Doctor Who’s Feminine Mystique: Examining the Politics of Gender in Doctor Who

By Alyssa Franke

Professor Sarah Houser, Department of Government, School of Public Affairs Professor Kimberly Cowell-Meyers, Department of Government, School of Public Affairs University Honors in Political Science American University Spring 2014 Abstract

In The Feminine Mystique, Betty Friedan examined how fictional stories in women’s magazines helped craft a societal idea of femininity. Inspired by her work and the interplay between popular culture and gender norms, this paper examines the gender politics of Doctor

Who and asks whether it subverts traditional gender stereotypes or whether it has a feminine mystique of its own.

When Doctor Who returned to our TV screens in 2005, a new generation of women was given a new set of companions to look up to as role models and inspirations. Strong and clever, socially and sexually assertive, these women seemed to reject traditional stereotypical representations of femininity in favor of a new representation of femininity. But for all Doctor

Who has done to subvert traditional gender stereotypes and provide a progressive representation of femininity, its story lines occasionally reproduce regressive discourses about the role of women that reinforce traditional gender stereotypes and ideologies about femininity.

This paper explores how gender is represented and how norms are constructed through plot lines that punish and reward certain behaviors or choices by examining the narratives of the women Doctor Who’s titular protagonist interacts with. Ultimately, this paper finds that the show has in recent years promoted traits more in line with emphasized femininity, and that the narratives of the female companion’s have promoted and encouraged their return to domestic roles.

2 Introduction

On November 23rd, 1963, a strange man known only as “The Doctor” landed on the

British Broadcasting Channel (BBC) in a time-and-space machine disguised as a police telephone box. Doctor Who, now the longest running science fiction television show in the world, has transcended its humble beginnings as a children’s education show and has become an international phenomenon, viewed and adored around the world by people of all ages. Thirteen different men have played the Doctor in one continuous narrative which has spanned fifty years, and the creators, actors, and fans have all expressed optimism that the show will continue for many years.

Although the actors have changed and the show has developed, some prominent themes, tropes, and story devices have remained. One such narrative device has been that the Doctor always travels with a companion, and that companion has predominantly been a young, conventionally attractive woman. She may have a family, a job, or a boyfriend, but when the

Doctor appears in her life, she is willing to leave it all behind for a chance to travel through time and space. The relationship between the Doctor and his companion has often been described as the central dynamic of the show, and the companion plays a crucial role in the narrative. Current showrunner Steven Moffat described the story of Doctor Who as the companion’s story: “It was

Roe Tyler’s story, it’s Amy Pond’s story—the story of the time they knew the Doctor and how that began, how it developed and how it ended […] The Doctor’s the hero, but they’re the main character,” (Jeffery, 2014).

Eventually the Doctor’s companions leave him, sometimes because they choose to, and sometimes against their will. Each woman’s choice to join the Doctor on his journey and their

3 eventual departures present opportunities to examine the gendered dynamics of the show. Doctor

Who’s longevity, influence, and gender dynamics make it an attractive piece of popular culture through which to examine broader societal discourses about gender.

Literature Review

Creation of Discourses Through Popular Culture

Though choosing to analyze a television show may seem silly or inconsequential to larger discussions about gender in society, popular culture can, in fact, be a rich source of data. Jutta

Weldes (2006) examines high politics concepts, such as globalization, as “discourses” in which subjects, objects, and narratives are ordered in a way to constitute a broader meaning. She argues that these discourses cannot be understood without incorporating sources within popular culture, which she calls “low data” sources. These sources provide data to examine how popular discourses are represented and constructed in the public in mundane, commonsensical ways.

The one minor flaw of Weldes’ theoretical framework is that it conflates using popular culture as a source of data to show broader representation of discourses with using popular culture to show how discourses are constituted. Nexon and Neumann’s 2006 study of Harry

Potter makes a sharper distinction between using popular culture as a source of data and analyzing popular culture’s constitutive effects. Their introduction outlines four ways in which popular culture can affect broader discourses. There are determining effects, in which popular culture provides information that helps determine actions; informing effects, in which popular discourses inform without necessarily determining actions; enabling effects, in which popular culture is used as a reference to support actions and ideas; and naturalizing effects, in which

4 popular culture make popular discourses seem natural. Though it is important to distinguish between using popular culture as evidence and using it to conduct a constitutive analysis, both efforts can be complementary and are often used in tandem.

Feminist and Gender Discourses in Popular Culture

Popular culture has become a ripe area for examining how discourses about men, women, and gender are created, disseminated, and become hegemonic. Betty Friedan, whose book The

Feminine Mystique (1983) is often credited with sparking second-wave feminism in the United

States, was one of the early feminists to examine popular culture to see what type of discourses about gender roles were being represented. She argued that popular culture had a determining and naturalizing effect in creating and sustaining a rigid and harmful ideal of femininity. Friedan examined how women’s magazines throughout the 1950s created the narrative of the “Happy

Housewife Heroine,” a woman who was earnest and kind, but did not need to concern herself with earning an education or building a career and, instead, should actively avoid those paths least she end up without a husband and fail to reach her ultimate fulfillment as a housewife and mother. The “Happy Housewife Heroine” narrative set rigid gender roles and stereotypes and, according to Friedan, created such a powerful discourse regarding femininity that many women convinced themselves that this image of femininity was natural and right.

Since then, others writers have built on the theories of second-wave feminism and later post-structuralist theories to analyze cultural ideals of gender in popular culture. R.W. Connell’s groundbreaking book Gender and Power (1987) described hegemonic gender ideologies as the ordering of versions of masculinity and femininity at a macro level in society. The hegemonic

5 ideals Connell describes are, by necessity, a general impression of cultural ideals of masculinity and femininity. Though the ideals are hegemonic, that does not imply that they are totally culturally dominant or necessarily a realistic portrayal of the actual personalities of a majority of individuals. In many cases, they are imaginations of a cultural ideal or fantasies. There are multiple variations of masculinity and femininity, yet the “hegemonic masculinity” and

“emphasized femininity” which Connell describes remain dominant through the exertion of political, physical, economic, and cultural power. Connell notes specifically that these cultural ideals are often constructed and reinforced through popular culture.

R.W. Connell notes that there is no hegemonic femininity on the scale that there is hegemonic masculinity, however, there is an “emphasized femininity” that differentiates women based on their subordination to men. Because femininity is not constructed in relation to dominance over women and subordinated masculinities like hegemonic masculinity is, authority, aggression, power, and technology are not often major themes in femininity. In addition, the most important feature of hegemonic masculinity is its heterosexuality and it is often closely related with the institution of marriage. There are multiple diverse forms of emphasized femininity because there isn’t a pressure for one form to dominate another, yet they all are constructed in relation to women’s subordination to men. One form of emphasized femininity, which Connell found to be dominant in 1987, emphasizes compliance and accommodation of the interests and desires of men. There were other femininities organized around resisting or adapting to men’s power in society which emphasized feminine virtues such as nurturance, compliance, and empathy.

6 Since the publication of R.W. Connell’s book, many other researchers have analyzed how these variations of femininity have been constructed, contested, and competed against each other.

Kate Milestone and Anneke Meyer (2012) discusses several sociological studies through the perspective that popular culture is an arena where these various ideologies of feminism are constructed and compete with each other and where the more dominant ideologies have been challenged and adapted. By tracing the findings of several studies over four decades, they outline the emergence of a “new femininity” which is “socially and sexually assertive, confident, aspirational, and fun-seeking.” Girls are encouraged to reject the pressure of emphasized femininity to be “ladylike” and are instead encouraged to engage in behaviors and activities that were previously assumed to be masculine.

This new view of femininity did not displace the traditional view, and in fact Milestone and Meyer (2012) argue that “new femininity” often reflects traditional ideologies about femininity. Many of the studies they examined showed that popular culture continued to promote a more conventional femininity by emphasizing the need for girls to obtain and maintain a certain physical appearance and pursue heterosexual relationships. One of the most prominent narratives of this co-opted “new femininity” has been “retreatism,” in which women are encouraged to retreat from their public lives and seek fulfillment in their homes and with their families. This narrative, outlined by Diane Negra (2009), either totally ignores or outright rejects feminism and has increasingly reflected post-feminist themes reinforcing conservative ideologies of femininity. And, in a way that is shockingly reminiscent of The Feminine Mystique, she argues these post-feminism themes portray jobs and careers as against women’s feminine nature and present traditional feminine roles as women’s most fulfilling roles.

7 Milestone and Meyer’s analysis concludes that representations of women and femininity have diversified as dominant discourses of gender roles have been challenged, but these reactionary responses to these challenges have in turn elevated traditional discourses about women and gender roles. In cases of both men and women, discourses generated in popular culture have had determinative effects on how women and men are perceived in public and how they are treated by individuals and institutions, depending on the extent to which they conform with certain narratives about masculinity and femininity.

Subsequent works have applied a similar theoretical framework in order to analyze gender discourses within the particular genre of science fiction. Brian Attebery (2002) specifically aims to decode gender in science fiction and argues that science fiction provides a unique way to examine discourses about gender and provides new ways to challenge those discourses. Of course, science fiction is also a space in which dominant discourses can be enshrined in some of science fiction’s most common tropes. For example, tropes about

“supermen” and “wonder women,” visions of humanity that have evolved to become stronger and smarter, commonly show men as aggressors and women as passive supporters, even when the women are equal in power and strength to their male counterparts. According to Attebery, when women are shown as superior to men, their power often derives from their sexuality, or else they must assume masculine characteristics.

One thing made clear in all of the above literature is that discourses about gender continue to be constituted, challenged, and re-constituted in popular culture. Popular culture can promote dominant discourses about gender, but it can also challenge these discourses. These

8 discourses cannot be ignored, because they frequently have determinative effects on how men and women perceive themselves and on how they act towards each other in society.

Feminist and Gender Critiques of Doctor Who

Doctor Who, with nearly 50 years of history, provides ample material for analyzing the representation of gender roles and contemporary discourses on gender.

The anthology Chicks Unravel Time collected several essays from Doctor Who’s female fans discussing, among other topics, the way in which the show upholds or subverts traditional gender roles, the sexual politics of the show, and to some extent the way in which the discourses they picked up from Doctor Who affected their own lives. Seanan McGuire analyzes in “Waiting for the Doctor: The Women of Series Five” how the narratives of the women in Series 5 of

Doctor Who reinforce gender ideologies of women as caring and accommodating of men. Rachel

Swrisky in “Guten Tag, Hitler,” about how River Song transgresses gendered stereotypes by being both feminine and powerful. And Courtney Stoker in “Maids and Masters: The

Distribution of Power in Doctor Who Series Three” analyzes the power dynamics in the relationships between the male Doctor and his female companions. If any general conclusions can be garnered from the essays, it is that while Doctor Who tries and occasionally succeeds in subverting traditional gender roles, it frequently upholds them. Some of the companions are able to defy traditional gender stereotypes, but they are frequently reduced to love interests defined by the Doctor or the other men in their life. Yet, the show continues to provide an arena for competition between these different gender discourses.

9 These sentiments are echoed by several essays from the anthology Queers Dig Time

Lords. In some ways, the show disrupted and countered dominant discourses about gender.

Several essays discuss the way the concept of “regeneration,” which was created as a way to allow the same character to be played by a different actor and is now used as a way to reinvent the character every few years, destabilizes dominant discourses about gender by opening up the possibility that the Doctor’s sex and/or gender could be changed. Susan Bigelow’s essay “Same

Old Me, Different Face: Transition, Regeneration and Change” describes the enabling effects of using the concept of regeneration to describe transitioning, as a transgender individual, from presenting as male to presenting as female. However, several essays describe how Doctor Who upholds dominant discourses about gender, sexuality, and relations between the genders. “In

Praise of Mature Women, or Why Donna Noble and River Song Totally Need To Call Me,” describes how a number of the female companions of the most recent episodes have been adoring romantic interests for the Doctor, while “The Heterosexual Agenda” laments the recent aggressive assertion of the Doctor’s heterosexuality, which has shifted relations between the

Doctor and his female companions.

Perhaps the most comprehensive analysis of gender in Doctor Who comes from Piers

Britton’s 2011 TARDISbound, in which he analyzes the Doctor’s masculine presentation and the relationship between the Doctor and his female companions. Britton argues that there has never been one constant masculine presentation for the Doctor, but that these presentations have shifted throughout his various incarnations. Sometimes these presentations have reinforced dominant discourses about masculinity by presenting the Doctor as the symbol of patriarchal authority. But he argues that more recent incarnations have undermined dominant discourses by presenting a

10 more feminized Doctor, similar to the ‘new man’ discourse enumerated by Milestone and Meyer

(2012). Similarly, he argues that relationships between the Doctor and his female companions up until very recently represented discourses about patriarchal relationships between young women and much older men. The companions themselves rarely disrupted dominant gender norms, and the Doctor often acts as a figure of patriarchal authority by curbing their autonomy and limiting their actions. However, he argues that one of the most recent companions, Amy Pond, is beginning to subvert these patriarchal dynamics.

Notably, all of these analyses lack any discussion of Series 6 and 7 of Doctor Who, or the

50th Anniversary episode, which I would argue displayed a reversal of the Series 5 trend which led Britton to argue that the patriarchal relationship between the Doctor and his female companions was being subverted. Additionally, these analyses lack a concentrated, comprehensive analysis of the gender norms displayed by the female companions, or any comprehensive discussion of the constitutive effects of the way gender and gender relationships are represented in Doctor Who.

Methodology

In this paper I will be examining the narratives about gender and femininity in order to discover whether Doctor Who has a feminine mystique of its own. My own methods will closely mimic the analysis done by Betty Friedan in Chapter 2 of The Feminine Mystique, “The Happy

Housewife Heroine.” First, I will analyze the reasons the Doctor invites each of the women to join him in his travels to see which qualities and characteristics he looks for and, subsequently, which characteristics are valued in the overall narrative. I will see whether the companions more

11 closely reflect emphasized femininity as described by Connell or the new femininity as outlined by Milestone and Meyer. Second, I will analyze the circumstances surrounding each companion’s departure from the show to examine whether the narrative about the companion’s transition from their adventures through time and space to their normal lives at home reflects the narratives of retreatism or the feminine mystique.

My case studies will be the primary female companions in the new Doctor Who: Rose

Tyler, Martha Jones, Donna Noble, Amy Pond, and Clara Oswald. These case studies will also be supported or contrasted by other prominent female characters including River Song, the daughter of Amy Pond; Harriet Jones, MP from Flydale North and later Prime Minister; and Kate Stewart, head of the military organization UNIT and daughter of Classic Doctor Who character Brigadier

Lethbridge-Stewart. I will also compare their narratives with the Doctor’s male companions,

Mickey Smith and Rory Williams, to see whether the elements in their narratives are gender- specific.

The 99 episodes of Series 1 through 7 of the new Doctor Who that aired between 2005 and 2013 will form my case study. The 50th Anniversary episode “The Day of the Doctor” airing on November 23rd, the 2013 Christmas special “The Name of the Doctor” airing on December

25th, and the mini-episodes released throughout those seven seasons featuring Doctor Who’s cast will also be included in my case study. I will frequently refer to Series 1 through the post-Series

4 Specials (2005-2010) as the Russell T. Davies era and Series 5 through the 2013 Specials as the

Steven Moffat era for the showrunners who led the show during those time periods. Although the showrunners are not the sole writers during the time they led the show (in fact, Moffat wrote several episodes for Davies while Davies was showrunner), they are responsible for the overall

12 tone and direction of the show. Davies described the role as a combination between writer and executive producer, with the responsibility to set the overall tone and direction of the show and streamline the scripts sent to him by various writers to fit that direction (Davies, 2014). As I will argue in the following sections, there are substantial differences in the way women are portrayed across the two eras.

I am limiting my study to episodes that have aired after 2005 because they are considered to be a separate unit from the episodes that aired between 1963 and 1989, even if together they form a continuous narrative. Fans of the show refer to the earlier era as “Classic Who” and episodes which have aired since 2005 as “New Who,” and the two eras are numbered separately by the BBC (episodes that aired in 2005 were labeled “Series 1” rather than “Series 27,” indicating the two are viewed separately). In addition, I am limiting my research to this era of

Doctor Who in order to more narrowly focus my research on how gender stereotypes are reproduced by contemporary creators for contemporary audiences.

Constructing a New Femininity: “I’m not his assistant!”

The Doctor’s companions are confident, assertive, and aspire to more exciting, meaningful lives. They seek out excitement and fun, and aren’t ashamed of flirting with whoever they want. And all of them are eager to prove they are the equals or betters of any man out there, including the Doctor. Yet although they aspire to a representation of femininity that resembles the “new femininity” outlined by Milestone and Meyer, they have in recent years tended to reinforce more traditional representations of femininity. In this section, I will analyze the qualities and characteristics the Doctor seeks out and values in his female companions. I will also

13 examine the power dynamic between the Doctor and the women he interacts with and how these women operate within this dynamic. Finally, I will analyze how the narrative treats the Doctor’s most egregious paternalistic tendencies.

Russell T. Davies’ Women: Flawed but Fighting

Not just anyone can be the Doctor’s companion. As the Doctor tells failed companion

Adam in “The Long Game”: “I only take the best. I’ve got Rose.” In the Russell T. Davies era, the women who would be the Doctor’s companions faced a test (intentional or not) to determine whether they had the qualities and characteristics that would make them suitable companions.

In Rose Tyler’s first episode, “Rose,” the Doctor spends most of his time belittling Rose, even as he slowly gains a begrudging respect for her. Though he is initially impressed with her deduction that students would be behind what she assumes to be a fake attack by plastic mannequins, he pushes her out of the building with the sarcastic implication that she would rather return to her normal life and leave him to possibly die as he attempts to save her planet than do anything to help him. Time and again he tries to rebuff her attempts to learn more about the alien threatening London, belittling her intelligence and her courage, but Rose pushes back every time, forcing him to acknowledge that she is clever enough to understand what is happening and courageous enough to act on that knowledge. She also challenges him repeatedly on his behavior, especially criticizing his callous response to Mickey’s supposed death. At the very end of the episode, after Rose has saved his life, destroyed the Nestene consciousness, and saved the world, she tells the Doctor: “You were useless in there, you’d be dead if it wasn’t for me.” The Doctor, without qualification or a sarcastic remark about the human race, replies, “Yes

14 I would, thank you,” and offers her a place on the TARDIS. Mickey, who cowered in the corner, encouraged Rose not to help the Doctor, and called him an alien “thing” is specifically not offered a place on the TARDIS.

In Martha Jones’ first episode, it is more obvious that the Doctor is testing Martha Jones.

While the other doctors, nurses, and patients who are in the hospital are panicking, Martha is taking charge of the patients and quickly assessing the situation. The Doctor praises her initial deduction that something other than the hospital windows is containing the air around the hospital and challenges her to walk outside of the hospital with him. She agrees, even when he reminds her they might die, to which he replies, “Good. Come on,” as if she’s passed her first test. He then singles out Martha’s panicking co-worker and says she must stay behind; she hasn’t passed his test. Throughout the episode the Doctor encourages Martha to make her own deductions about what is happening to them, only supplying her with information when it is not something she, as a human who has lived her entire life on Earth and would have a limited knowledge of alien technology, would be expected to know. He relies on her bravery and cleverness to expose the plasmavore after he has sacrificed himself, and it is her selfless actions that revives him. In addition, the Doctor welcomes it when Martha challenges him and refuses to call him “Doctor” because she feels that is a title that must be earned. Though she isn’t officially welcomed as a companion for several more episodes, the Doctor does invite her to join him for a trip in the TARDIS.

Donna, unlike most companions, has two meetings with the Doctor before she becomes his companion. In her first episode, “The Runaway Bride,” the Doctor spends most of his time belittling her and arguing with her. Eventually Donna’s tenacity and assertiveness impresses him,

15 and by the end of the episode he offers her a place on the TARDIS, which she refuses. Donna returns in “Partners in Crime,” having spent most of her time since last meeting the Doctor trying to track him down again. The Doctor continues to presume that Donna is not very clever and can’t help him stop Miss Foster’s assault on humanity, but she proves him wrong. Not only had she investigated Miss Foster on her own, almost exactly paralleling the Doctor’s same investigation, she was able to supply the Doctor with the final tool needed to disable Miss

Foster’s “Inducer” device and save a million lives. This time it is Donna who asks to join the

Doctor in the TARDIS, and the Doctor agrees.

In these “tests,” we can see which characteristics and qualities the Doctor seeks out and values in his companions. They must be brave; even if they don’t seek out dangerous situations, their reaction must be to put themselves right in the middle of a conflict rather than try to save themselves. They are shocked and occasionally afraid by the dangers they encounter in their journeys through time and space, but they are not easily panicked or intimidated. And above all, they must be assertive. Not only do they have to be assertive to confront the villains they face, they have to be able to challenge the Doctor. In fact, it is often asserted that the Doctor needs companions in order to challenge him. When Donna rejects the Doctor’s offer to travel with him in “The Runaway Bride,” she encouraged him to find someone else willing to travel with him, saying, “Sometimes, I think you need someone to stop you.” Throughout their adventures with the Doctor, his companions constantly challenge the Doctor’s judgement and actions. They do not quietly accept the Doctor’s judgement and allow him to do whatever he wants.

The Doctor’s companions seek to establish more equal relationships with the Doctor and fought his more domineering tendencies, asserting themselves when he belittled them or tried to

16 order them around. In one particularly memorable exchange from “The Fires of Pompeii,” the

Doctor tries to order Donna to give up her attempts to save the citizens of Pompeii from the impending volcanic explosion. Donna, furious, asks, “What, and you’re in charge?” The Doctor replies, “TARDIS, Time Lord, yeah!” attempting to use both his status as a member of an alien race that had a system of laws governing interference in time and his ability to travel through time and space as proof of his authority in this situation. Donna, however, will have none of it, yelling back, “Donna, human, no! I don’t need your permission!” She then proceeds to undermine him at every opportunity by informing the citizens of Pompeii about what is about to happen. Ultimately, the Doctor admits that she was right to challenge his behavior and force him to save some of the citizens of Pompeii.

The Doctor’s companions also challenge his more egregious paternalistic behaviors. The

Doctor’s concern for the safety of his companions extends beyond that of one friend for another.

He views the safety of his companions as his personal responsibility, as if by inviting them aboard the TARDIS they became charges in his care. For example, when Rose is in danger in

“The Unquiet Dead,” the Doctor tells Charles Dickens (who happened to be a bystander), “It’s my fault. She’s in my care, now she’s in danger.” Twice the Doctor sends Rose away in the midst of a battle for her own protection, but both times she refuses to let him make this decision on her behalf and fights to return to the Doctor and fight alongside him. In “The Sound of Drums” the

Doctor orders Martha not to tell her family about their conflict with the Master (whether for her safety or for theirs is made unclear), but recognizing that they are in greater danger when they do not know what is threatening them, Martha tells the Doctor, “I’ll do what I like!” and tells them anyway. In “The Runaway Bride” the Doctor lies to Donna and tells her the particles she’s been

17 doused with are safe, but Donna deduces he’s lying and forces him to tell her the truth. The

Doctor may be thinking about the safety and well-being of his companions, but they refuse to let him make decisions on their behalf or hide information about their lives from them.

There is, of course, a fundamental imbalance of power in the relationship between the

Doctor and his companion. He is a practically immortal alien with encyclopedic knowledge of the universe, capable of reading and manipulating minds, and with the ability to travel through time and space. And he has used this imbalance of power against his companions. Arguably the most tragic— and disturbing— exertion of this power occurs in the Series 4 finale when Donna inadvertently absorbs the Doctor’s consciousness in a regeneration gone wrong. This information is burning up her brain and killing her, so the Doctor uses his psychic abilities to erase Donna’s memories of her travels with him in the TARDIS, even as she shouts and begs him not too.

Yet, the narrative questions the Doctor’s use of his power to alter people’s lives without their consent, especially when he justifies his actions by arguing that he is protecting that person.

Just three episodes later in “The Waters of Mars” the Doctor violates a fixed point in time and saves three people who should’ve died, including Captain Adelaide Brooke. Adelaide questions the Doctor’s actions, reminding him that he had just told her that her death was a fixed point that could not be altered, and that indeed her death was necessary to spur future explorations into space. The Doctor is unbothered and demands her gratitude for saving her life. But Adelaide is disturbed, telling him that no one should have that amount of power. The Doctor rejects her concern and dubs himself the “Time Lord Victorious,” giving himself the authority and power to bend the laws of time to suit his whim. Adelaide rejects his authority, telling him “The Time

Lord Victorious is wrong.” Then, in the strongest rebuke to his authority she can give, she kills

18 herself. By dying as she was always supposed to, she forces the Doctor to recognize that he had gone too far and granted himself too much power over people’s lives.

Finally, on several occasions Rose, Martha, and Donna must fight against explicitly sexist biases and prejudices. Rose and the Doctor challenged the sexist presumptions of a man in 1950s

Britain about “women’s work” in “The Idiot’s Lantern;” Martha challenges Shakespeare’s opinion that women shouldn’t be Doctors in “The Shakespeare Code;” Donna challenges a man’s statement that the prophecies of female seers are inherently inferior to men’s in “The Fires of

Pompeii.” These moments, though they never explicitly invoke feminism, provide an opportunity for the companions to prove their feminist bona fides by challenging sexist and misogynistic assumptions. The one complaint that can be made of these moments is that they present sexism as a relic of a less enlightened past, rather than something women face everyday in contemporary times, revealing a subtle post-feminist bias.

In short, the companions of the Russell T. Davies reject many of the characteristics of emphasized femininity and portray the characteristics in line with those of new femininity. They are bold and assertive and constantly putting themselves in danger to help others. They refuse to be the Doctor’s subordinates and fight for him to consider them as his partners and respect them as equals. While the Doctor may be protective of his companions to the point of being patriarchal, the narrative confronts this tendency and his power over his companions, forcing the viewer to question whether the Doctor has the right to make decisions for others, even if it is supposedly in their best interest. And, even more importantly, the narrative portrays the women resisting the Doctor’s attempts to control their lives. They do not accept that the Doctor knows what is best for them, a sharp contrast from the companions who will shortly follow them.

19 Steven Moffat’s Women: Feisty but Fundamentally Flawed

On the surface, Amy Pond and Clara Oswald, the companions of the Steven Moffat Era, display the socially assertive characteristics that the Doctor has valued in his companions. They are bold and aggressive, they frequently overcome their own fears and put themselves in dangerous situations, and they are not intimidated by those around them. In short, they display the typically “male” characteristics that contradict emphasized femininity and are more in line with new femininity. But as the Doctor’s reasons for selecting his companions become more explicitly paternalistic, the qualities and characteristics he values in his companions align more with those of emphasized femininity. The companions become a dangerous mystery for the

Doctor to solve, and as a result, they become someone that he must protect. As his behavior becomes increasingly paternalistic, he demands and values their compliance with the actions he decides are in their best interest.

Amy Pond first meets the Doctor when she is seven years old and the newly regenerated

Doctor crashes the TARDIS in her backyard. He returns fourteen years later and invites her to travel with him, telling her that he’s asked her to travel with him because he’s lonely. However, as he reveals in the Series 5 finale “The Big Bang,” the Doctor really asked Amy to travel with him because she was “the girl who didn’t make sense.” She lived in a big house with too many rooms, her mother and father had vanished, and she couldn’t remember major events, such as the

Dalek invasion of the Earth. He took it upon himself to investigate this mystery while providing only vague hints to Amy that something was amiss. When he finally revealed his deception to

Amy, she never questioned his decision to deliberately hide this information from her. The

20 narrative supports both the Doctor’s deception and Amy’s blind faith in the Doctor. When the

Doctor travels back in time through his own timeline, he finds Amy in the past and asks her to trust him. When Amy notes that he doesn’t always tell her the truth, he replies, “If I always told you the truth I wouldn't need you to trust me,” an assertion Amy doesn’t question.

In Series 6 Amy poses a second mystery to the Doctor. In the first half of the series she suffers from a Schrodinger’s pregnancy; after being scanned by the Doctor she is revealed to be simultaneously pregnant and not-pregnant. In this instance the Doctor’s deceptive behavior becomes even more disturbing. The Doctor scans Amy without her knowledge or consent, allowing him to hide this information from her. He later discovers that Amy has been replaced by a flesh avatar of herself that she is unconsciously controlling while her real, very pregnant body is imprisoned by his enemies, and again hides this information from her. In fact, he waits until she is in labor before he vaguely hints at what is happening, which only terrifies her more. He then abruptly cuts off the signal controlling her body, returning her to her own body as she is about to give birth. Again, the Doctor took it upon himself to investigate a mystery in Amy’s life without informing her that anything was amiss. Again, Amy never criticizes the Doctor for his deception. And again, the Doctor continues to demand blind trust that he is doing what is best for

Amy.

This pattern was repeated with the introduction of Clara Oswald. The Doctor technically meets Clara twice before she is formally introduced as his companion, and on both occasions she dies. He recognizes that she was the same woman and begins searching for another version of her, eventually finding the original Clara in modern day London. At first he attempts to hide his knowledge of her other lives (and deaths) from her. He finally reveals this knowledge to her

21 when they are trapped together in “Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS,” raising his voice higher and higher until he is yelling at her, demanding to know if she’s “A trick? A trap?” In order to save the TARDIS and themselves, the Doctor plans to reset time, which will inadvertently cause them to forget their memories. Clara says she doesn’t want to forget what happened to her, but the Doctor tells her it’s better that they keep their secrets from each other.

After time has been reset and their memories of the alternative timeline have been erased, the

Doctor demands to know if Clara feels safe, again demanding blind trust and faith that he is protecting her without telling her that something is threatening her. These memories return to

Clara in “The Name of the Doctor,” and although she demands the Doctor explain what he meant when he said he saw her die, they are distracted and the Doctor’s deception is never addressed again.

It may be hard for many to accept the characterization of Amy or Clara as “compliant,” given the number of times they argue with the Doctor or are even characterized as being domineering over him. However, these are hollow displays of control and the companions are compliant to the Doctor’s will on decisions that most directly impact their agency and autonomy.

In Series 7, for example, Clara chooses not to travel full-time with the Doctor and establishes a system where the Doctor visits her weekly. But this level of control over her interactions with the

Doctor is superficial at best. The Doctor seeks her out specifically, stalks her through various periods of her life in between his visits, and keeps his knowledge of the deaths of her alternative lives from her. Ultimately, he walks her blindly into the very situation which nearly causes her death.

22 The Doctor obtains information about Amy and Clara’s lives that they themselves are not aware of and then actively attempts to hide this information from them. He demands that his companions trust him and have faith that whatever he is doing, he is doing in their best interest.

Furthermore, his behavior is supported by the narrative. When his deceptions are uncovered, the companions never criticize him for deceiving them and accept that the Doctor making judgements and decisions on their behalf without reservation. While Davies confronted and challenged the inherent imbalance of power between the Doctor and his companions, Moffat draws upon and reinforces this imbalance.

The Doctor’s paternalistic attitudes also influence the way he interacts with other women.

This attitude becomes especially obvious in his interactions with Kate Stewart in the 50th

Anniversary episode “The Day of the Doctor.” The daughter of UNIT founder Brigadier Alistair

Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart, Kate had followed in her father’s footsteps and was the leader of

UNIT during an attempted invasion by the Zygons. The Zygons, who have the power to shape- shift and absorb another person’s memories, impersonate Kate Stewart and access the Black

Archive, which houses the most dangerous weapons that UNIT has collected. In order to prevent the Zygons from using these weapons to take over the Earth, Kate activates a countdown to detonate a nuclear warhead that will destroy both the Black Archive and the rest of London. The

Doctor demands that Kate stop the countdown, and when she refuses, he triggers a memory- erasing device that makes the Zygon impersonating Kate and the actual human Kate forget whether they are human or Zygon, forcing them to cancel the nuclear detonation and negotiate together.

23 Kate’s dilemma is intended to provide a parallel to the Doctor’s situation during the Time

War, where he was forced to kill both the Daleks and the Time Lords in order to prevent the war from consuming the universe. When Kate refuses to stop the nuclear detonation she reminds the

Doctor that he’s been forced to kill millions of people in order to save billions before. The

Doctor recognizes this, but tells her that he regrets making that choice and that if Kate makes a similar situation, she won’t ever be able to live with herself. And because he regrets the kind of person he has become since making that choice, he tells her: “[B]ecause I got it wrong, I’m going to make you get it right.”

Later in the episode the Doctor does get the opportunity to go back in time and revise his earlier choice after discovering a way to save the Time Lords. Both moments are portrayed as essentially good, where clever solutions prevented unnecessary deaths and spared our heroes from making terrible decisions. But the manner in which each of these choices is made is vastly different. For the Doctor, the moment is a triumphant one in which he reclaims his agency and is able to avoid making a decision he deeply regrets, freeing himself from years of guilt. Kate, however, is deprived of her agency and autonomy by the Doctor and is forced to negotiate with the aggressors who attacked her and threatened the Earth. The Doctor’s actions are framed as something done for Kate’s own good, since he believes she is incapable of understanding the long-term personal consequences of her actions. The episode ends with the implication that the negotiations were successful, and the audience never sees Kate’s reaction to the Doctor’s actions.

This is not the first time the Doctor has acted as the paternalistic protector of the Earth, and been in conflict with a woman in an position of authority as a result. In the first episode of

Series 2, “The Christmas Invasion,” the Doctor orchestrates the removal of Prime Minister

24 Harriet Jones from office after she orders the destruction of an alien ship that had just threatened the Earth as they were fleeing. Part of their conflict is over whether or not the Prime Minister’s attack on the aliens was justified, but part of their conflict is also over authority. Throughout the show’s history the Doctor has frequently acted as a protector of the Earth, acting on humanity’s behalf to protect them from alien threats, a theme that this episode deliberately draws upon by having the alien invaders name the Doctor as the Earth’s champion. While acting as Earth’s champion, the Doctor halts the alien invasion of Earth and arranges for the alien’s retreat. Yet

Harriet Jones, the British Prime Minister acting as an elected representative of humans, also acts from a position of authority and orders the destruction of the alien ship as they are retreating. She reminds the Doctor that he is not always there to protect the Earth and that in his absence several humans were killed by the invaders. She defends her action, claiming it as an act of self defense on behalf of those she was elected to represent.

So when the Doctor tells Harriet Jones he should’ve stopped her from destroying the alien ship, she views that statement as a challenge to her authority and suggest this makes him another “alien threat.” The Doctor responds angrily, telling her: “Don’t challenge me, Harriet

Jones! […] I can bring down your government with a single word.” Because she challenged his authority as a protector of the Earth and his judgement on whether the attack against the aliens was justified, he orchestrates her removal from office. Yet, over the next several seasons, the

Doctor’s decision to remove Harriet Jones is reexamined and questioned. Her departure from office allows one of the Doctor’s most dangerous enemies to become Prime Minister in Series 3.

Harriet Jones remain unrepentant when she returns to the show in Series 4. During an attack on

Earth by the Daleks, Harriet Jones gathers together the Doctor’s former companions in order to

25 devise a plan to save the Earth. When one of the companions reminds her that the Doctor deposed her, she stands by her actions, noting that, just as she predicted, the Earth is being threatened and the Doctor isn’t there to defend them, requiring them to defend themselves.

Perhaps, like Harriet Jones, Kate Stewart will return to challenge the Doctor’s authority and defend her actions. But there are unmistakable differences in the way each woman’s challenge to the Doctor’s paternalistic authority is framed and treated by the narrative. Harriet

Jones was punished by the Doctor for challenging his authority, but she was given an opportunity to defend herself and never accepted that the Doctor did the right thing. In addition, the Doctor faced direct consequences for removing Harriet Jones from power, and her concerns were eventually validated. In contrast, the Doctor’s decision to temporarily remove Kate Stewart’s memories to force her into a negotiation, which is a more direct deprivation of her autonomy and agency, was treated as an unquestionable good. The Doctor’s authority to determine what is best for humanity and for Kate Stewart herself is never questioned or challenged.

The Doctor’s Paternalism and the Companions’ Compliance

In short, while the Doctor has always had a bit of a paternalistic streak, it has been validated and even praised in recent years. During the Russell T. Davies era, this tendency was challenged by both the characters and the narrative. Rose, Martha, Donna, Adelaide Brooke, and

Harriet Jones rejected the idea that the Doctor knew what was best for him or for the planet, and the narrative often validated their concerns and challenged the Doctor’s behavior. Though he had tremendous power over their lives, that power was repeatedly questioned, and at the end of the

26 Tenth Doctor’s narrative arc his paternalism and power were presented as the most disturbing and dangerous aspects of his character.

But during the Steven Moffat era, the Doctor’s paternalism has become a more fundamental and more accepted part of the dynamic between the Doctor, his companions, and the other women he interacts with. Clara and Amy accept that the Doctor is acting in their best interests, never challenge him for deceiving them, and willingly give him the blind trust and faith he demands. And when the women refuse to comply with the Doctor when he is acting on what he believes to be in their best interests, they are punished by the narrative. When Kate Stewart refuses to cooperate with the Doctor and is subsequently denied of her agency and autonomy, the narrative validates the Doctor acting as the paternalistic protector of Kate Stewart by portraying his intervention as an unquestionable good.

As the Doctor acts increasingly paternalistic, he demands increasing compliance from his companions, a shift the narrative has endorsed and promoted. The show’s treatment of the Doctor and the women he interacts with has evolved, but not for the better.

The Whovian Mystique: “Don’t Make Me Go Back.”

One of the most pivotal moments in a companion’s story, second only to their decision to join the Doctor, is the moment where they leave the Doctor. Traveling through time and space with the Doctor is an exciting adventure, but more than that, it is frequently an empowering experience for the companions. Some companions are forced to leave the Doctor, some choose to leave of their own free will, and others are pressured to do so by extreme circumstances.

However they do it, all of the companions must eventually transition from an extraordinary life with the Doctor to an ordinary life back home on Earth. Their departure is inevitable; after all,

27 the reason Doctor Who has been able to survive and thrive for fifty years is because it can continuously replace its cast. So while the fact that they are departing is not in and of itself extraordinary, examining how and why they leave the Doctor, and what they do after they leave, provides a unique opportunity to examine broader societal narratives about femininity and gender roles. In the following section, I will examine the story arcs of companions who have departed the Doctor to determine how they conform or differ from prevalent narratives about women’s domestic roles.

Russell T. Davies’ Happy Endings

During the Russell T. Davies era, the companions’ departures share many elements in common with the retreatism narrative outlined by Diane Negra, in which a migratory, professional heroine has a “retreatist epiphany,” realizes that the sense of self she has built is deficient unless she can rebuild a family base, and returns home. Though the narratives of the companions do not exactly align with this narrative, several common themes can be found. First, every companion is forced at some point to leave a life that has given them a stronger sense of self, purpose, and direction and adjust to an average, normal life back at home with their families. Second, after a sub-plot in which they have tried and failed to secure a romantic heterosexual relationship, they almost immediately secure a relationship upon leaving the

TARDIS.

Rose Tyler is separated from the Doctor on three separate occasions, but it is the first and last of these occurrences that the retreatist themes of her narrative are most readily apparent. The first time she is separated from the Doctor she refuses to conform to the retreatist narrative and

28 fights to return to the life she had with the Doctor. In the Series 1 finale, “The Parting of the

Ways,” the Doctor and Rose are locked in a battle against the Daleks over the Earth. The Doctor sends Rose back home to Earth against her will, fulfilling a promise he made to her mother to keep her safe. Rose is distraught and wants to return to the Doctor, but her mother Jackie and her boyfriend Mickey try to convince her to give up and stay with them on Earth. Rose, however, can’t adjust to living a normal life again. As the first episode of Series 1 showed the audience,

Rose’s life before the Doctor was stable, routine, but largely without purpose. She had a low level of education, no fulfilling job, and no higher prospects for her life. But after the Doctor entered her life, she found a life that was more unstable, but was filled with adventure and gave

Rose a sense of purpose. As Rose tells Mickey and Jackie: “It was a better life. I don’t mean all the traveling, seeing spaceships and things, that don’t matter. The Doctor showed me a better way of living your life […] You don’t just give up, you don’t just let things happen. You make a stand, you say no! You have the guts to do what’s right when everyone else runs away!”

Although it is implied in the episode that the simmering romance between Rose and the

Doctor has some influence on Rose’s decision to return to him, she makes it clear in this confrontation that this is not her primary motivation. Rose isn’t returning to the Doctor because she loves the Doctor, she is returning to him because it is the right thing to do, and because she can no longer live a normal life on Earth. Mickey even attempts to rekindle their romance, which had been falling apart as a result of Rose’s adventures with the Doctor, in an attempt to convince

Rose to stay on Earth, telling her “You can’t spend the rest of your life thinking about the Doctor

[…] You’ve got to start living your own life. You know, a proper life, like the kind he’s never had. The sort of life you can have with me.” Mickey makes a distinction, not just between her

29 love for the Doctor and her love for Mickey, but between the type of life she would have with each. But at that very moment Rose discovers a way to return to the Doctor and rejects Mickey’s appeal, choosing instead to rejoin the Doctor and help in his battle against the Daleks.

In the Series 4 finale “Journey’s End” Rose is again separated from the Doctor. This time, however, their separation is permanent, and the reasons she chooses to leave the Doctor behind almost directly conform to the retreatism narrative. After being trapped in a parallel universe with her family, Rose finally manages to return to the Doctor in the midst of another battle against the Daleks. During the battle, the Doctor accidentally creates a part-human, part-Time

Lord clone of himself, who shares his same thoughts and memories. Once the battle is concluded, the Doctor returns Rose to the parallel universe and tries to convince her to stay there with her family and the part-human Doctor. But Rose recognizes that even though he looks like the Doctor and thinks like the Doctor, the part-human Doctor isn’t really the Doctor. She fell in love with the time-traveling, 900 year old Time Lord and his life inside the TARDIS, not a human copy. Rose could chose the Time Lord Doctor and continue traveling through time and space, or she could chose the part-human Doctor and build a normal life with him and with her family on Earth.

Rose is finally convinced to remain in the parallel universe when the part-human Doctor proves his love for her. The building romance between the Doctor and Rose had been a prominent subplot of Series 1 and 2, though both Rose and Doctor stopped short of explicitly saying they loved each other. In “School Reunion,” the Doctor admits this is because he is a

Time Lord: “I don't age. I regenerate. But humans decay. You wither and you die […] You can spend the rest of your life with me. But I can't spend the rest of mine with you. I have to live on,

30 alone.” But the part-human Doctor, who will age at the same rate as Rose and will not regenerate when he dies, will be able to live out a normal life with Rose. With this obstacle removed, the part-human Doctor is finally able to tell Rose he loves her, and Rose chooses to remain with him in the parallel world.

These retreatist themes become even more prominent with Donna Noble. Her narrative was a feminine mystique fantasy from the very beginning; when we first meet her in “The

Runaway Bride” she was working as a temp in a high-end company in the center of London in hopes of finding a well-off man to marry. Having found a suitable man and nagged him until he proposed, Donna is halfway down the aisle at her wedding before the fantasy falls to pieces. She discovers that her fiancee has been working with an alien invader and poisoning her for months and that the wedding was nothing more than a sham to keep her from running off. She then works with the Doctor to uncover the alien’s plan, helps to save the Earth, and ultimately saves the Doctor’s life. Afterwards, when the Doctor asks her what she’ll do now, she replies: “Not getting married for starters. And I’m not going to temp anymore. I dunno, travel. See a bit more of planet Earth […] Just, go out there and do something.” The experience has both soured her perspective on marriage and encouraged her to broaden her aspirations in life.

Although Donna rejects the Doctor’s initial offer to travel with him, she eventually seeks him out after being unsatisfied with her own attempt to escape from her normal life and travel the world. She makes it very clear when she joins the Doctor as a full-time companion that she has absolutely no romantic or sexual interest in the Doctor. Yet, her desire for a committed, romantic relationship remains a subtle theme throughout their travels. This is most evident during the the two part episode “Silence in the Library”/”Forest of the Dead,” when Donna is

31 trapped inside a computer and put into an integration program that erases her memories of the

Doctor and convinces her that she is a married housewife raising two children. Essentially, she gets to live out the normal, domestic life she always dreamed of. But this life is an illusion, and the Doctor eventually frees her from the computer.

This moment foreshadows Donna’s eventual fate. During the battle against the Daleks in

“Journey’s End” she absorbs the Doctor’s mind, but the extra knowledge is destroying her mind, and in order to save her life the Doctor must erase all of her memories of her adventures in the

TARDIS with him. But Donna has changed tremendously as a person as a result of her experiences with the Doctor. She became less self-centered, more confident, and began to truly believe in herself and her abilities. Before she met the Doctor she was aimless, drifting, and waiting for a man to come along to marry her so she could live a normal, domestic life. But since she met the Doctor she gained a sense of purpose and direction. She promised multiple times to spend the rest of her life traveling with the Doctor, seeing the universe and saving people. Donna begs the Doctor not to erase her memories, sobbing “I can’t go back […] Please don’t make me go back.” In spite of her pleas, the Doctor disregards her wishes, removes her memories, and returns her home to her normal life with her family.

Initially, this moment is portrayed as the tragedy it truly is. The audience witnesses the devastated reactions of the Doctor and Donna’s family as they witness Donna acting like the self- centered person she used to be. But life moves on, and they adjust to keeping Donna’s past life a secret from her. Shortly after loosing her memories Donna meets and becomes engaged to a new man, and although she and her fiancee don’t make a lot of money, Donna’s family tells the

Doctor that they are happy together. In “The End of Time” the Doctor looks in on Donna’s life

32 one last time at her wedding and gives her a winning lottery ticket as a wedding present, ensuring she will be financially stable in her new marriage. In the end, Donna gets a happy ending, but she only gets it through the retreatist narrative. She is forced to give up her extraordinary life with the Doctor and live a normal life on Earth, with no memory of those wonderful experiences. She then secures a committed relationship with a man, something she always longed for but never was able to obtain while she travelled with the Doctor.

The one companion who almost completely rejects this retreatist narrative is Martha

Jones. Unlike Rose and Donna, Martha was successful, well-educated, and well on her way to establishing her own career as a medical doctor before she decided to join the Doctor on his adventures. While she enjoyed her adventures with the Doctor, she wasn’t quite as aimless and lacking in self-confidence as Rose and Donna, and traveling with the Doctor didn’t giver her the same sense of self and purpose. If anything, traveling with the Doctor seemed to negatively impact her self-esteem.

Martha has to constantly fight for respect from the Doctor. He refuses to invite her along as a full-time companion for six episodes, and it’s only after Martha points out that he’s treating her like a “passenger […] someone you take along for a treat” that he finally invites her to travel with him full-time. She also finds herself frequently doing menial work for the Doctor or otherwise supporting him. In the two parter “Human Nature”/“The Family of Blood,” when

Martha and the Doctor are hiding in an English school in 1913, she works as a maid to the

Doctor. She is made to do menial tasks and endure racist and sexist remarks and other types of abuse, some of which comes from the Doctor, who’s been forced to give up his memories. In the

33 very next episode “Blink,” Martha has to get a job in a shop to support the Doctor and herself while they are trapped in 1960.

It is only when she is separated from the Doctor and is forced to fend for herself that she begins to regain her self-confidence and recognize her talents. Martha spends a year on her own traveling the Earth to raise a rebellion against one of the Doctor’s most dangerous enemies, known as the Master, while the Doctor remains the Master’s hostage. Shortly after she helps him defeat the Master, Martha confesses to the Doctor: “I spent a lot of time with you thinking I was second best, but you know what? I am good.” After this experience, Martha decides that she no longer wants to travel with the Doctor, and to this day she is one of the few companions to leave the Doctor of her own free will without being pressured to do so by unusual or extreme circumstances.

Given her experiences with the Doctor, her decision to leave him is an empowering moment rather than a disempowering one. Although she is no longer traveling through time and space, Martha remains as driven and ambitious as ever. After she leaves the Doctor, Martha finishes her education, qualifies as a doctor, and begins working at UNIT to defend the Earth against alien threats. The last time we see Martha in “The End of Time,” she is working as a freelancer with Mickey Smith, defending the Earth against rogue alien attacks. If anything, leaving the TARDIS gives her a greater sense of direction and boosts her professional career.

Yet the themes of the retreatist narrative are still present. Her “epiphany” moment, the moment where she finally decides that she no longer wants to travel with the Doctor, in large part occurs because she recognizes that the Doctor will not return her love. Almost immediately after leaving the Doctor she finally does obtain a committed romantic relationship, and although she is

34 offered several more opportunities to travel with the Doctor, Martha refuses every time in large part because she is engaged. This again follows the pattern of companions finding love and settling down in a committed relationship after having been denied such a relationship while traveling with the Doctor.

In addition, there is one more troubling scene that occurs the last time Martha Jones appears in Doctor Who. In the Tenth Doctor’s final episode, “The End of Time,” the audience discovers that Martha has ended her first engagement and married Mickey Smith, former companion to the Doctor and former boyfriend of Rose Tyler. Martha is seen running through a vacant lot to help Mickey in a shootout with an alien Sontaran, and when she reaches Mickey he tells her: “I told you to stay behind […] We’re being fired at by a Sontaran […] and this is no place for a married woman.” Martha doesn’t appear to take this seriously, replying, “Well then, you shouldn’t have married me,” and Mickey makes no further comments. This statement goes beyond mere protectionism; Mickey specifically says that a gun battle is no place for a “married woman,” as if being married means Martha should no longer do the things that her career requires of her.

Of course, there are several crucial differences between Martha Jones’ narrative and the retreatism narrative. First and foremost, Martha’s “epiphany” is not the “retreatist epiphany” that she is somehow deficient if she has failed to secure a committed heterosexual relationship and build a domestic life; instead, it is a recognition that she is in an unhappy relationship that she must remove herself from for her own personal wellbeing. She does secure a committed relationship shortly after leaving the Doctor, and that relationship is part of the reason she never rejoins the Doctor, but this relationship is secondary to her professional commitments to UNIT

35 and her personal commitment to the safety of the Earth. Mickey’s comment that she shouldn’t be in a dangerous situation now that she is a married woman stands out as a strange aberration.

The more insidious narratives are those of Rose and Donna. These were women who, as a result of their travels, gained self-confidence and a sense of purpose. Their stories do not directly conform to the retreatist narratives in one crucial ways: they do not have a “retreatist” epiphany and decide to depart the Doctor because they find their lives unfulfilling. They were forced away from the Doctor by circumstances beyond their control, a moment which was tragic and traumatic for each of them. But ultimately they found fulfilling, happy lives through the retreatist narratives. Almost as a consolation prize, each of them returned home to their families and managed to secure the committed relationship that had remained just outside of their reach.

Even, as in Rose’s case, if it wasn’t the relationship with the corresponding life they wanted. Or even, as in Donna’s case, they had long since rejected the idea that they needed a husband to be fulfilled. Call it the “Happy Ending” problem: having lost one of the most amazing opportunities and experiences in their lives, they still managed to get their “happy ending” by settling down with a man and returning to their normal lives.

Steven Moffat’s Wives and Mothers

During the Steven Moffat era, the companions’ narratives and eventual departure from the Doctor share an alarming amount in common with the “Happy Housewife Heroine” narrative outlined by Betty Friedan in Chapter 2 of The Feminine Mystique. On the surface Doctor Who seems to have almost nothing in common with the short stories Friedan studied. The happy housewife heroines stayed at home and found fulfillment only in cooking, cleaning, and looking

36 pretty; Doctor Who’s heroines travel out into space and time saving planets, wielding guns, and outwitting villains. But in the stories Friedan analyzed, she found a common narrative in which the heroine was faced with a threat to her husband or child and had to overcome her own “dream of independence, the discontent of spirit, and even the feeling of a separate identity,” (Friedan,

46) to find fulfillment and keep the love of her husband or child. Similarly, the narratives of

Steven Moffat’s companions are more preoccupied with their identities as wives or mothers than as individuals, and that the ultimate aim of the narrative is to teach the women to find fulfillment in these roles.

Amy Pond’s narrative has always, in some way, revolved around her contested identity as a wife and mother. Her story arc in Series 5, which thanks to time-travel takes place entirely in the night before her wedding, revolves around her reluctance to marry Rory Williams. Amy is a very independent woman dreamed of escaping the sleepy village she grew up in and joining the

Doctor on his adventures ever since he crashed landed in her backyard when she was seven years old. So when he returns to her fourteen years later, she leaps at the opportunity to travel with him again. She later confesses to the Doctor in “Flesh and Stone” that she ran away with him in part because she was afraid of marrying Rory. These fears are explored in “Amy’s Choice,” when

Amy, Rory, and the Doctor are trapped in two parallel dreams. In one dream Amy is pregnant, married, and living with Rory in a quiet rural village; in the other dream she is still traveling with the Doctor and Rory in the TARDIS. The “Dream Lord” who trapped them in these dreams forces them to choose which of these dreams is reality, and he makes it explicitly clear that the choice is Amy’s. Amy is doubtful that their life in the village is real, telling Rory, “Not really me though, is it? […]would I be happy settling down in [this] place?” She’s more than willing to

37 delay their wedding as long as possible, traveling through time on the night before their wedding as long as they possibly can. It’s only when Rory is killed that Amy finally makes her choice, choosing the dream in which Rory is still alive so that she can be with him.

It’s later revealed that the night before their wedding is more important than either of them imagined. Amy and Rory continued to travel together with the Doctor in the TARDIS, putting off their wedding longer and longer until Rory is killed and then erased from time, forcing Amy to forget that he ever existed. On the night before their wedding the TARDIS explodes, causing the universe to collapse and creating the cracks in space and time that had been following them throughout the Series. The Doctor manages to reset the universe, which results in Rory being brought back to life and Amy overcoming her reluctance to get married.

They wake up on the morning after all their adventures take place, and the long-delayed wedding finally occurs. The series then ends on a surprisingly feminist note. Amy, who feared being forced to choose between her life with Rory and her life with the Doctor, chooses to combine the two. The final scene in Series 5 is of Amy waving goodbye to her childhood home, before returning to the TARDIS in her wedding dress with her new husband to join the Doctor on another adventure. She can travel through time and space and have adventures and still be

Rory’s wife. She also refuses to take Rory’s last name, maintaining an important marker of her individual identity.

Despite the progressive ending, this series sets up two recurring motifs that will later become more problematic. The first motif is Rory’s recurring deaths. Rory dies and is brought back to life so frequently that it becomes part of a recurring joke within the show. The first of these deaths occur in “Amy’s Choice,” when Rory’s death forces her to confront the fact that she

38 loves him, and makes her feel guilty because she never told him so. She grows so despondent over this that she’s willing to commit suicide with the hope that it will wake them from the dream in which he’s died. Rory dies again at the end of “In Cold Blood” when he saves the

Doctor’s life, an indirect consequence of Amy’s decision to travel with the Doctor and a moment where her two different lives, one as Rory’s wife and one as the Doctor’s companion, are in direct conflict. An illusion of Rory dies in “The Doctor’s Wife” after attacking Amy for abandoning him. In their final episode, “The Angels Take Manhattan,” Rory dies several times.

The first time, he is sent back in time without Amy to die of old age in the past. The second time, he and Amy commit suicide together to create a paradox, preventing them from having to live out the remainder of their lives without each other. But for the third and final time in his story arc, Rory dies when he sent back in time again to die of old age.

Rory’s deaths appears to serve three narrative purposes. The first purpose is to create guilt in Amy about her failure to properly love Rory. The second purpose is to remind her about how worthless her life is without him. On two occasions she commits suicidal acts, never with the end result of actually committing suicide, but certainly with the acknowledged risk that her actions could result in her death and a resignation that it wouldn’t matter to her if she did actually die.

The third narrative purpose is to set up a direct conflict between her as the Doctor’s companion and her life as Rory’s wife, with the ultimate purpose of forcing her to choose between those two lives. Rory was always the reluctant companion who never sought out adventures with the

Doctor, but travels with the Doctor to please Amy. By continuing to travel with the Doctor they both risk death, as the Doctor acknowledges on several occasions, but it is Rory who most frequently confronts this risk. Amy’s desire to travel with the Doctor could therefore result in her

39 losing Rory permanently, as happens in “The Angels Take Manhattan.” Due to extraordinary circumstances the Doctor can’t go back in time to retrieve Rory, making Amy’s eventual choice between her life with the Doctor or her life with Rory permanent. Distraught over Rory being dead to her in the present, Amy allows herself to be transported back in time to live out the rest of her life with Rory, telling the Doctor, “It'll be fine. I know it will. I'll be with him like I should be. Me and Rory together.”

At the end of Series 5 it appeared that Amy could reject the false choice between a life she loved and the marriage to the person she loved and instead combine them together in a way that suited her best. Yet over and over again the two were placed in direct competition to each other, with the presumption that they were inherently incompatible with each other and that eventually Amy must choose between them. As in the “Happy Housewife Heroine” narratives, the heroine’s desire for a career or, as in Amy’s case, the desire to travel on adventures with the

Doctor, threatens the heroine’s marriage. In this case, Amy’s desire for adventure directly threatens her husband’s life. Amy can only live out her life with her husband if she gives up her adventures with the Doctor. The narrative will not allow her to have both and forces her to choose.

The second motif introduced in Series 5 is Amy’s consistent refusal to call herself “Amy

Williams” and her preference for her maiden name, “Amy Pond.” She even passes down her maiden name to her daughter, Melody Pond, who later becomes River Song. This conflict comes to a climax in “The God Complex” when Amy, Rory, and the Doctor become trapped in a holographic labyrinth where a alien minotaur feeds off of Amy’s faith in the Doctor. They confront Amy’s worst fear, a seven year-old version of herself that has been abandoned by the

40 Doctor. In order to break her faith in him, the Doctor confronts that fear and tells her to stop waiting for him to return for her and take her along on adventures with him. He also refers to her by her husband’s last name for the first time, saying “It’s time we saw each other as we really are, Amy Williams.” Once the minotaur dies, Doctor returns Amy and Rory to Earth for their own safety, buying them a house and a reluctant Amy that there is a “bigger, scarier adventure” waiting for her as Rory’s wife. Essentially, the Doctor encourages Amy to grow up and move beyond the seven-year old girl who waited in her garden all night to go on adventures and sees the universe by appealing to her identity as Rory’s wife, and encouraging her to take on the domestic role she had been deliberately avoiding. The conflict over Amy’s identity reaches it’s resolution in “The Angels Take Manhattan” when, a moment after she is sent back in time, her name appears with Rory’s on a nearby gravestone as “Amelia Williams.”

The moments where Amy accepts her husband’s last name are closely associated with moments in which she supposedly grows and matures. However, those moments of supposed

“growth” are actually more closely associated with moments where she gives up her own dreams and aspirations and accepts an identity as Rory’s wife. On each occasion that she accepts the name “Amelia Williams” comes when she leaves the Doctor to live a more normal, domestic life with Rory. On the first occasion in “The God Complex,” it is the Doctor that gives her this name and forces her to leave. But on the final occasion in “The Angels Take Manhattan,” she chooses to leave the Doctor and presumably asked for her name to be written as “Amelia Williams” on her own gravestone, signifying her permanent departure from the life with the Doctor that she always wanted and her full acceptance of her identity as Rory’s wife. In this way, the conflict

41 over Amy’s name presents another way of representing the conflict between her life with the

Doctor and her life with Rory.

These two motifs show how the feminine mystique only truly applies to the Doctor’s female companions. Rory, to a certain degree, experiences many of the same conflicts as Amy. In

“The Power of Three,” he discusses the conflict he feels between “real life and Doctor life,” and both he and Amy discuss how to choose between the two lives. He also shares a similar conflict regarding his own identity; the Doctor regularly refers to Amy and Rory collectively as the

“Ponds,” rather than Rory’s last name, and Rory appears disappointed and offended that Amy gave their daughter her last name rather than his. However, there is a crucial difference in their narratives and they way each character’s circumstances are framed. First, although Rory does to a certain degree have a conflict over his identity, ultimately the use of his last name by both him and Amy is presented as the natural and inevitable result.

Furthermore, Amy is always the one who must choose between their lives with the

Doctor and their lives back at home. Rory’s goals and aims are rarely in direct conflict; he is happy to travel with the Doctor and happy to remain at home, as long as he is with Amy. And when there is a conflict between their two lives, they are portrayed markedly differently. In “The

Power of Three,” Rory’s main conflict is his career as a nurse; though he is frequently absent due to his adventures with the Doctor, he has impressed his superiors, and has been asked to commit more time to work. Amy’s commitment is to be a bridesmaid in a wedding. Earlier in the episode

Amy alludes to a career as a travel writer, but we never see any commitments related to this. In fact, Amy has never had any career, despite working a number of odd jobs over the years. In previous episodes is shown to have worked as a model and a kissogram, though she faced

42 backlash and criticism from the Doctor and from Rory at both of these jobs. While over the course of his narrative Rory was shown with a professional interest and allowed to grow at his job, Amy changed careers and did whatever odd job seemed to suit that particular episode. So unlike Rory, who only rarely experiences a direct conflict between his adventures with the

Doctor and his professional role, Amy almost constantly is forced to manage a direct conflict between her adventures with the Doctor and her role as Rory’s wife. Unlike Amy, Rory really can have it all.

Amy’s final departure from the Doctor highlights one of the other problematic emphases of the feminine mystique: the idea that being a mother is a woman’s fundamental and most fulfilling role. The majority of Series 6 and the beginning of Series 7 revolves around Amy’s conflict over her role as a mother, or how she feels she has failed at this role. As mentioned above, Amy becomes pregnant in the beginning of Series 6. Her real body is kidnapped and replaced with a doppleganger, and Amy only learns she’s pregnant once she’s gone into labor.

She spends only a few weeks with her newborn before her baby is kidnapped from her. She learns that her baby eventually grows up to be River Song, but she remains conflicted over the thought that she will never get to act as a mother to River. In a mini episode released on YouTube in the middle of Series 6, Amy confesses in a phone call to the Doctor that she doesn’t want to miss all the years where River was a child, when she could act as a mother to her. She later learns that her daughter grew up with her, disguised as her best friend from her childhood, but in a confrontation with her daughter’s kidnapper she states that this wasn’t enough for her, because she still never got to be a mother to her baby. A deeper reading of Amy’s grief reveals a subtle narrative about how she perceives her role as a mother. While she is devastated her child has

43 been kidnapped, she also clearly expresses a dismay that she was not there to raise her daughter.

She gave birth to River, but never was able to act as a mother towards her.

This conflict arises again in “The Asylum of the Daleks,” when Amy is in the middle of a divorce with Rory. Amy confesses that she drove Rory out because she can no longer have children after having her body kidnapped, and she knows that Rory has always wanted children.

Though Amy is the one who has suffered the physical and emotional trauma of being sterilized against her will, the focus is entirely on Rory and how she has failed to be the wife and mother he wanted because she is no longer able to have children. Finally, in an animated scene released on YouTube, it is revealed that Rory and Amy adopted a child after they were separated from the

Doctor and forced to live out the remainder of their lives in New York. In this way, Amy is finally able to succeed where she had consistently failed and fulfill her natural role as a mother.

This is not the first occasion where being a mother is portrayed as a woman’s most natural or empowering role. In the most egregious example in “The Doctor, the Widow, and the

Wardrobe,” the life force of a forest is attempting to escape acid rain through a relay device. The

Doctor and Cyril Arwell, a small boy, cannot use the relay device to transport the life force of forest in their minds because they are “weak.” Lily Arwell, Cyril’s sister, is described as

“strong,” but too young to transport the forest. But Lily and Cyril’s mother, Madge, is “strong.”

The Doctor explains: “Weak and strong. It's a translation, translated from the base code of nature itself. You and I, Cyril, we're weak. But she's female. More than female, she's mum. How else does life ever travel? The Mother ship!” As a mother, Madge is the only one capable of exerting the power necessary to bear the life force of the forest and bring her children and her husband

(who at this point was lost and presumed dead) back home.

44 This narrative presumes that being a mother is a woman’s natural role since Lily is described as “strong” because she has the potential to be a mother, even if she is too young to have children yet. And throughout the episode, being a mother is the only way in which Madge

Arwell can empower herself. She is able to convince the harvesters that she is a threat only when she tells them that she is a mother looking for her lost children. She is only given the motivation to overcome extreme obstacles when she hears her children talking about how their mother always comes to them when they need help. And ultimately, she is only able to exert the power necessary to save her family when she fully embraces her role as a mother.

River Song neatly encapsulates the problems with the way women’s roles as mothers and wives are portrayed by Steven Moffat in Doctor Who. Unlike most companions, River’s story arc is shown in reverse; the audience first meets River Song at the very end of her life, and she is shown at progressively younger stages of her life as the show progresses. Initially, there is a great deal of mystery regarding her identity. Her first appearance in Series 4 (during the Davies era but written by Moffat) hints that she might be his wife, and the audience learns that she knows the

Doctor’s real name, a secret that he could only reveal at only one unspecified time. Her next appearance in the two-parter “The Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone,” continues to hint at the possibility that River is the Doctor’s wife, but for the first time also hints at the fact that she might also kill the Doctor in the future. This dichotomy sets the tone for all of their interactions in Series 6; as River tells the Doctor in “The Wedding of River Song,”: “There are so many theories about you and I, you know […] Am I the woman who marries you, or the woman who murders you?”

45 It is finally revealed that she is the daughter of Amy and Rory, who was kidnapped, raised by enemies of the Doctor, and brainwashed to kill him. Their next interaction in “Let’s Kill

Hitler” continues to play on the wife-killer dynamic. River, who is still using her birth name

Melody Pond at this point, talks about marrying the Doctor several times, but puts aside what she describes as a childish fantasy so that she can complete her task and kill the Doctor. She very nearly succeeds as well. But the Doctor asks her to tell “River Song,” something for him, and although it is never revealed what is said, it is heavily implied that it is something indicating his love for River Song. When Melody realizes that she will become River Song, the woman the

Doctor loves, she changes her mind and saves the Doctor’s life, sacrificing her future regenerations in the process. Unfortunately River is kidnapped by the Doctor’s enemies again in

“The Wedding of River Song,” and they attempt to force her to kill the Doctor. But when River refuses to kill him, she sets off a chain reaction that leads to time disintegrating. The Doctor begs

River to kill him to prevent the destruction of time, but River refuses, claiming that she loves him too much and will suffer if she is forced to kill him. The Doctor ultimately convinces her to kill him by marrying her and begging that she kill him. Of course, the Doctor is not actually killed and manages to escape by hiding in a duplicate mechanic copy of himself. As the Doctor is marrying River, he manages to subtly indicate to her that he is actually safe and that she can pretend to kill him without actually doing so.

There are several problematic elements to the way this narrative portrays River’s identity as the Doctor’s wife. First and foremost is the way that marriage is portrayed as River’s redemption. In “Let’s Kill Hitler” the Doctor’s love is somehow able to reverse years of conditioning and brainwashing. In “The Wedding of River Song,” the Doctor’s uses a wedding to

46 overcome River’s stubbornness and ensure her compliance with what he wants her to do. Even though the wedding was used as a cover to convey to River that he was safe, he could have informed her at any point that he was safe, but chose specifically to use a wedding as a cover.

Finally, following the wedding and her faked murder of the Doctor, River is imprisoned for his murder. Therefore, her marriage to the Doctor and ultimate compliance to his demands is closely associated to a near total loss of her independence and autonomy. Although River appears to be capable of escaping the prison at any time she likes, she chooses to remain in her cell and only leaves when the Doctor calls for her. This is just one of the many ways that River’s life revolves around the Doctor. Some of the ways in which her life revolves around the Doctor were beyond her control, such as the circumstances surrounding her birth and early childhood. But she was often shown choosing to organize her life around the Doctor’s. At the end of “Let’s Kill

Hitler,” after she has saved the Doctor but eventually abandoned by him in a hospital, she is shown attending a university to study archaeology for the purpose of finding a “good man,” implied to be the Doctor. In her very first episode River was shown to have eventually become a professor in archaeology, but with this comment, her foremost personal and professional accomplishment was undermined to show another way in which her life revolved around the

Doctor. And, in another stunningly close reflection of the happy housewife narrative, River’s degree becomes a “MRS degree,” obtained only for the purpose of finding the man who will eventually be her husband.

Finally, River’s narrative reflects the happy housewife narrative in the way it portrays her ultimate fate. In her very first episode two-parter, “Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead,”

Rivers dies saving the Doctor’s life and the lives of thousands of people in the Library. But her

47 consciousness is saved and uploaded into the same computer in which Donna had been imprisoned. Thanks to the Doctor’s intervention the computer is functioning properly now, and

River’s consciousness is able to live happy and safe in the dreams of the young girl who controls the computer. However, in her new life in the computer simulation River acts as the mother to

Donna’s simulated children and that young girl. Though River never expressed any interest in being a mother or having children, she is shown being happy this new role. Though she has now totally lost her independence and is trapped in the computer, her newfound domestic role is presented as a fulfilling and good way for her consciousness to spend eternity in the computer simulation.

In the Davies era, companions who were forced to leave the Doctor still found a fulfilling life and a happy ending by returning home and entering a committed relationship. But in the

Moffat era, women’s gendered roles as wives and mothers are praised and presented as natural and inevitable, and the narrative actively promotes their return to these roles.

Conclusion

The representation of women and femininity in Doctor Who has regressed. Where once the companions were valued and praised for challenging and contradicting the Doctor, now the companions are increasingly encouraged to be compliant to the Doctor’s demands. The narrative used to question the Doctor’s paternalism and challenge his power over the women he interacted with, but now the narrative praises the Doctor’s paternalism and presents his power over his companion’s lives as an unquestionable good. The Davies era has a tendency towards the post- feminist perspective and his women tend to find their happy endings when they get their guy. But

48 while Moffat’s women can wield a gun and make a snappy one-liner about being “easily worth two men,” their narratives revolve around their acceptance of their feminine, domestic roles, and their identities as wives and mothers. Simply put, while it has quotable lines and exciting images of strong women wielding guns and facing down the terrors of the universe, Doctor Who has developed a subtle feminine mystique of its own.

Doctor Who may just be one television show without the breadth and influence of the feminine mystique that Betty Friedan described, but it is important to challenge the problematic ways in which popular culture presents female characters wherever they occur. I argue that there is first and foremost a normative good in challenging the way Doctor Who’s female characters have been presented to us. Women deserve strong, well-written female characters, and the narrative should not condone or promote some of the extremely problematic things that it recently has. For example, the recent emphasis on the companions’ compliance with the Doctor’s paternalism means that the companions enable or condone some truly disturbing actions taken by the Doctor, such as the Doctor stalking Clara throughout her life. In addition, the focus on Amy’s role as Rory’s wife has lead to story lines in which she contemplates and almost commits suicide when Rory has died, because without him she feels her life is no longer worth living. This romanticization of suicidal thoughts or actions minimizes how truly disturbing Amy’s thoughts are and sends a disturbing message to women about the value and worth of their lives when they have lost a romantic partner.

Finally, I argue that we should always be skeptical of narratives that limit women’s roles and possibilities, and that we should challenge them whenever possible. These narratives are created by writers who are surrounded by contemporary discourses on gender and, as a result,

49 reflect these discourses. Current showrunner Steven Moffat has rejected accusations of sexism in his writing and has presented his work as being feminist. But his public statements reflect the degree to which discourses about gender roles have influenced his writing. For example, in response to accusations that he reduces women to mothers, he said “‘Reducing women to mothers’— now there is possibly the most anti-women statement I’ve heard,” (Jeffries, 2012). If

Moffat was being criticized for portraying women as mothers, I would agree that this is an anti- women statement, but Moffat was criticized for reducing women to mothers. His denial that women can be reduced to their roles as mothers ignores the very real history of narratives like the feminine mystique that presented women’s roles as mothers as their only truly fulfilling role in live and sought to limit them to these roles. Furthermore, stating that reducing women to mothers is anti-women implicitly supports the narrative that being a mother is a woman’s most natural and fulfilling role.

We live in a world where these narratives are limiting women’s roles and possibilities.

Media and popular culture are constantly asking whether women can really have it all and balance both their domestic and professional lives, but men are never asked the same questions.

Doctor Who has the amazing potential to present women and young girls a vision of a world where their potential and possibilities are endless. At their core, the narratives of the companions are about ordinary people being removed from the limitations of their ordinary lives and discovering just how much they can achieve in extraordinary situations. Not every companion’s story has to end happily ever after, but certainly there should be more stories where the companions return from their adventures empowered, ready to take on the challenges we face in our everyday lives, and freed from the gender roles which have limited women for generations.

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