Unsetting Doctor characterization

[neadods]

I'm going to polish this here before I post on the Who comms and get killed in a wanksplosion, but I can't help but see if anyone else sees what I see. Because I've been watching a lot of old school Who over the weekend, and come to the uncomfortable conclusion that the Doctor is a bit of a pedo - or at least has a schoolgirl fetish.

I say "a bit of" because he's not perving on anyone below the age of consent by their own standards. And there's never a hint of anything untoward in his relationship with Susan. But what else have we got in canon?

Romana decides to loosen up and become more likeable to the Doctor and what does she do? Regenerate into someone much smaller (a body that was her own choice, unlike the Doctor's regenerations; I get the impression he slept through those classes at the Academy.) And then she tops it off by adopting an unmistakeable schoolgirl uniform to wear. Considering that the Tom/Lalla relationship ends up all over the screen, it's pretty canon to say that Doctor 4 and Romana 2 were at it like weasels offscreen. Since, er, they were. And oh, by the way, uniform or not, Romana's just out of the academy, while the Doctor is old enough to start to have a mid-lives crisis, as he bitched about all the time to an unsympathetic Sarah Jane.

The 9th Doctor and Rose were all over each other to the point that they had to *deny* they were all over each other just about every other episode because it was that obvious that they were seriously involved. Tennant (Doctor 10) is on record calling the Doctor/Rose relationship a sexless love story. Sexless (or not in the hands of the fans) he is yet again attracted to someone who is centuries younger than he is and is barely adult by her standards, much less his.

One of the shows over the weekend was Black Orchid. Peter Davison is on record saying that he offset being the Doctor famously told to not touch his companions by playing that he and Nyssa had some offscreen understanding. Beside the yet-again centuries of age difference, in Orchid the Doctor and his companions are offered a drink. The Doctor, champion of children everywhere, asks for lemonade. Tegan asks for a screwdriver and gets it. (We see her drinking cocktails later as well.) But when *Nyssa* asks for a screwdriver as well, the Doctor clears his throat and suggest that "the children" (by which he means Nyssa and Adric) also get lemonade.

That scene, in conjunction with Davison's statements, somewhat freaks me out. In conjunction with the relationships with Romana 2 and Rose, it makes me seriously wonder if after his mid-lives crisis, the Doctor really did start perving on Sweet Young Things.

Comments

Here via friendsfriends

[spiralsheep.livejournal.com]

Doctor/Rose squicks me but I've said everything I have to say about that elsewhere... repeatedly...

I can't comment on tje fifth Doctor because I don't remember him that well.

BUT, your first argument doesn't work because it assumes that a set of human clothes means exactly the same thing to TWO aliens as it would to humans from modern westernised cultures when, in reality, those clothes wouldn't even symbolise youth to all humans because cultural symbols differ. (And I'm only pointing this out to help you avoid possible later "wankspolsion".)

Re: Here via friendsfriends

[neadods.livejournal.com]

a set of human clothes means exactly the same thing to TWO aliens

Romana might not have known or cared, but the Doctor, steeped as he is in English culture, would know exactly what that was. (And I suddenly realize how hetero I'm being in my comments, because Turlough also wore a school uniform for quite some time. Although also alien, he had been shoved into a boy's school and only knew those clothes for the uniform they were.)

Re: Here via friendsfriends

[spiralsheep.livejournal.com]

You still need evidence for your jump from the Doctor knowing what something is to him experiencing something in an identical symbolic way to a particular human culture and then to him sexually fetishising that symbol.

If you're presenting Turlough, the school boy, wearing his school uniform as evidence of the Doctor being a pedophile then, yes, you're probably choosing to involve yourself in a "wanksplosion".

Have you seen [Bad username or site: ide cyan @ livejournal.com]'s essay on the Doctor as a sex tourist? It's excellent. I don't have a current link because nostalgia_lj deleted the com it was in but I know it was also posted elsewhere on teh interweb.

Re: Here via friendsfriends

[spiralsheep.livejournal.com]

Link: http://community.livejournal.com/doctorwho/286137.html

:-)

Re: Here via friendsfriends

[neadods.livejournal.com]

I'm half afraid to click that link... ! :>

Re: Here via friendsfriends

[spiralsheep.livejournal.com]

It supports your case, it's funny, and the minor "wanksplosion" was a misunderstanding. :-)

Re: Here via friendsfriends

[neadods.livejournal.com]

I'll check it out after work. My company is conservative and I try to avoid pages with a lot of iterations of the "s" word while under IT's eyes.

[violetisblue.livejournal.com]

Attraction to the much younger/more naive/inexperienced, though, isn't the same thing as being attracted to an actual, sexually undeveloped child's body--I see where your thesis is going, but I wouldn't use the word "pedo" to describe the particular fetish. (Lolita complex/fruit vert instead?) I totally agree, though, that he seems to like them young, blonde and wide-eyed to one degree or another; even the First Doctor was making eyes at that particular female prototype back as far as "The Daleks."

[neadods.livejournal.com]

It's hard to figure out what word to use. By his standards, he does seem to go beyond just having a type to having some fetish for the very, very young... but at the same time, as I acknowledge, he's arguably not doing anything, much less anything appropriate with them. And from the other side of this equation it's more of a "Mrs. Robinson" thing with the very young but undeniable adult being attracted to the much older and more experienced adult.

I wouldn't have said "pedo" at all until I hit that bit in Black Orchid, which is the part that's actually bothering me. Romana's schoolgirl uniform creeps me out in retrospect, but when I actually watched old school I didn't care. But in Black Orchid the Doctor specifically treated Nyssa as a child in comparison to one of his other female companions... and yet that was the companion the actor very subtly played an attraction to/relationship with. I know that what the actors say in interviews isn't canon, but at the same time, that's the moment that crosses from having a bit of a fetish to being VERY creepy for me.

I threw in the Turlough bit for no particular reason, since to tell the truth I never saw anything on screen that read as either of them having that kind of interest in each other.

[wiliqueen.livejournal.com]

But in Black Orchid the Doctor specifically treated Nyssa as a child in comparison to one of his other female companions... and yet that was the companion the actor very subtly played an attraction to/relationship with.

FWIW, with a great deal of effort, I've been able to see a sliver of that in operation only after "Time-Flight." Before that, uh-uh.

And even after, it's nothing more than an intellectual exercise on my part. It's very firmly fixed in my mind as a guardian/ward relationship, even moreso than some others because of her circumstances.

I'm curious (and a bit stumped) now, because I've seen/heard interviews with him unapologetically favoring her, but not with that particular flavor.

Forgot to clarify...

[wiliqueen.livejournal.com]

FWIW, with a great deal of effort, I've been able to see a sliver of that in operation only after "Time-Flight." Before that, uh-uh.

And of course the Big Finish people aren't the only ones who have taken the possibility that there was actually a considerable stretch (from their perspective) between "Time-Flight" and "Arc of Infinity," in which she was the sole companion and effectively caught up to Tegan in age, or very nearly so.

I've always gotten a very strong sense from the Doctor as she's taking her leave in "Terminus" that he's just now noticing that she's gone and grown up on him, and when the heck did that happen?? Which, I suppose, doesn't really help in terms of your theory...

Re: Forgot to clarify...

[neadods.livejournal.com]

Which, I suppose, doesn't really help in terms of your theory...

The Doctor's interests, like the Doctor's age, rapidly turns into one of those intellectual exercises where you have to quote-mine canon since it's completely contradictory!

Re: Forgot to clarify...

[wiliqueen.livejournal.com]

And I think at least some of the people generating the canon like it that way!

[neadods.livejournal.com]

The most recent version I can point to is in one of the Confidentials, but I bet they clipped that bit before it went to DVD.

[wiliqueen.livejournal.com]

My first instinct on this was to wonder if he was retconning himself a bit, perhaps influenced by their expanded interaction in the BF audios. (And even there, you have things like his telling the Consuls in "Primeval" that he had "pledged to look after her.")

Then I realized it was more likely that he was being more circumspect about it in the older quotes. Or was it all an offscreen joke/game, to offset their own frustration with the edict? Which they got around an awful lot anyway.

Is a puzzlement.

[tiggerallyn.livejournal.com]

I think there's something very telling in Victoria's outfit--miniskirt and blouse--in "Tomb of the Cybermen."

She's from the Victorian era, 1866. She's been kidnapped by the Daleks and imprisoned on Skaro. The Doctor frees her, her father is killed, and the Doctor takes her in aboard the TARDIS.

So the next thing we know, Victorian Girl 1866 is wearing a miniskirt.

Maybe Jamie put her up to it. Maybe he showed her clothes Polly left behind. I don't know.

It's just... odd that Victoria goes instantly to a miniskirt.

(Course, years later Sarah Jane finds one of Victoria's dresses in "Pyramids of Mars" and it was more proper than anything Victoria actually wore on the show.)

[neadods.livejournal.com]

It's just... odd that Victoria goes instantly to a miniskirt.

It is. But we don't know why she did it; it might have had nothing at all to do with the Doctor, who doesn't appear to have particularly reacted to it. (Nor did the Third Doctor react to Jo or Liz's miniskirts, or much of anything that Sarah ever wore, which is why I'm thinking that this started with his own midlifes crisis. And his own species.)

Oh, urg, and he doesn't turn to humans (Rose) until he runs out of 1) his own kind and 2) female-shaped aliens. At which point he flirts with both male and female humans. That Means Something, I'm sure.

Although... hmmm... if I bring Jack into it, and the Ninth Doctor flirted constantly with Jack, then that starts to take pot shots at my theory, Jack being neither young, virginial, or female.

[inamac.livejournal.com]

If you want another pot shot at your theory (which is excellent, btw - and British fandom is still spluttering about the innuendo at the start of City of Death) I should point out that on the only occasion we've seen the Doctor practically in flagrante delecto it was with someone considerably older than he is - to wit Cassandra...

[neadods.livejournal.com]

The opening of City of Death is squeaky-clean compared to New Who!

Although thinking of new Who, I'm wondering how I'm going to fit Reinette in, she being the one character I think we can point to as the Doctor canonically gettin' a little somethin' on screen. Aside from what one critic called a "plunger-like snog."

[jonquil.livejournal.com]

I find Romana's school uniform Cree. Pee. But would the Doctor? It's not as if he has childhood infatuations with Earth schoolgirls to build on. He's more likely turned on by high collars. ;-) In any cases, by the definitions of his own culture he's clearly a pervert for hanging out with humans at all.

Tennant didn't say it was sexless, he said they weren't shagging. It's different. And although Nyssa and Romana II read as childlike, Rose doesn't at all to me. "Barely an adult" she may be, but she's old enough to go off to a hotel with Mickey with nobody batting an eyelash.

So I guess I'm saying the producers may be pervy, but I don't think the Doctor is.

[neadods.livejournal.com]

Oh, I don't think that Rose is childish... with her mother, I doubt she had much of a childhood at all; she's had to be the one keeping things together for a very long time. But she is *young* - by British standards she's only been an adult for 3 years, one year by American standards. As opposed to Mr Lying-about-his-age-for-centuries.

the producers may be pervy, but I don't think the Doctor is.

Except for the hanging out with lesser races thing... :>

[jonquil.livejournal.com]

By the Doctor's standards, we're all babies. ::handwave handwave nothing to see here these are not the droids you're looking for::

[neadods.livejournal.com]

Which leads tidily back to my thesis!

[neadods.livejournal.com]

I hear the face of Boe gives good head.

[jonquil.livejournal.com]

SO YOU'RE SAYING THE DOCTOR NEVER GETS TO HAVE SEX AGAIN UNLESS HE FANCIES A DALEK?

PERVERT.

[penwiper337.livejournal.com]

Not getting into the whole 'perv' thing, but I always interpreted the Doctor's comment in Black Orchid less as "Must prevent underage drinking!" and more as "Tegan-the-earthling knows what a screwdriver is, but the two aliens haven't got the least clue that it's alcoholic, how can I dissuade them from selecting this drink in a manner that will not look suspicious to our hosts?"

[neadods.livejournal.com]

I hadn't thought of it that way. And when viewed through that light, the scene suddenly becomes a great deal less creepy!

Love the icon!

[scarlettgirl.livejournal.com]

Would you like me to wait until you have this polished before I link it to Who Daily?

[neadods.livejournal.com]

Nah, go ahead and do it; down in comments the theory goes down in flames, so I don't think it's going to go any further. Yet. :>