“An ancient being who can travel through time and space in a flying 1960s police box? That I can buy, but a woman able to do things while on her period? YOU’VE GONE TOO FAR, SIR.”
doctor who
Bill Potts Rant
If you didn’t know, I love Doctor Who. A lot. So when I saw season 10, I was not impressed. I’m not going to hold back here, it was the worst season of Doctor Who I had ever seen. The storylines were ridiculous, the character development was.. Null. It was nothing. I cannot think, in my head of one way a character developed. Not to mention, Bill Potts. AKA I pander to SJWs.
I have never seen a character pander more to SJWs than Bill Potts. Bill Potts is everything Tumblr likes: an unattractive (call me harsh but she is universally unattractive), black lesbian. And that would be fine… If the show stopped reminding me every episode.
In the first episode, Bill has a almost partner and I didn’t mind that. But almost every episode felt to mention that she was black or a lesbian.
We had to have a racist Victorian guy, some guy crushing on Bill so Bill can tell him she’s a lesbian (this also had nothing to do with anything and added nothing to the episode), a blue guy accusing Bill of racism so she can explain racism, Bill telling the doctor randomly that she likes girl when he already knows and finally, Bill traveling the universe with her girlfriend.
I might have been able to deal with that if Bill was a good character. She wasn’t. She just asked questions and made “funny” statements. She didn’t develop at all. And don’t try to tell me her lack of development is because she only had one season. The most developed Doctor Who character, Donna Noble, had one season.
Of course though, Bill will get defended to death because she’s an unattractive, black lesbian.
All righty, this post (which was thoughtfully placed in the Bill Potts tag where all her fans go) is desperately and deliberately racist, but the OP obviously knows and is proud of that. So arguing wouldn’t do much good. So I’m taking it over instead to post many beautiful photos and gifs of the beautiful Bill and Pearl Mackie! Do join me?
The amount of women writing Who is disappointingly small. The show has never had more than two women write in a year. And that’s a recent record, set by series 9 and 10 under Moffat (and, arguably, season 22 of the classics, but Paula Moore is a pseudonym, most likely for more men). And the fact that it’s apparently not for lack of trying is even more saddening. One of my greatest hopes for Chibnall’s run is that he’s able to take that further, particularly with the hook of a woman Doctor.
now if we trans folks (particularly trans women) could get an apology from Mr Davies for the grossly transphobic Cassandra character that would be nice
That seems like a reasonable request. I doubt that line was intended to be offensive, but oh yikes.
Russell turned into a very good trans ally sometime between
2008 and now, as made obvious by refusing to move forward with Banana until Bethany Black was cast and Banana being very positive representation, but given he specifically wrote ‘humorous’ supplementary material about Cassandra’s multiple transitions it was either supposed to be deliberately offensive or he didn’t consider that trans people would be watching at all. We’d also like an apology for his 2008 disaster ‘I think it would introduce genitalia to family viewing’ when talking about the prospect of a female Doctor.I actually went to a convention about LGBT themes and representation in Doctor Who, and RTD was there. A trans fan raised the issue of Cassandra, and Russell did apologise for the hurt caused by the character, which he didn’t intend but regrets.
Oooh, that’s good.
Maybe this speaks to tumblr’s bizarre ‘perfect pure progressive thing/trash awful anti-progressive thing’ dichotomy more than anything else (because a different more unknown white guy will be writing the new Doctor?) , but I’m sort of discouraged that the reaction to the 13th Doctor news from a lot of quarters has been “oh good, I can finally watch this show again, it is Progressive now”. And I don’t want to underplay the huge deal that a female Doctor is, it is a huge deal. But…
Bill Potts was a huge deal too. People who see themselves in her have written about her importance at length. She was (heck, is, she’ll almost definitely be back for the Christmas Special, Pearl Mackie’s been spotted on set) a black, lesbian, working-class co-lead on one of the biggest sci-fi shows ever. Bill beamed out from a lot of the posters and from the children’s tie-in magazines. Bill kissed a girl on television, a full-on passionate overjoyed kiss, during family viewing hour on the BBC. Bill had natural hair. Bill became immortal (by choice) in a world where TV producers almost seem to hate gay characters getting happy endings. Bill was an audience surrogate who represented a lot of Brits who don’t see themselves represented on British TV often. It’s just –
The companion’s the audience surrogate. Everyone was encouraged to see themselves in Bill Potts. And she was the co-lead. That bears repeating. The Doctor’s one lead of Doctor Who and the Companion’s the other one.
If a black, lesbian, working-class co-lead wasn’t enough to get you to Finally Watch The Show Again, why is a white female co-lead what eventually manages to do it?
If a black, lesbian, working-class co-lead wasn’t enough to get you to Finally Watch The Show Again, why is a white female co-lead what eventually manages to do it?
a more articulated version of what I was trying to say yesterday, thank you.
I loved Bill so deeply and was wounded by the way she was treated that all those “I can finally watch DW” messages that have been pouring from twitter and tumblr, mostly coming from white queer people, feel like a personal attack.Maybe it has something to do with the fact that literally nobody ever talked about it so there was no way to know unless you were already watching the show? Why is it that you and all the people that were apparently still keeping up with what was going on with the show never spread the word that this character even existed? LIke, you’re the one here shitting on people for being excited for a female doctor just because there’s a more progressive character there’s a pretty good chance they literally never heard of.
literally nobody ever talked about it….Why is it that you
and all the people that were apparently still keeping
up with what was going on with the show never spread the word that this
character even existed?
- My article for the Mary Sue about Doctor Who, the Bechdel-Wallace test and Bill Pott’s importance (does that cover the specific ‘you’?)
- Pearl
Mackie’s introduction/the new companion reveal video, aired during
halftime of the FA Cup (essentially our equivalent of the Super Bowl);
currently with
1,056,841 views on YouTube - “Doctor Who gets first openly gay companion” as reported on the BBC website, the 7th most visited news website in the world
- The Huffington Post, Vulture, Digital Spy, Fusion, Nerdist, Hollywood Reporter, Hypable,
AV Club, E!Online, Black Girl Nerds, Vanity Fair and Variety articles about Bill, her sexuality, her race and her importance - Pearl Mackie on the front cover of the Radio Times, a magazine with a circulation of roughly
684,922, on every news stand in the UK - And on or featured prominently in several other popular UK magazines as the S10 promotion kicked off
- The Daily Mail, inexplicably and revoltingly the most-visited English language news website in the world (ugh), wrote several articles about Pearl Mackie and Bill. (Don’t worry, that link doesn’t go to them)
- The Mirror reporting on Bill’s love life for whatever reason
- Freema Agyeman & Noel Clarke & Lashana Lynch, all TV stars with followings, supporting Pearl Mackie on Twitter
- Multiple gifsets, fanart, fanfic, meta, crafts, videos, graphics, cosplay, praise, happiness, just basically a huge amount of talented artists and creators and fans from all over the world spreading the word about Bill on social media because they liked her and/or were pleased to be represented
- Those
four links I put in the post up there specifically to demonstrate that a
large amount of people were aware of her existence and have been
talking about her importance from their own perspectives
LIke, you’re the one here shitting on people for being excited for a female doctor
Source and quote please.
