Jodie Whittaker as the Thirteenth incarnation of The Doctor in Doctor Who.
After suffering through a few rounds of tennis this afternoon, the BBC gave the world what it had really been watching for: the reveal of the next titular incarnation of the long running show Doctor Who.
Doctor Who has been important in my life since my junior year of high school. I was going through a hard time - dealing with trauma I hadn’t identified, feeling like I couldn’t bear getting up in the morning - and the show was exactly what I needed. What’s more escapist than troubled humans a few years older than me running off in a time machine to go exploring? I hung on every episode of the revamped series that year. I cried when Rose was forced to leave the Doctor, when Donna had her memory wiped, and when Amy and Rory were taken by weeping angels. I was genuinely attached to those characters - they felt like my friends, or stand-ins for where I wanted to be.
Once I got to college, the appeal faded. I had my own life now, that was eventful and adventurous. I didn’t need to rely on other people’s fantasies to get through the day. My reality was stable and exciting enough to merit my full attention. That combined with a show that, when I stopped regularly watching, was becoming less and less fun due to the often over-wrought plotlines and halting character development of Steven Moffat, made me tune out.
Nevertheless, when the buzz around the Thirteenth Doctor’s casting started going at the tail end of last year, I got excited - specifically because I was hearing that for the first time in fifty years, the Doctor wouldn’t be a white guy.
As Doctor Who faded to the background of my life, feminism came into sharp focus in the foreground. I began to read Audre Lorde, Kimberley Crenshaw, and bell hooks. I studied queer theory, and critical masculinities. I started to see how the principles that were described in these books played out in the culture all around us. Principles like patriarchy, white supremacy, and heteronormativity were in full display in the television shows, movies, and music videos I watched. Once I began to see these trends, I couldn’t stop. My eyes had been opened, and there was no closing them again.
This afternoon, when Jodie Whittaker - an outstanding actress whose role in Broadchurch moved me profoundly over the course of its three seasons - was cast as the newest version of The Doctor, I watched the fanboy internet suffer a collective meltdown. Every comment thread was filled with white men complaining about how the show had crossed the line, lost their support, and been cuckolded by PC culture.
It strikes me as heavily ironic that in a show featuring a thousand year old alien with two hearts who flies around in a time machine saving the universe from other aliens, some of whom in their early versions literally had weapons made from toilet plungers, the fact that said alien is now a woman is what made the show “unrealistic”. Like, come on.
But these sorts of mass outcries on the part of devoted white male fans are happening more and more frequently. Last year’s Ghostbusters remake was subject to a coordinated online tantrum that saw trailers and movie review sites sabotaged by men irate that women were now the ones fighting specters. The new Star Wars trilogy faced criticism both because the lead, Rey, is female and because John Boyega, who is Black, couldn't play a stormtrooper because of his race. As the world, and the fictional worlds its inhabitants spawn, become more diverse, these men become more and more determined to hold these films and shows back in the past.
In some ways, I kind of get the impulse. For the year or so when Doctor Who was getting me through the school week, its familiarity and easiness was part of its appeal. It felt incorruptible, somehow insulated from the messiness of the outside world I was so desperate to escape from. It sometimes felt like it was all I had.
For a lot of these outraged fans, I’d imagine they feel the same way. The world is changing quickly, and maybe it’s left them behind. Everyone has shows and movies they enjoy, but when they become your entire life, you’re filling an emptiness in some other area. “Nerd culture” has long been a home for self-described misfits and outcasts. And if those who feel ignored by the world feel they are being usurped by women, by people of color, and others - instead of other white men, who in most cases are the aforementioned usurpers - they will lash out.
I’m sure in the circles that obsess over this show, there will be heated debate and vitriol spewed by those on both sides of the fence. But to those who think Whittaker’s casting is the end of the world, and those in Doctor Who: get a life. And I mean that in the nicest way possible. Because once you stop living in someone else’s universe, you’ll find that it’s much more interesting than anything you can watch on TV.