Talkin' 'bout Regeneration 2017 (1)
Jul. 23rd, 2017 11:08 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cjlasky7There's been a lot of buzz on social media about the casting of Jodie Whittaker as the 13th Doctor, and I find the debates both appalling and entertaining. Sometimes, a seminal moment in pop culture tests a fan community, and you get a true measure of what people believe about important issues. I've heard all the arguments against a female Doctor: a) the Doctor is canonically a male; b) it'll limit the stories the series can tell; c) it's an empty gesture toward political correctness--and I don't feel that any of them hold up.
But, most of all, I'm not the least bit thrown by gender switching of a main character because I've seen it often enough before. Here's three instances of a gender switch that influenced my worldview:
[Note: I am not talking about "Freaky Friday"-style body switches; I'm talking about protagonists who retain all their previous characteristics, except for the change in gender.]
1. "The Left Hand of Darkness," Ursula K. Leguin (1969)
Groundbreaking novel from one of the greats of modern science fiction. Leguin takes us to the world of Gethen, where the humanoid population is gender neutral, except for a monthly cycle (called "kemmer"), where a person can be either male or female. Leguin brings a trained anthropologist's eye to the various societies of Gethen, showing how the absence of fixed genders would shape a civilization (and she packs in political intrigue and Buddhist philosophy to boot).
2. "The Procrustean Petard," Sondra Marshak and Myrna Culbreath (1978)
That's fine, you say, but we're not talking about literature, we're talking about a TV show. You don't see manly men TV heroes like Hercules or Captain Kirk being turned into women, do you?
Well...
Just after the original Star Trek series ended and just before the first set of Trek movies, Bantam Books released two volumes of original short stories called The New Voyages. Volume Two featured this story, where almost the entire crew of the Enterprise is captured and gender flipped by alien technology.
Marshak and Culbreath have some odd ideas about genetics, and (post-Voyager) the complaints about sexism in Starfleet will seem out-of-date. But still--watching James T. Kirk struggle to adjust to a body that is unfamiliar but unquestionably his (her?) own is (as Spock would say) fascinating.
3. "Orlando," Virginia Woolf (1928)
But if you want a story that's most relevant to the current kerfuffle with the Doctor, you can't do any better than the granddaddy (and grandmother) of all gender bender stories: Orlando.
Orlando starts out as a proper English Lord in Elizabethan times, but during a sojourn to the Mysterious East, he wakes up from a magical sleep as a woman (and apparently ageless). For the next three hundred years, we follow Orlando as she encounters would-be suitors of ever-shifting or indeterminate genders, poets and critics locked into their blinkered worldviews, and witness her own struggles as a writer, as she tries to find the words to express herself in a world that has no words to describe anyone like her.
It's both a parody of British picaresque and the next evolution of the form, Henry Fielding by way of Joe Orton, but Woolf through and through.
**************
Virginia Woolf would have loved the idea of our new Doctor, and I could just see Thirteen taking her on a trip in the TARDIS, perhaps becoming one of the inspirations for Orlando. It's just one of many, MANY ideas that came to mind when the casting was announced.
Can you imagine Thirteen:
Meeting Joan of Arc before her last battle?
On a steampunk adventure with Ada Lovelace and Charles Babbage?
Re-encountering the female Pope (that Twelve alluded to in "Extremis")?
Battling a new incarnation of the Rani--with Whittaker playing BOTH roles?
This is just off the top of my head, kids. I'm sure that if any two or three people on my friends list got together, we could pump out enough standalone stories centering on Thirteen for five seasons of Doctor Who. A female Doctor "limits" storytelling? What, are you KIDDING me?
But maybe Chibnall won't go this way; maybe the braintrust won't do anything so overtly feminist, so as not to scare away a chunk of the fandom. But if that's the case, I hope they approach Thirteen the way Moffat approached Missy: the same character, but with a slight change in perspective that allowed her to escape the old patterns, patterns that weren't working for her anymore.
Whatever they decide, I'm looking forward to Season 11. I'm a little nervous, because God knows, there's a lot of doubts about Chibnall as a show runner, and many possible ways to screw this up. But Whittaker? Oh, there's no doubt about her at all. The universe of Doctor Who has expanded to new horizons, and I'm ready for a bold new era of adventure.
Next: Thirteen and the DW global phenomenon.
But, most of all, I'm not the least bit thrown by gender switching of a main character because I've seen it often enough before. Here's three instances of a gender switch that influenced my worldview:
[Note: I am not talking about "Freaky Friday"-style body switches; I'm talking about protagonists who retain all their previous characteristics, except for the change in gender.]
1. "The Left Hand of Darkness," Ursula K. Leguin (1969)
Groundbreaking novel from one of the greats of modern science fiction. Leguin takes us to the world of Gethen, where the humanoid population is gender neutral, except for a monthly cycle (called "kemmer"), where a person can be either male or female. Leguin brings a trained anthropologist's eye to the various societies of Gethen, showing how the absence of fixed genders would shape a civilization (and she packs in political intrigue and Buddhist philosophy to boot).
2. "The Procrustean Petard," Sondra Marshak and Myrna Culbreath (1978)
That's fine, you say, but we're not talking about literature, we're talking about a TV show. You don't see manly men TV heroes like Hercules or Captain Kirk being turned into women, do you?
Well...
Just after the original Star Trek series ended and just before the first set of Trek movies, Bantam Books released two volumes of original short stories called The New Voyages. Volume Two featured this story, where almost the entire crew of the Enterprise is captured and gender flipped by alien technology.
Marshak and Culbreath have some odd ideas about genetics, and (post-Voyager) the complaints about sexism in Starfleet will seem out-of-date. But still--watching James T. Kirk struggle to adjust to a body that is unfamiliar but unquestionably his (her?) own is (as Spock would say) fascinating.
3. "Orlando," Virginia Woolf (1928)
But if you want a story that's most relevant to the current kerfuffle with the Doctor, you can't do any better than the granddaddy (and grandmother) of all gender bender stories: Orlando.
Orlando starts out as a proper English Lord in Elizabethan times, but during a sojourn to the Mysterious East, he wakes up from a magical sleep as a woman (and apparently ageless). For the next three hundred years, we follow Orlando as she encounters would-be suitors of ever-shifting or indeterminate genders, poets and critics locked into their blinkered worldviews, and witness her own struggles as a writer, as she tries to find the words to express herself in a world that has no words to describe anyone like her.
It's both a parody of British picaresque and the next evolution of the form, Henry Fielding by way of Joe Orton, but Woolf through and through.
**************
Virginia Woolf would have loved the idea of our new Doctor, and I could just see Thirteen taking her on a trip in the TARDIS, perhaps becoming one of the inspirations for Orlando. It's just one of many, MANY ideas that came to mind when the casting was announced.
Can you imagine Thirteen:
Meeting Joan of Arc before her last battle?
On a steampunk adventure with Ada Lovelace and Charles Babbage?
Re-encountering the female Pope (that Twelve alluded to in "Extremis")?
Battling a new incarnation of the Rani--with Whittaker playing BOTH roles?
This is just off the top of my head, kids. I'm sure that if any two or three people on my friends list got together, we could pump out enough standalone stories centering on Thirteen for five seasons of Doctor Who. A female Doctor "limits" storytelling? What, are you KIDDING me?
But maybe Chibnall won't go this way; maybe the braintrust won't do anything so overtly feminist, so as not to scare away a chunk of the fandom. But if that's the case, I hope they approach Thirteen the way Moffat approached Missy: the same character, but with a slight change in perspective that allowed her to escape the old patterns, patterns that weren't working for her anymore.
Whatever they decide, I'm looking forward to Season 11. I'm a little nervous, because God knows, there's a lot of doubts about Chibnall as a show runner, and many possible ways to screw this up. But Whittaker? Oh, there's no doubt about her at all. The universe of Doctor Who has expanded to new horizons, and I'm ready for a bold new era of adventure.
Next: Thirteen and the DW global phenomenon.
no subject
Date: 2017-07-23 05:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-07-23 09:28 pm (UTC)I've never read it, but I've heard that their novel, "Price of the Phoenix," has enough homoerotic purple prose to last a Vulcan's lifetime.
no subject
Date: 2017-07-23 05:34 pm (UTC)I'm getting nowhere and rapidly losing patience with these people. (The latest? Female characters have to be perfect in practical matters, they can only make mistakes in emotional ones. I told the person to go read LeGuine, and your post, and rent Orlando.)
Completely agree of course.
Will, however, have to check out Left Hand of Darkness. I own the book. Just haven't gotten around to reading it.
no subject
Date: 2017-07-23 10:23 pm (UTC)Heh. They'll be back.
Ask "no wimmens" Trek fans in 1969 if a woman could be a starship captain or a space station commander. Ask those same fans now about Kira Nerys or Kathryn Janeway. I'm betting most of them love Kira and would grudgingly admit: "Don't mess with Janeway if she hasn't had her coffee."
If it's done right, most of the DW naysayers will come around--I don't care what they say now. They have too much invested in the show to give it up so easily.
no subject
Date: 2017-07-23 10:31 pm (UTC)I think you are probably right. They're just whining right now. Oh my show no longer validates my biased world-view, woe is me! Sigh. LOL!
The Christmas episode looks amazing...by the way. I just watched the Trailer. Mark Gatiss is apparently playing Hitler. But we have the original doctor and the current one, head to head. (Not the new one yet.)