid.

Okay here's a link. link

Female Ass-Kickers 1 reply

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1年以上前 Cinders said…
I skimmed. I'm inclined to agree with the premise of it, however. Though I have not seen much of the old Doctor Who episodes, I have seen a handful, and in general, they fell victim to the times and traditional tropes of ditzy damsels in distress. There are exceptions to this, as the article points out, most notably and familiarly to me with Sarah Jane Smith.

However, this article was written in 1997, before the reinception of Doctor Who. The New Series, I feel, handles women and the companion characters much better, giving them unique motivations that I don't think were really present in the old series. They began on shaky ground with Rose, who in a few episodes does just feel like a stereotypical girl, but in other episodes redeems herself quite well, showing depth and even (in the case of the season 1 finale) great physical power.

Unfortunately, while Rose grew both on me as a viewer and as a character in the show, I feel that the show regressed when they created Martha, the (in my personal opinion) least interesting and most stereotypical companion. Her unrequited love for the Doctor only added to her tragedy, and I feel a great opportunity to make a minority character one of the strongest was squandered. I blame the writers for this, not Freema Agyeman of course, who is a very qualified actress.

But they really traded in the stereotype with Donna, a sassy, older female companion who was very clearly not interested in fawning over the doctor or being his little pet. Not only that, Donna had an agency that companions before her lacked. Even though Rose was a large part of seasons one and two, Donna was absolutely integral to the plot of season four, because she was the catalyst and the resolution to the events.

I was worried they couldn't do much better than Donna as far as creating a strong female companion. But those crazy writers surprised me again with Amy Pond. Though she had her brief romantic storyline with the doctor, it was an understandable childhood crush, one from which she seemed to healthily move on from when she realized how much she was in love with Rory.

Rory is another new one for the Whoniverse, as I understand, and I think he only makes Amy a stronger character for it.

So yes, while I agree in general about that articles claims about the original companions, and their purposes, I believe that the writers are also aware of the stereotyping the old series fell into with regards to women and genuinely tried not to do that with (most) of its companions. They even tried to make Martha "tougher" by having her join UNIT. While a valiant effort, however, it still didn't work for me.

But that's just personal opinion.