bill potts

bill’s clothes

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I’ve nearly finished screencapping Doctor Who S10 and it’s got me thinking about how Bill’s character is revealed through costume. I, a person with no costume design or fashion experience whatsoever, will attempt to explain:

Almost every time we see Bill, she’s wearing something that’s bright and bold and colourful, often with stripes (Bill REALLY loves stripes.)

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Her denim jacket is especially interesting, because it looks just like her mother’s one. (For a while I thought it was the same one, but actually I don’t think it is.) Oh, and Bill’s mother liked to wear colourful stripey outfits as well, with lots of red and yellow and blue.

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So that’s where she inherited her fashion sense from! And I also noticed, once I finally found a close up of the denim jacket, that its patches (which I’m guessing Bill sewed on herself?) are all clues about Bill and what will happen to her:

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The rainbow speaks for itself. The WOW! is all about her excitement at getting out in the world and seeing new things. And the skull and the robot… well, they speak for themselves too I guess. I suppose if I wanted to get really analytical (and I do) maybe the placement of the patches are significant too. The skull is next to the WOW! indicating that this wonderful new adventure Bill is on might lead to her death. But the rainbow is above the robot, and it’s Bill’s crush on another girl which saves her from dying as a Cyber-converted robot.

There’s a patch on the back too:

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Which I read as “? & i”, which I guess kinda sums up in three characters the journey of any Companion and Doctor. Question mark, and I.

Anyway! The other thing I noticed is that Bill wears bright and bold colours… except when she’s in a position of powerlessness. Then, everything goes dreary and grey and all the fashionable clothes turn into drab uniforms and dirty rags.

(cut for length)

In Lie of the Land, she’s stuck wearing the same greyish-black outfit that all the people in the Monk’s society seem to wear.

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And in World Enough and Time, she goes through a variety of grey/white/brown clothes (which gradually turn into rags) as she waits for the Doctor to rescue her. Again, these are the sort of clothes everyone wears in that world, so there’s nothing to make her stand out.

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Which eventually ends in her being turned into a Cyberman. The ultimate uniform, featureless, colourless thing.

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But obviously that’s not quite the end of her story. Heather comes along and saves her and gives her her bright colourful clothes back. It’s actually occurred to me that Heather probably reconstructed Bill’s clothes from memory (no nudity in a family show!) and she almost got it right:

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A black top and circular earrings (what Bill was wearing the first time Heather ever saw her) and a blue jacket (what Bill was wearing the last time Heather saw her).

And one last thing – Extremis actually bucks the trend of Bill wearing bright colours. In that, she’s all in greys.

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Maybe that was our first clue that that wasn’t really her…

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mewiet:

mattandsaraproductions:

lyricwritesprose:

thenotoriousscuttlecliff:

lyricwritesprose:

prince-atom:

textsfromsuperheroes:

Andrew: A lot of people criticize Steven Moffat saying he
doesn’t know how to write anyone other than a white man and as a response he
made the female version of the Master and made the lesbian character of Bill
but it always felt like he was writing these characters reluctantly and with a
grain of passive aggressiveness, like “Fine I’m doing it are you happy?”

Diana: I know what you mean because he also has the
characters constantly pointing out that he’s done it. Like the Master cannot
stop talking about how’s she’s female now in almost every scene to the point
where you expect her to look at the audience and ask, “Are you happy now? Can
we get some credit for this?”

Andrew: And that’s the grain of “Fuck You” that Steven
Moffat puts into his writing. Steven Moffat writing diverse characters is like
a teenager angrily doing chores he doesn’t want to do. And it’s like, this is a
trivial task, this should not be such a big deal to you.

Diana: It shouldn’t be, because these characters mean so
much to so many people. It should be an honor and you should be so happy and
proud to give these characters to people, and we don’t want to feel this
passive aggressive quality in them. It really takes away from this really
important thing that’s happened.

– The Hosts of Talk From Superheroes on Steven Moffat and
Diverse Characters

Listen to more episodes here, on iTunes or wherever you
listen to podcasts.

Are we watching the same show.

Exactly who, in this scenario, is making Moffat do his chores?  The BBC?  The BBC cares if the show gets ratings, not whether it’s progressive.  The fans?  I sincerely hope they’re in a minority, but you can find plenty of fans who want Doctor Who to stop with all this feminism and diversity and give them the Man Does Smart Man Stuff show.  Moffat’s wife?  Okay, I’ll grant you she probably pushes him to be a better feminist, but he not only married her, he works under her regularly, so I don’t see the “reluctant homework” aspect coming from there.  So who is it?  Who, exactly, is forcing Moffat to do this stuff?

At a guess, maybe, himself? I mean, didn’t he say himself that this is what people in his position should be doing and not patting themselves on the back for it? Can’t remember the exact quote, but it was something along those lines.

And, seriously, who watches seasons 8-10 and comes away thinking he begrudgingly cast Michelle Gomez as the Master?

Assigning yourself “homework” is the opposite of angrily doing homework that someone else forced you into, though.  It’s not, “Fine, I’m doing it, are you happy?”  It’s, “I’m doing it because I believe in it.”

Mind you, deciding that you need more representation doesn’t mean that you’re going to write it well.  If the podcast had said, “It seems like Missy cannot stop reminding you that she’s female now, and that strikes me as clumsy writing by someone who has never really tried writing gender-fluidity of any kind,” well, I’d point them to “Curse of Fatal Death,” and I might quibble with phrases like, “in every scene,” but ultimately, that’s criticizing the execution of the idea, not the motive behind it.  That’s what’s bugging me about this piece.  It’s not saying, “I think X was executed clumsily,” it’s saying, “I think X was executed clumsily because Moffat is really a bad person who didn’t actually want to.”  And that bugs me.  It’s an accusation of bad faith, I guess.  It says to me that no matter how a writer tries, no matter how they improve, no matter how they learn, it doesn’t count, because someone out there “knows” that they’re really a bad person who didn’t actually want to.

That’s discouraging on a personal level, not just an interpersonal one.  I mean, I’m a writer who’s trying to put more diversity into my work.  And it doesn’t come intuitively.  I’m constantly second-guessing myself. I’m sure I’ve made some errors somewhere along the line.  And it’s nice to know that if I ever get myself noticed, someone will be along to say, “Well, yes, she writes quasi-Egyptian fantasy and diverse science fiction and whatnot, but I don’t like the way she does it—which proves she’s really a bad person who didn’t actually want to.”

What’s wrong with, “I don’t like the way they do it,” full stop?

A: “Moffat is A Terrible Person!”

B: “Why?”

A: “He doesn’t write diverse characters!”

B: *points to all the diverse characters in Moffat’s Who*

A: “Well clearly he was forced into doing that!”

B: “OK, what’s the evidence for that?”

A: “Because he’s A Terrible Person!”

Please, fandoms of Tumblr, stop with this manichaean view of goodness. People just can’t win with you, can they? People don’t deserve cookies for doing the right thing, no. But the moment some creator does the right thing without wanting your applause for it, you turn on him, focused only on what he’s done wrong. Well let me tell you something: It’s not about you. It’s not about your patting yourself on the back for liking only the Correct And Good Works. It’s about telling better stories, and creating a better world because of it.

People are not Good, nor are they Bad. That’s because goodness is not a trait, but a virtue. It’s something we exercise, and get better at doing. And Moffat has gotten better at writing diverse characters, and at writing generally. You don’t like his version of Doctor Who? Ok, that’s fine. I don’t much like Douglas Adams’s episodes. Opinions differ, isn’t that lovely? But stop penalizing people for becoming better.

Moffat isn’t a Good Man, but he’s not a Bad Man, either. He’s an idiot… passing through, helping out, learning.

(And then you have the other side, the comments from dudebros whinging over Moffat pandering to social justice warriors. Haven’t they stopped watching or reading fiction by now? What’s left with only straight white dudes?)

As much as I hate to reblog the links to the baseless podcast in the OP, the above five responses to it need to be shared.

“White People Find Something To Dislike In The Characterization Of A Black Lesbian Hero, They Don’t Actually Know What, But By Gosh They’re Sure It’s There!”

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the-lazy-cat-bakes-souffles:

It’s just occurred to me that Bill and Clara act as each other’s spiritual guardians in a strange sort of way at the beginning and the end of Series 10.

In The Pilot, it’s the memory, or rather the lack thereof, of Clara that convinces the Doctor not to wipe Bill’s mind, and subsequently invite her to travel with him in the TARDIS. Clara’s legacy changes everything for her.

In Twice Upon a Time, as one last gift, Bill gives the Doctor back his memories of Clara, almost like she’s returning the favour. Bill’s compassion and hope finally heals the wounds left when he forgot her, bringing them the closure they needed.

These two women never met onscreen, yet they both did the most wonderful thing for each other and for the Doctor. I love Bill Potts and Clara Oswald and their silly old Doctor so much.

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haruspis:

buzzfeedau:

Steven Moffat on how @doctorwho will be addressing the dangers of time travel for the new POC companion, Bill (played by Pearl Mackie).

‘What do you want to say to children?’ is the biggest thing here.

You don’t want to feel as though you’re apologising for them, or saying that there is something for which they have to make amends.

You want kids to see their kind of face on-screen and to know that that kind of face is absolutely fine and always has been. That’s what you want to say: there is no case to answer.

So if you do make a great big fuss about it, then you might be the first people to tell those kids ‘hey, there’s something about which you have to be afraid’. I don’t want to do that. I want to say ‘the universe is full of people like you’. And, y’know, we’ve started doing that in our historicals too, because, actually, it’s historically accurate. They didn’t invent people of different colours recently, in fact white is the most recent colour, so we address it but we address it in a positive, optimistic, Doctor Who way.

For the character meme: Bill Potts! -leinonline

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general opinion: fall in a hole and die | don’t like them | eh | they’re fine I guess | like them! | love them | actual love of my life
hotness level: get away from me | meh | neutral | theoretically hot but not my type | pretty hot | gorgeous! | 10/10 would bang
hogwarts house: gryffindor | slytherin | ravenclaw | hufflepuff
best quality: She’s warm and friendly to almost everyone she meets
worst quality: Honestly I’ve never been able to pin down what Bill’s worst quality is. “Unsure of herself in some aspects” perhaps
ship them with: Heather!
brotp them with: The Twelfth Doctor, and also the Thirteenth Doctor if they ever meet, which they better
needs to stay away from: British tabloid newspapers.
misc. thoughts: Please be in series 10 Bill

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