Jodie Who-ttaker? The Doctor is in

Re: The good old days

"Time was when part of watching a program was to be surprised by it. Now every interesting thing about a program is spilled before it airs. I wonder if things will swing back when people get bored of knowing everything in advance?"

I actively avoid watching movie trailers now as they seem to have become *all the best bits of the movie in 3 minutes*.

The last time I got sucked in was passengers, the trailer made it look a bit tense "Theres a reason we woke up early" had me thinking, aliens? conspiracy? Awesome! What I actually watched was one of the story arcs from some future sequel to love actually.

Re: Not my opinion!

That's a shame - I thought I'd come up with an original bit of tongue in cheek trolling.

Re: Not my opinion!

Speaking as a female with 'Dr in front of her name, I do get tired of the assumption that Dr = male.

Totally agree. Occasionally gender change can work very well - I like Dr Watson in Elementary but thats a re-imagining of the 19th Century Holmes into a new format for modern times which set in Victorian era would be plain silly. What is suggested here for Dr Who comes over to me as a feeble attention grabbing move in a francise that seems to be lacking imaginative ideas to move forward. Moffatt has been grooming the audience to expect this for a few years so I'm hardly surprised. What next: Mr Marple, Miss Poirot, Wonder Man, Cleopatra, Salome, Frankenstein (creator or monster) ...

Why is it PC, to a have a lead character with two hearts, from an alien planet, that changes appearance completely every single time to change gender?

It could be argued that the likes of Voyager were just spin offs to tick the PC brigade boxes without upsetting the hardcore fans.

I personally don't give a toss who does it, so long as it's entertaining. But then again, I've never been one for worrying about who stars in what.

I couldn't name 99% of actors in films, as I think it's pretty unimportant in the grand scheme of things.

If you're all in favour of strong female roles...

...then why exclude shows with strong followings? Or do these strong female roles have to battle against entrenched favorites by starting new series? Doctor Who is supposed to be shockingly strange. If the new Doctor was an orca or an elephant or some other intelligent species, it would be fun and weird. It's a bit sad that a female human is seen as not-fun and challenging.

"I've seen talk of making James Bond female"

Bond does, of course, have a female boss - at least recently.

Strong female characters

One does not even need lead characters to be female to have a significant presentation of strong female characters. I (and I suspect more than a few male nerdy science fiction fans) enjoyed the early, highly intelligent presentation of Romanadvoratrelundar (sadly the character later became "just a companion"). Having a peer (superior?) in intelligence albeit with less experience provided nice opportunities to show the Doctor's strengths as well as present a positive female role model. (What other kind of character would be able to say both as a jibe and respectfully that the Doctor wins by making mistakes?)

While Doctor Who is not exactly known for consistency, it would have been nice if the established expectation that regeneration does not change gender (which was changed at least as early as "The Doctor's Wife"). It would not have been difficult to make up some technobabble to explain the exceptional case, but those managing the series chose to support the an arbitrary view of gender (which is distinct from equality in worth).

(The series also seems to have diminished the superiority of the Doctor. Part of this is normal (bad) enemy/conflict inflation (saving worlds, galaxies, and even universes can become old hat), but I suspect part of this comes from trying to make the companions more significant. This could have been done in other ways than making human companions peers (or superiors), but it is easier present quantitative value than qualitative value.)

WHY does it seem "like pandering to political correctness/feminism"? Why don't you see it as just a simple choice that reflects the times that we are living in?

"What TV producers should be doing is creating high quality new shows with female leads, or strong new female characters in existing Universes."

This!

Maybe they could have made a River Song spin off. Or get the rights to Berni Summerfield from the books.

Re: Susan

Do you mean Susan, the granddaughter of Death?

Re: Dear leftist commie remoaning bastards at the BBC...

Instigator! Don't we have enough permanently outraged as it is, without pokin' at em? I suppose the only good thing about internet angries is it keeps them off the street. Otherwise they'd be out in the garden yelling at those damn kids, an peeing on everyone's fireworks.

They already did that with Bill.

How about a person with white skin who identifies as Black, or vice versa, who is also non-binary gender and gets super offended if you assume their gender.

You forgot

That they need to be Transgendered as well. (LGBTQ and all that)