Rachel Wortman
Viewpoints Editor Doctor Who is back with plenty to prove, hurtling onto our screens and back into the collective consciousness of Britain and the rest of the world. Just a few moments into this year’s premiere, it became clear that this new era of the beloved science fiction series would be carried solely and solidly on the shoulders of its newest Doctor, Peter Capaldi.
It isn’t easy to simultaneously show intelligence and befuddlement, as the episode demands, but he does it marvelously. Following the action-packed initial sequence of a massive T-Rex smashing Victorian London and a look at a far-too-apathetic crowd of gawkers (including our own Paternoster Gang), we finally get our first glimpse of the new Doctor. He comes staggering out of the TARDIS, a bit confused about the identity of both himself and his friends. An excellent choice on the writers’ part, the Doctor is portrayed like an infant in his ability to communicate, merely muttering out “me” vs “not me” as he attempts to comprehend the situation at hand. It was also very nice to see Clara ruffled up, figuratively and physically, because it gave her a realness the absence of which had previously made her character difficult to connect with.
While the changes were a good start, it must be addressed that Steven Moffat’s characterizations and scripts are still as problematic as ever when it comes to gender. Once again, there’s an awful lot of misogynist dialogue about women’s bodies, in this episode’s case, often about how they were not good enough, or used to manipulate. One second Clara is too short, and the next she’s able to outwit the bad guy because she’s 5’ 1” and crying.
Another title to this episode could easily have been “I’m the Doctor, Please Like me,” as most of the plot concerns whether or not Clara can deal with the fact that her youthful, hipster Doctor now resembles a grumpy Scottish governmental communications director. The entire situation is handled in a bizarre manner. For an episode that was supposedly about complex appearances, all they seemed to harp on was how old the Doctor looked.
This created a ridiculous subtext that Clara, while willing to bone the 11th Doctor, would under no circumstance be able to fancy the 12th. Just as he has in the past, Moffat has created a toxic relationship between companion and Doctor that somehow can only be meaningful if it is driven by unnecessary sexual tension.
There were also issues involving the behavior of Madame Vastra in her treatment of Clara. She is extremely severe with Clara, insisting that instead of the Doctor having to prove himself to his companion, as it has been in the past, Clara must prove herself worthy of the Doctor. This interaction creates another aggravating example of the female lead trope of needing to be “not like other girls” in order to be worthy of the hero.
Furthermore, this frustrating sequence showed Vastra policing Clara’s sexuality in a contradictory way: both shaming her by assuming that she’d no longer find the Doctor attractive, while also implying that she was wrong to ever fancy him in the first place. I can’t help but think this is Moffat’s attempt to condemn the supposed fangirls of the show that he believes are too shallow to grasp the complexity of Doctor Who and are only interested in the heartthrob leading men.
Although there were many problems, the episode was better than past series and with the amazing performances of both Capaldi and Coleman, a new hope for the struggling classic is restored.