[ SECRET POST #2314 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2314 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 04 pages, 096 secrets from Secret Submission Post #331.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ], [ 1 - posted twice ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[philstar22]

This I disagree with. RTD was equally blatant about his sexism. He had issues with female sexuality, particularly when it came to older women. Rose is as much defined by her relationship to the Doctor as River is. Davies has talked in interviews about writing attractive female companions to appeal to male viewers. Donna's end was extremely problematic and had clear sexist undertones to it. Rose's end is problematic too. In both cases we have the male Doctor taking the freedom of choice away from the female companion.

And Davies' female companions are as much defined by romance and/or wanting children as Moffatt's. Rose and Martha are both defined by their feelings for the Doctor, and Donna is shown to ultimately want to settle down with a family (her consolation prize for having her memories taken away are to be hooked up with some random guy).

That isn't to say that Moffat isn't sexist, because he is. But Davies is equally so, and it frustrates me when people act like Moffat's who is so much more sexist than Davies. And personally I'm at least happy that Moffat's women at least are allowed to have sexuality, even if that is often written in problematic ways.

[(Anonymous)]

I massively disagree with everything you've said here. For one thing, Journey's End =/= the entirety of Davies' run. Moffat's sexism is pervasive and little things pop up in every episode and the big things fill the entire arc of his female characters. Davies' just randomly crops up in a "dude, did you even think about what this looks like" way, and almost all of it cropped up only in Journey's End. Which is the worst episode Davies ever wrote, so it's not like it's representative.

The bottom line is that with Davies, there is way more to his portrayal of female characters than just romance and sexist things, and the type of romance and sexism is way less revoltingly awful (to most people) and explicitly gendered than Moffat's type of romance and sexism - no brainwashed child brides or mystical incubator pregnancies or women talking about how you shouldn't let him see you age or claiming that the pain of the entire universe is less important than their pain at losing the Doctor or being told to "grow up" by taking their husband's name or the Doctor joking that someone is acting irrational because she's "brainwashed, also, she's a woman" in Davies.

So with Davies, we've got some problematic plot points and romantic cliches thrown into a much more substantial and active character arc with far more fleshed out character development. On the other hand, Moffat's female characters don't have much more to them apart from the sexist parts, and the sexist parts are much bigger parts of his female characters' stories, so it's obvious why they are picked on far more.

Of course, it's partly due to perception -- what bothered you personally about Davies may have bothered you way more than the things that bothered you about Moffat. And that's fine. But there's a reason most people find Moffat's writing far more sexist than Davies, and it's not because they're stupid. It's because of how they perceive his problematic elements in the context of his full body of work.

tl;dr, if Moffat's writing was more substantial and his character development better, people would be more forgiving of his sexist bits, because the sexist bits wouldn't seem like the only thing there.

[(Anonymous)]

^This. I hate Moffat's sexism for how in-your-face it is and how hard it is to escape it, because it keeps coming up in so much of his writing.

However, my dislike of Moffat is not a case of "is he better or worse than RTD?" RTD doesn't figure into my criticisms of Moffat, except for explaining that the fact I'm a Doctor Who fan is because RTD's writing had a lot of material that was untainted by sexism and therefore didn't put me off, because it was easy to avoid the bits that were sexist.

[(Anonymous)]

Yes, character development like Nice Guy (TM) Mickey and Pine For Rose Forever Let Me Angst For Three Seasons Ten. Totally so much better.

[(Anonymous)]

Yes, it is so much better from a "depth and extent of character development" standpoint, because you know full well that you're massively cherry-picking a couple of individual traits out of many, many traits and evolving character threads. *eyeroll* Whether you personally enjoyed said character development and character traits is up to you, but it's an entirely different topic.

Also, part of said character development involved Mickey changing from a pathetic whiny loser to a competent badass who shaped up and took control of his life choices about things that didn't go his way instead of being a dick about them and blaming them on other people. So yeah, lotsa character development there too.

[(Anonymous)]

Rose is as much defined by her relationship to the Doctor as River is.

No. Just... no.

Yeah, Journey's End was problematic and I didn't particularly like it but there is no way that you can say that after everything, Rose is in any way defined by her relationship to the Doctor. Yes, she loved him and chose to be with him but that =/= being defined with her relationship to the Doctor.No wait, am I defined by my relationship to my SO? Shit.

[(Anonymous)]

Rose is as much defined by her relationship to the Doctor as River is.

As much as I'm not happy with what their romantic subplot did to both Rose and Ten's characterizations, nobody on the show is as defined by their relationship to the Doctor as River is.

You could take Martha, Rose, Clara (probably), heck, even Amy and Rory, and think up a Turn Left-style AU about their lives and relationships if they'd never met the Doctor. You can't do that for River. Even if you handwave the circumstances of her conception and birth, you still can't do it for River. Handwave a dozen times, there's still little to nothing to work with- virtually all of her actions and motivations come back to him in the end. There may be ways in which she's a stronger or more likeable character than some of the other companions, but that's not one of them.