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Doctor Who legend Sylvester McCoy says only a MAN can play the Time Lord

Obviously there's been a backlash against his statements in fandom, but can I be super-unpopular and admit that I'm not sure how I feel about a female Doctor either? Not that I'm agreeing with Sylvester McCoy reasoning though, "If they changed it to be politically correct then it would ruin the dynamics between the doctor and the assistant” doesn't even make sense as an argument when the dynamic between the Doctor and his Companions changes all the time? It's hardly an established dynamic that shouldn't be touched, they all relate to one another differently depending on differing individual personalities?

But anyway, it seems like the popular thing these days in fandom is to root for a female Doctor, and I'm just not sure how I feel about it. The canon suggests that Time Lords have some control over their changes, so why would the Doctor suddenly choose to regenerate as a woman when he has kept a male identity through 12 regenerations, and seems to have always identified as male? I mean I'm not entirely opposed to a female Doctor by any means, but I guess that's why it's a little bit of a sticking point for me at the moment. The argument seems to go that the Doctor is a Time Lord and can easily choose to regenerate as female without it being a big deal, except that he hasn't through 12 regenerations so far, nor have other Time Lord's like River and Romana, so clearly Time Lord's still must have some basic concept of gender and whether they identify as male or female?

Obviously the intro of Missy has changed things by opening up Time Lord society dealing with gender identity differently, but that still all seems a bit vague to me at the moment when this is the first time that we know of (I think?) that a Time Lord has chosen to change their sex, and we don't yet know if the Master had any particular reason for switching. I guess that I'm just stuck on, whatever regeneration they go through, it's always seemed like Time Lord's still keep the same basic core personality in the past, so wouldn't the Doctor (and the Master too I guess) continue thinking of themselves as male? I feel like the lone voice in fandom when it comes to this debate, because it always seems to get painted as only someone really old-fashioned and set in their ways could not want a female Doctor. And Idk, there's definitely some interesting casting choices out there that I could see myself enjoying as the Doctor, but at the same time it does feel to me like it would be kind of a simplistic message if the show did go with "oh we're hired a biological female to play the Doctor, that means that the character is suddenly a woman now and thinks of herself that way". I mean I assume anyway that part of wanting an actress to play the role of the Doctor would include that incarnation of the Doctor starting to identify as female?

I'm certainly not opposed in any way to changing the gender of established characters for reboots, I'm just not sure how to feel about it when it comes to a character from an ongoing television series. I'm a bit of a hypocrite I guess though lol as I have been enjoying the portrayal of Missy as the Master so much that they could probably make a female Doctor work for me just as easily with the right casting, but still is there anyone else out there who also feels a bit unsure with how a female Doctor would work when he's always been portrayed as male? (The Master choosing the female form for this latest regeneration just doesn't cancel out to me the way that it's always been shown to us as working in the past for the Doctor)

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True, it doesn't help when you can always predict what these older actors are going to say if there's any suggestion of change to the status quo *g*

And they could probably find some way of making it work sure, it's not something that I'm necessarily clamouring for at the moment because I'm not sure of how it would work with how the Doctor has been established as male for so long, but I would be on-board if they handled it well and got the casting on-point. As I say, Missy working out so well has shifted my mindset a little more in that respect, and who knows maybe that was Moffat laying the groundwork for a female Doctor in the next regeneration?

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The Eleventh Doctor's very first lines (I have bolded the parts relevant to this discussion):

DOCTOR: Legs. I've still got legs. Good. Arms. Hands. Ooo, fingers. Lots of fingers. Ears, yes. Eyes, two. Nose, I've had worse. Chin, blimey. Hair. I'm a girl! No. No. I'm not a girl. And still not ginger. And something else. Something important. I'm, I'm, I'm
(Bang!)
DOCTOR: Ha! Crashing!

I'm not really coming down on any side of the argument, except I don't see why the Doctor shouldn't be female. Clearly he considers it a perfectly logical possibility. (This doesn't mean that he SHOULD become female. But discounting the possibility goes against the show canon.)

Also there have been two female Doctors already:

Joanna Lumley in The Curse of Fatal Death (yes it was for Comic Relief, but she counts just as much as Rowan Atkinson or any of the others), and Arabella Weir in Big Finish (Exile).

Add to that the Corsair (as others have mentioned upthread) and Missy, and Time Lords changing gender is clearly something the species is capable of, and not all that unusual. The Doctor treats Missy no different to how he's always treated the Master. Describes her as simply someone who was once a friend.

To me, it'd come down to the right actor. (I'd love Sue Perkins, although she might be too Tennant-like.)

Well, there was also mention of the Corsair, who did both male and female regerations. Idk, to me, the Time Lords can be genderfluid and it's hard to know if the fact that we see them regenerate into one gender is really true to the characters or just the writers doing the same old stuff over and over again. Just like people who complain about Steve Rogers's bisexuality because he wasn't canonically bisexual 50 years ago. Yeah, of course, nobody was going to say it way back, it doesn't mean it can't be said explicitly nowadays.

Yeah, I think my opinion on this is a bit unpopular amongst the Whovians I associate with. And to be fair, most of the arguments against a female Doctor are regressive. I just don't think yours are, or mine are.

ITA! Tennant was my least favourite Doctor because he always just seemed too ~hipster cool~ to me, I could never quite gel with him :(

Yes. The Doctor shouldn't be cool. Or, well, not cool in that sense.

I don't want a female Doctor. After all the controversy, if we now have a female it becomes about the Doctor being a woman, not about the Doctor being the Doctor. No, thank you.

I also don't see how people think the BBC is obliged to be "politically correct" about this. No.

Also, Moffat's made some interesting comments about gender fluidity on Gallifrey recently, and how the Time Lords likely view gender. So we can rest assured that if it were to happen whilst Moffat were at the helm it wouldn't be a big deal in the script, but can you imagine the media circus around it? God. No.

I always see the Doctors as non-sexual anyway (ie, never noted any sexual chemistry between any doctor and any companion, never shipped a single pairing!) And that makes sense to me because of the Doctor's great age - sex has been outgrown.

My great dream for a Doctor would be Tilda Swinton - it is absolutely believable to me that she could form a link in the current Eccleston-Tennant-Smith-Capaldi continuum. Would love to see her with a young male companion as well.

I think the more traditional side of fandom would have a good shriek of outrage and then get used to it. After all Swinton has already regenerated from man to woman (Orlando!)

I don't disagree that changing gender is something that their species evidently is physically capable of, I suppose that I'm just questioning whether or not it feels right for the Doctor. I'm not necessarily arguing that he HAS to stay a man and that it's such an essential part of his identity, but to me him being a man does still play a part in the character that DW has established, and so it would be jarring if his next regeneration was as a woman when he has chosen to regenate as a man 12 times (and was presumedly born male with William Hurtnall as the original version). I do agree on a lot depending on casting if they ever do go with a female doctor, they could probably get me on-board fairly quickly with the right actress, it's just not something that I am picturing otherwise

Sorry if this seems nit picky, but I don't consider the Comic Relief spoof to be canon with the TV series. Missy is the only in-show example of a Time Lord switching gender (and The Doctor's Wife apparently, but I need to rewatch that episode because I can talk about that!), and so I did consider that fairly unusual when judged alongside how other established characters have never switched gender, in spite of some of them regenerating quite a few times

Yeah I feel like whoever does get cast as the first female doctor would not have an easy time of it, it would be a lot of added pressure :(

And interesting, do you have a link to what he says? As I said above, I'm not necessarily opposed to the idea that Gallifrey is very gender-fluid, I'm just not sure that the canon backs that up when characters have always stuck with the same gender time and time again until this latest regeneration of the Master

Even though we know that Time Lords can change gender, I still always sort of thought that the ones that never did identified strongly as male or female and that most didn't change because it would be "wrong" for who they were. But then I think the ones that did change, like the one mentioned in The Doctors Wife, were gender fluid or non binary. Or you might have Time Lords born as one gender but they find they don't identify as it and become the opposite gender for the rest of their regenerations. I'm not opposed to a female Doctor per se, but I agree that the character has been consistently male and maybe Time Lords do have gender identity as strongly as we do. That's looking at it from a Watsonian perspective, of course, not a Doylist one. But from a Doylist one, I don't trust the writers to do a female Doctor well anyway.

I could see that casting actually! Although I've gotta disagree with the Doctor being asexual I'm afraid, I thought that the 11th Doctor had a definite ~thing~ for River, then there was the Tenth Doctor in The Girl In The Fireplace with some definite snogging going on

But then I think the ones that did change, like the one mentioned in The Doctors Wife, were gender fluid or non binary.

Excellent point! Time Lords certainly seem capable of changing gender if they wish too, but it would be odd to me for it to only come up now with the Doctor when he's regenerated as male so many times that it would suggest that he *does* consider himself to be a man? Ditto with River, I can't really picture her as deciding to regenerate into anything but female. Again if the right casting came along then maybe I wouldn't be opposed to it, but it's not something that I'm picturing right now for the character as established

I thought that the 11th Doctor had a definite ~thing~ for River, then there was the Tenth Doctor in The Girl In The Fireplace with some definite snogging going on
I know mine is not a common view but have never been able to see any of the doctors in a remotely sexual light! Even that ep where Tennant is a school teacher supposed to be madly in love, couldn't see it. (Also don't see the Doctor/Master as a sexual thing so it's not just me having slash goggles on!)

Oh dear, I'm afraid that I can't help but hopelessly ship when it comes to any of my shows *g*

Well, I think that we have to keep in mind that the main reason we've never had a female (or black/Indian/hispanic/whatever) Doctor before has nothing to do with Time Lord gender identity. It's that until pretty recently, it was inconceivable that anyone but a white male could be cast in such a role, and even now, it's obviously still controversial. So in a situation like that, do the writers A) say "But we know better now, and we can and should consider a wider range of actors for the part, even though it will be a break in tradition," or B) say, "Well, regardless of how crappy the reasons for it being this way are, it IS this way, so we have to keep it this way?"

Basically, when the only reason people can advance for keeping something like this the way it always has been boils down to "It's always been like this, so changing it would be weird and scary!" I'm dubious. Change IS weird and scary, but that's not a reason to avoid it, and may be a reason to embrace it.

He was on his last regeneration, but the Time Lords popped back into existence just long enough to give him a whole new batch. With no particular limit this time, just in case.

Sorry if this seems nit picky, but I don't consider the Comic Relief spoof to be canon with the TV series
Oh I don't either. I just thought of it as an actual example of a female Doctor onscreen. And the Doctor barely blinks, just looks at her Companion (that she's engaged) and wonders if the'll both wear white. It doesn't bother, not fazes her.

Ditto Eleven - he thinks he might have become female, as if this is something perfectly logical. (Generally, then he has so little regeneration control, I have no problems with him ending up female... There'd be no conscious choice involved.)

Edited 2015-08-03 05:53 (UTC)

I really don't know how to feel about that subject but as I'm not as deep into the fandom as others (you and such), I'm definitely also not really opposed to it in general. I mean, I'm not sure what to feel about that, but I think it would definitely be interesting...

And I'm not completely sure the doctor identifies with any gender anyway... *shrugs* I always felt like that's what differs him from normal humans, that he's identifying himself with being an alien and not exactly a man and such, and I mean, he never did "normal human things" like have sex or such. He loved before (like with Rose and Ten) but for me that's also part of his personality. That when he falls in love he falls for a person, not a gender, and that's why i personally think he doesn't exactly "care" that much...

Not sure how much of it he REALLY can decide himself (like gender), because he always seems so surprised when he sees his face for the first time, so there's that...

I'm not sure either how much he can decide, but I guess I'm assuming that it's mostly physical appearance changes that can take him by surprise, other than the superficial changes he always seems to regenerate into a ~more or less~ similar form and personality

I agree that I don't think that he would care much if he regenerated as female, his reaction to Missy suggests that it's not a big deal in Time Lord society if you do switch genders, but at the same time the fact that the Doctor has never regenerated as a woman through 12 regenerations suggests to me that he must identify as male in some way, or else why would it have mattered if some of those regenerations were female and some male?

Edited 2015-08-03 08:41 (UTC)

http://www.radiotimes.com/news/2015-08-01/steven-moffat-the-doctor-is-neither-100-male-nor-female---like-all-of-us This is it here!

Thanks :)

Yeah, so definitely not a big stretch to give him the option to regen in the form of a lady, if he wanted to.

TBH I'm a lot more pressed about every version of the Doctor being white than I am about them being male. Is female representation THAT pressing an issue right now? Virtually every major Companion is a woman. Not that I wouldn't be all over a female Doctor. But I ain't surprised this is the go-to issue for all the angry white chicks on Tumblr.

Yeah I do agree with that, I would love a PoC Doctor, and that makes a lot more sense to me than this huge movement for a female Doctor as something that should be automatically happening. I mean I guess I can see a female Doctor working if the team wanted to do that, but as you say, there's plenty of other strong female representation with the companions, and if they ever do find Galifrey then I'd be all for having some recurring Time Ladies, the Doctor as a female is just something that I'm less sure about idk

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