Recently the 5th doctor, Peter Davison (who by-the-by was probably my favourite as a kid, though Tom Baker will always have a special place in my heart too) made some comments about whether there should be a woman Doctor Who (or rather, a Doctor Who who happens to be a woman).
In some respects his thoughts on this aren’t especially newsworthy, now that Peter Capaldi is definitely at the helm of the Tardis for at least another season, all the talk of casting a woman or *GASP* someone non-white has died down. But hey, there are no time limits on speculation of this sort, I guess.
What his thoughts boil down to is that he thinks the “vulnerable man” doctor plus plucky female companion dynamic works well and if you had a female doctor something, something, something. Honestly, I lost interest at that point but there’s a really good write up at The Mary Sue if you fancy knowing more. His comments have this sort of weird logic that doesn’t really hold. I’m sure they weren’t intended to be sexist but there’s something oddly nonsensical about them that can only really be explained within a framework of “Female characters? What the hell do we do with them?”
Ugh.
But here’s how I know that he’s wrong and that a female Dr Who definitely WOULD work. Peter Davison doesn’t have a clue. Like, I don’t think he has any idea what kind of character might or might not work in a television show. He’s not a writer, he’s an actor and his storytelling instincts are entirely fallible. And I know this because he’s demonstrated it before.
Back in 2009, before earthquakes laid waste to it, the Christchurch Convention Centre was the setting of the Armageddon Expo. Davison was one of the guests and during the Q & A portion of his talk he was asked about the “new” doctor. Relative unknown Matt Smith had been announced as David Tennant’s replacement but no one had seen him in the role yet. Who even was this guy? He’d never be a patch on David Ten-Inch, that’s for sure. Or at least that was the overriding feeling at the time, though I’m sure we would all have been pleased to be wrong.
Davison didn’t offer any opinions on Matt Smith specifically. Rather he addressed the move to a “young” doctor stating that he didn’t really think that could work because you need the Doctor to have a sense of “authority”, a certain gravitas. You need other characters to pay attention to this random bloke who’s just turned up out of nowhere and a young person (Matt Smith was 25 when he was announced as the 11th incarnation) couldn’t pull that off.
Of course I’m paraphrasing but this was the gist of his argument, as I remember it. Nevermind that Davison himself was only 30 when he first appeared as the Doctor. Is there that much difference between 25 and 30 in terms of authority? Maybe there is, but that doesn’t even matter because the fact is his argument held no water. Matt Smith was a brilliant Doctor. His comparative youth was no impediment to the success of the show or the storytelling because WRITERS.
So if you need any further proof that a female doctor would not only be possible but would probably work really well it’s because Peter Davison thinks otherwise, and that guy has NO IDEA.
(Tardis image by aussiegall licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license)