I don’t really have a dog in the fight when it comes to the new Doctor. I gave up on the show around the time of Tom Baker, and like Star Trek it always seemed a touch too much like heavy handed socialism for my liking. Nevertheless, the reaction has been interesting to those of us entrenched on the front lines of the Culture War.
As for the actual decision, I think it’s less about whether it makes sense in regard to a character that regenerates, and more about the timing and the reasoning behind it. If they’d done it in the 80’s in good faith purely for reasons of narrative, I suspect that the fans of the show may have been more down with it. But in 2017, such a decision can’t help but reek pungently of Cultural Marxist doubling down.
As XYZ’s Grumpy Motorist pointed out, the backlash isn’t so much about the new Doctor being a woman, but the reason that the new Doctor is a woman. I’d go even further. This has little or nothing to do with the empowerment of women. Notice I didn’t say feminism? The two concepts are so often mutually exclusive nowadays that even Germaine Greer seems partially red pilled (real progress in my opinion).
Being a woman with an interest in genuine equality (as opposed to equality of outcomes), or even a rabidly unreasonable third wave feminist in 2017 is kind of like being about halfway down the organ transplant list. You’ve been patiently waiting for your turn for decades, but keep getting passed over by much cooler and much more marginalised groups who just got on the list, and are deemed more urgently in need of a kidney than you are. The Rotherham rapists will always be framed as more relevant victims than the girls they abused ever were. There’s a reason why fake college rape culture stories get more airtime than thousands of legitimate victims of abuse ever will.
The Dr. Who casting is yet another example of this. Make no mistake about it. At face value, the new Doctor is a woman. But not really. Sorry ladies. You’ve been leapfrogged on the organ transplant list yet again. This has nothing to do with the empowerment of women. A male has been regenerated as a female. The social engineers at the BBC are more interested in promoting the junk science agenda of gender dysphoria and gender fluidity than anything as noble as encouraging young girls to pursue real science. You know, the kind that makes the distinction between male and female DNA.
Even if this casting decision is taken at face value, some of the reactions from those celebrating the ‘breaking of the glass time lord ceiling’ are of concern.
I overheard someone who could best be described as a ‘Beta male feminist ally’ discussing this development excitedly with his female friends. He struck me as quite sneaky, a term that Dr. Jordan Peterson has used to describe such types, who in the absence of the usual qualities a woman might look for in a mate, defer to a kind of sycophantic ally status in the hope of getting a sympathy and solidarity root.
“Do you think the new Doctor will know martial arts and be really kick arse?” he asked his friends excitedly.
You or I might say such a thing as an ironic joke. This guy wasn’t. He was serious. And this is the problem. He and his companions all became excited at such a possibility even though it was remarkably insulting to women. A suggestion that mere womanhood requires some added kind of affirmative skill set to be added to the character to make this s**t stick to the wall.
The Doctor has always been physically weak, defeating and outwitting his enemies with his intellect. I gave up on the show decades ago, but I recall many a scene of a quivering and nervous Doctor being shoved against a wall by a more physically powerful opponent.
That the people who are celebrating this ‘Great Leap Forward’ in Sci-Fi feel that the new Doctor needs to be spared the emasculating indignities suffered by every other incarnation of the character speaks volumes. It will never be good enough for the Doctor to merely use a superior intellect to outwit opponents in a logical continuation of the character. It will be unacceptable for this new Doctor to be intimidated by a big scary patriarchal alien.
The BBC will undoubtedly draw the same conclusion that the Beta male feminist ally did. It won’t be good enough for the new Doctor to be just as good as the previous male versions, nor for her to share their physical limitations. This Doctor needs to be better.
Beta male feminist allies showed their creepy true colours in both online and mainstream media, when their obsession over how wonderful the new Doctor is deftly switched from ridiculously patronising notions of ‘a defining moment for women’ to drooling over leaked nude photographs of the actress roughly five seconds later. These people are creepy and just trying to get into your pants ladies. Don’t trust them.
If I were a betting man, my money’s on the BBC delivering a pathetic Charlie’s Angels style interpretation of the Doctor. A Doctor who doesn’t cringe when intimidated. Oh no. We’ll see a 55kg Doctor manhandling (if you’ll pardon the pun) 400kg aliens, and liberally breaking bones with fists and feet registered as lethal weapons.
Anyone who thinks that all of this sounds wonderfully empowering is part of the problem. It’s part of the polite lie, the foundation of sand that falls apart under even the most rudimentary scrutiny. Dr. Who won’t fail due to sexist males staying away in droves due to casting. It will fail due to the demands of progressives mired in post-modernism who aren’t satisfied with taking an inch when they can take a mile, and make a popular sci-fi franchise completely jump the shark, to such a point that people who are used to suspending their disbelief will be able to suspend it no longer.
There are a million reasons to take issue with the direction that the BBC have taken and decide to tune out, and only one reason at the expense of one of the most beloved sci-fi franchises of all time to tune in. I get why it makes sense for a progressive to take a disingenuous agenda-driven wrecking ball to a beloved boy’s own adventure. What I don’t get is why they actually think that anyone, including themselves, would be interested in watching it?
It’s your XYZ.
Photo by Ibsan73 
Photo by Iain Farrell
