You are right. It isn't even yet. But it has been improving, and quickly. But dear god it has to happen a lot more naturally and over time. Let these female characters be created and established. Unfortunately that is not going to happen overnight. But it will happen. And I think the problem is that a lot of these PC people try to make it immediately a reality. So it isn't just enough that well written female characters are being created, but established characters have to be thrown under the bus (I'm looking at you Marvel) just to balance out a quota as quickly as possible.
Fair enough, I can definitely understand the frustration with that approach, the big two are especially dire at this sort of thing. Believe me the numerous do overs/reboots/undoes/redoes that the big two indulge in make me roll my eyes whenever they do their replacement schtick. However, on an older property like Who sometimes you just have to grin and bear it and hope that the new direction works well - nu-Starbuck was a success wasn't she?
Why is this an issue in any way, shape, or form? Its one thing to say that people should be free to deviate from traditional gender roles. Its another to be offended at the people that choose to stick to them, which in this culture is still the majority.
Ah, this is where the rest of the sentence is important. Lone. Female. Character. In a show that's an ensemble. When that happens the character tends to be reduced to being female, using the shorthand of pink, and eyelashes and very little else. The lone female character is especially doomed since she's called on to represent the entirety of her ***, making things such as consistent characterisation secondary.
Yes, I do think that he sees gender in exactly the same way we do. Doctor Who is not a person from a real society that we are slowly discovering. He is a fictional hero that is written by humans, meant to appeal to the sensibilities of humans.
I think we'll have to disagree on this point. Sorry, not that it isn't a valid point of view - it's just, having grown up with the peculiar experimental brand of the show that existed during the Great hiatus, I just can never agree with him being the point of view character. (And given that Chibnall is part of the old guard that were around in that era, I suspect he's of a similar mind.) That role was always the companions, The Doctor in the novels, and in much of the show (Tom Baker, McCoy, McGann and Troughton eras especially), has been the mysterious fae trickster with Orange and Blue morality far more often than most people seem willing to acknowledge.
Urgh how to put this... Its almost akin to arguing that Loki should be always Tom Hiddleston because that's how it's always been and we don't want to upset the current fans, ignoring that the archetypes of the character are far far more complex (and interesting) than the stuff shown in the films, or even the comics, involving graphic disturbing imagery, and reflecting a social code and order that we find abhorrent these days. (Sif's hair and how Sleipnir was sired for instance, or Loki's children being tricked into entrapment) The character isn't at all relevant to modern society surely, and yet he's one of the most fascinating that the MCU have produced - I suspect much of that is leakage from the darkness of the much much older tales that spawned the character in the first place. I'm desperately hoping that Chibnall will take similar inspiration from the strange and fantastical 90s era of the show - an era that spawned the still talked about two-parter Human Nature/Family of Blood. If the show can recapture some of that twisted approach to its storytelling I'll be overjoyed.
The story almost demands that we take the thing in as interesting a direction as we can push it given the Saturday tea time time slot.
Under RTD that direction was PTSD and Time War aftermath, the repercussions of playing God with the universe. Under Moffat a more overt fascination with the mechanisms of time travel itself, and an eventually tiring obsession with the main character as savior. Under Chibnall? Who knows? Recently he's been about toxic gender ideas... However that was Broadchurch, not a family show.
Sort of like how suddenly when the gay movement became a thing 10 years ago suddenly he started bumping into gay people everywhere. Or now that gender fluidity and the ridiculous idea that gender identity is imaginary has become the latest movement people flash around like a fashion accessory, this happens.
Hah! That's giving me flashbacks to the 00s when every week there was a 'gay agenda' thread. Nothing against you saying that at all, RTD admitted that there was one. But then, RTD himself finds those stories fascinating, as evidenced by his brilliant shows Queer as Folk, and Cucumber/Banana. Hinchcliffe had his thing for gothic horror, Adams overt often absurd humour and Nation... Well Nazis, spies and all of the popular themes from the postwar era.
It'll be a different flavour to the show if Chibnall wants his era to be about gender perceptions sure, but what each of those eras have in common is that they're primarily about a mad alien travelling in a spacetime capsule that they've stolen having mad adventures. I doubt that's going to change.
Hell, put it this way - the Pertwee era was a far more drastic change in format than this will likely be. The show survived and thrived with that left-field decision, it was only when it started looking backwards that it started to suffer (well that and Grade, who'd long hated the show finally got into a position where he could kill it, ironically just as it was beginning to find its feet again)
There's also the point that until 2020 the show is probably safe. Until then the... Unique manner in which the BBC acquires its funding, and its remit to make public television are still intact. After 2020, who knows? But the show has been all but guaranteed five more seasons to find its groove again if rumours are to be believed.
Basically all I'm asking is that you give it a fair chance. The show started off as an educational tool, before rapidly morphing into the scifi show we all know today. Who wouldn't still exist if someone hadn't had the radical idea to make the recast an inherent part of the character. I'd like to think this relatively small addition to that lore will only help the show's longterm survival by opening up a whole raft of storytelling options that weren't available before. However I'm trying to be empathetic with the people who are disappointed.
Hah yeah - ironically not actually seen the Ghostbusters film, but I remember the hate that came before the film, and the rather... Obvious relief that the reboot wasn't that good. Hrmm, the thing is whilst the fan reaction is definitely comparable, the situation otherwise isn't. I'm not sure there is another show that has this level of flexibility of format encoded into its very fabric. (See previous Pertwee example.) I keep flashing back to the fact that Sydney Newman wanted it to happen as far back as the 80s.
