Doctor who??

Warning: Doctor Who ramble ahead. Skip now if that’s not your cup of tea.

I have read many opinions recently – largely men’s – about the developments regarding the casting of the new Doctor. Most of them are pretty dismissive of the situation – why do we NEEED a female doctor? One, particularly, moved me to respond. Specifically, this article bemoaned the end of good female companions, arguing that since the reboot, the story has been a narrative about the companions, and the Doctor is largely the macguffin that drives the story. And that now, with a woman as the Doctor, all those companions who had occupied centre stage will be relegated back to the fringes as background characters and plot devices.

Well, I say this: I love the companions. Doctor Who – the show – has provided an opportunity for us to journey with the Doctor, to see ourselves – young, older, intelligent, clueless, straight, gay, white, ginger, or person of colour… complex and independent and terrified and overwhelmed and brilliant and feisty and unexpected… As a woman, I’ve been so very encouraged that the Doctor sweeps in, hair and chin and eye brows and teeth… all the individual quirky things that we come to love about each regeneration… and he gathers up an ordinary person, and sometimes her family, into an amazing adventure in time and space, and as I watch it, I see myself as that feisty ginger bitch, stuck in stupid temp jobs, wishing someone would love me and rescue me from the crapulence of my life… and watching Donna’s story, watching her become better – the betterest version of herself – makes me feel that if only I met the Doctor…

You know the thing that unifies the lives of the companions? The Doctor leaves them, moves on. He leaves them to go back to their lives, and they are left, broken, to do that. Rose, left, lost behind the wall; Martha, left a warrior in a world changed; Donna, left with no memory because of the pain of it all; Sarah Jane encapsulates the pain, berating the tenth Doctor – ” you left me! After everything, you just left me and I had to learn to just get on with my life!” Even River, living her complicated, back-to-front romance with the Doctor, always aware that there would be a last time – and we, with the spoilers, having already seen it.

That is the thing, as a woman -I watch the Doctor and I imagine being swept up in adventures but I know that it all must end, and that ultimately, the companions journey at the whim of the Doctor – he steers the adventures and does the rescuing… and in the end, when it’s over, he gets to walk away. So this new Doctor, for the first time, will be an opportunity for me to imagine myself as the protagonist – being the eye of the storm.
I’m certain that this Doctor will be just as brilliant, and just as intent on sweeping ordinary companions out of their lives and into adventures in time and space. The fact that she is a woman won’t damage the awesomeness of that. But it does challenge the idea that men are adventurers and women are companions or damsels in distress. I don’t want to be the damsel in distress. I want to be the adventurer, I always have.