The last fifteen episodes of Doctor Who have depended heavily upon Steven Moffat’s “Parenthood” theme. Lets illustrate it here:
- “A Christmas Carol” – the story of a boy who grew up with an abusive father, learning how to love.
- “The Impossible Astronaut” &
- “Day of the Moon” – involve an orphanage and a mysterious child who is later revealed to be River, and the child of Amy and Rory.
- “The Curse of the Black Spot” – a story about an estranged father who mends his relationship with his son.
- “The Doctor’s Wife” – we get a break here!
- “The Rebel Flesh” &
- “The Almost People” – a two-parter involving a subplot about a father hoping to get back to his son; also culminating in Amy’s labor.
- “A Good Man Goes to War” – Melody Pond is born, and the Doctor builds an army to non-violently rescue Amy and Melody.
- “Let’s Kill Hitler” – Amy and Rory discover they’ve already raised their daughter – woops!
- “Night Terrors” – a father learns to love his weird alien son, by inviting a stranger into the house in the middle of the night (wtf?)
- “The Girl Who Waited” – break
- “The God Complex” – break
- “Closing Time” – a father learns to love his baby with whom he’s had a hard time developing a connection
- “The Wedding of River Song” – Amy and Rory’s daughter, River, kills Amy’s best friend/her own husband – its like a American soap opera!
- “The Doctor, the Widow, and the Wardrobe” – When her children go missing, a mother takes space-miners hostage and drives a future-space mining thing, then pilots her family through the time vortex in order to rescue them.
Gordon Bennet, look at all that parenting!
I wanted to illustrate the frequency of the parenting theme in response to criticisms of “The Doctor, the Widow, and the Wardrobe”. Admittedly not the most feminist of stories, there does seem to be a common habit of viewing this story solely in the context of Science Fiction as a whole, rather than in the context the current era of Doctor Who. I think its important to remember that this story is told in the context of a whole season devoted to parenthood.
If we divide this last 15 episodes into stories about mums and dads, what do we get? (Lets exclude Amy and Rory for a moment.)
Dads:
- “A Christmas Carol”
- “The Curse of the Black Spot”
- “The Rebel Flesh” &
- “The Almost People”
- “Night Terrors”
- “Closing Time”
Mums
- “The Doctor, the Widow, and the Wardrobe”
If we were to include “A Good Man Goes to War”, I feel that it was be a bit more of a “Dad” story than a “Mum” one; Amy’s a damsel in distress, whereas Rory is the adventurer who travels all of time and space to build an army to try and save his wife and daughter (I imagine relating how helpful many dads want to be when their partners are giving birth, but undoubtedy aren’t).
In “The Doctor, the Widow, and the Wardrobe”, the “women as vessels for life” concept, isn’t what the story is really about. That’s a spacey-wacey symbol of importance, but isn’t the heart of the story. I believe what lays at the heart of it, is a story about mothers as emotionally strong, and incredibly brave and daring. That isn’t to say its without its problems, and that as a stand alone story it may still give an uneven feel for the importance of mothers in the lives of their children.
I think Moffat’s message so far has been this, “The Doctor will defeat the Daleks…but failing that, your Mum and Dad (if you’ve got ‘em) will always save you.” Not an accurate message, but perhaps a comfort to many young people hiding behind the sofa.
I totally disagree. I think your premise could be valid except for the bit of dialogue at the climax of the episode. The trees say that the doctor and the boy are weak. The mother is strong. And the doctor’s response of oh of course.
The episode cements the idea that gender is binary and fixed all across the universe, and that it fundamentally defines who you are. And that bearing children is a) the one thing that can make you strong and b) fundamentally defines who you are / how you are perceived by the whole universe. It’s just a benevolent sexism pat on the head that he says women are “strong”.
That’s inaccurate. The Doctor’s response is actually more like, “Oh, of course, ‘weak’ v. ‘strong’ is a mistranslation.”
Yes, yes, there is a problem with the binary and the standards that are suggested by this episode. But I think its inaccurate to interpret this episode as “this is what women are” instead of a love letter to mothers, which I think it what it actually is. The uterus = power concept is problematic, but it doesn’t define women in Moffat’s Doctor Who. This is a story about motherhood, continuing the theme of the season, not a story about all women.
The thing I take away from this episode is that talking about gender with aliens is difficult!
Which would actually be a cool theme for them to explore across a whole series, but I’m quite glad they did it here.
I very much like the portrayal of Madge throughout the episode, and the way it shows not only the traditional ‘mum can fix it’ competence that people still assume is a female-only trait (and which Closing Time dealt with from a male point of view already) but the horrible pressures on mothers (not only in wartime) to pull it together, to be strong for their children, and to always, always put everyone else first.
I think it’s a surprisingly sophisticated story about the mythology of motherhood, considering it’s written by a man and it’s, you know, DOCTOR WHO. If taken on its own I can see why eyebrows might be raised but it drives me a bit nuts that we’re not allowed to have ONE episode about motherhood without people bitching about it, after a whole season of fatherhood and invisible mothers.
I couldn’t agree more. I’m all for strong portrayals of women (I wouldn’t be writing for this blog if I wasn’t) but it does irritate me that some strains of feminism assume that this excludes traditional female roles. Surely the whole point is that we can choose our role now? Motherhood is as valid a choice as any other, and it’s nice to see that reflected in popular culture.
Intriguing read on Series 6. On a podcast (I *think* it was the 2MTL’s recap discussion on S6), I had heard the point made that while RTD had always viewed family from the child’s perspective (most centrally with Rose, but also VERY much with Martha, Donna, and even the Master), Moffat flipped that over, and has most often examined the idea of family from a parent’s (and, as you point, out, almost always, father’s) perspective. Maybe one of the reasons Amy is so problematic is that she’s had to be both child AND parent, but virtually never NOT one of these roles.
While some deplore this focus on family (and by “family” I don’t necessarily mean “blood relations” but also mean the extended families that have been part of the series since 2005, e.g., the too-brief team of Nine-Rose-Jack, the big reunion in “Journey’s End,” the extended-universe families of Torchwood and SJA, etc.), I think it’s been a critical part of the show, which would now be almost unthinkable without it. In the classic series, we always had the temporary families of Doctor and companions, but, with the single exception of the Doctor and Susan, our regulars have never really had any substantial family histories. Sure, there were the odd narrative moments of such history in the JNT era (e.g., Adric’s brother, Tegan’s aunt, Nyssa’s father and stepmother, Ace’s mother and grandmother), but they were always fleeting. Characters rarely had much history or connection or longings beyond the moment (again, the McCoy era provided the stirrings of change along these lines, with the planned Season 27 in particular embracing it). So, having a persistent meditation on family and history has been arguably the new series’ most important contribution to Doctor Who (although the novels got there first in the 1990s, big time).
The challenge is to not only rely on the idea of family as a narrative engine, but also to do something interesting with it in the long term. On that count, each producers’ grade is clearly mixed. As you say, Ritch, way too many Dads this season (though as a Dad myself, I do have a huge soft-spot for Dad-angst in drama; I still can’t get through Father’s Day without completely losing it). And the Doctor’s own family history will likely always be elusive, and thus ambiguous to the point of inconsequence. I would hope that we’ll see more creative family arrangements and relationships in the future (well beyond RTD’s frustrated kids and Moffat’s melancholy dads).
Interesting thoughts! Thanks for sharing!
I remember that podcast. It was an interesting hypothesis – and I really wish they would work to bring more female writers into Doctor Who so we can see some different avenues explored! This is a show that benefits from changes, flexibility and diversity, so a bit more diversity in the writing staff would be awesome.
I’m still a bit cranky we never got to see Ace’s mother (apart from as a baby). She was so important to Ace’s character! It’s fascinating to go back and look at those last 2 classic seasons now, as you can see how much was used as a model for Rose… and how they didn’t quite go far enough for modern tastes, but the Doctor was already heading squarely into domestic territory.
They clearly wanted to turn the corner into more serialized storytelling and dig into the histories of both Ace and the Doctor. It’s just too bad they only had a grand total of 28 episodes (after “Dragonfire”) to go anywhere, and their ambitious plans for the 1990 season were cancelled (at least till Big Finish adapted them to audio last year).
Thankfully, the New Adventures started in 1991, and from Paul Cornell’s Timewyrm: Revelation onwards, always explored this deeper territory. They were a HUGE influence on RTD’s conception of the new series; he even wrote one of them in 1996 (Damaged Goods).
As I tried to say in my earlier post, I really don’t think the ep says that bearing children is the ONE thing that can make you strong in any context other than that of the world of this particular story. Nor does it say that that defines how you are perceived by the universe – it says that in this context, by this species, for this purpose, it is child-bearing that makes you strong, and strong means, in this context, equipped to serve this particular purpose.
And it tells this particular story through a particular woman, and celebrates her strength, which is shown in other ways than simply having given birth.
Which is kind of OK by me.
Isn’t it kind of a balance though? Other than Rose’s dad returning from the AU I felt like RTD’s Who was full of moms and a LOT of absent fathers.
Was it though? Rose’s Dad was vital to her story. Martha’s Dad was in almost every episode her Mum was in. Donna’s Dad was around, and later ‘replaced’ by her grandfather, who was definitely more involved in her life than her mother was.