When Outraged Feminism Meets Doctor Who

(What follows contains what you might call mild spoilers, if you’ve seen no photographs of the new companion. It contains no discussion whatsoever of the plot of the forthcoming episode, but does briefly discuss the character’s back story—which has already been discussed extensively online.)

Nick—as those of you who follow him on Twitter will already know—found this brief article in MX Brisbane, a free street newspaper, a copy of which he picked up off the bus seat next to him:

It’s all right: you take the time to wipe whatever you were just drinking off the computer screen. I can wait.

The “slut” in question is Amy Pond, the new companion. She’s played, as you can see from the photograph, by a beautiful redhead, whose Scottish accent, I’m reliably informed by people of my acquaintance, makes her even sexier.

Amy Pond is, by profession, a kissogram, which led to the following discussion with Nick.

ME: So she’s a tall, gorgeous woman who works on—no, you wouldn’t even call that the fringes of the sex industry.
NICK: Affection industry at best, I’d have thought.

Yes, she spends part of the first episode in a policewoman’s outfit. Yes, that policewoman’s outfit has a mini-skirt. Wearing a mini-skirt somehow qualifies you for the pejorative term “slut,” now, does it? What is this, Derby Day at Flemington race course in 1965?

Or maybe it’s the fact that she’s a kissogram that qualifies her for this, let’s face it, grotesquely exaggerated and offensive insult. I don’t see why, but then I didn’t decide to write an article called “Who is the slut?”

According to this article, there’ve been a “flood of complaints”. Too much to expect that they cite any? Oh, yes. But it seems the real complaint is from The Daily Mail‘s Allison Pearson, who in an article here, says

Since when was Doctor Who’s assistant supposed to be sexy? They’re meant to be one of the boys, running around saving distant worlds. Is it too much to ask that family TV remains the one universe yet to be invaded by nuts magazine?

As the commenters on this article astutely point out, not only have there been plenty of sexy companions in the past (if Jo wasn’t sexy, why did Terry Walsh spend so much time climbing ladders in mini skirts? And what about Nyssa? Peri and her low-cut tops? Mary Tamm as Romana? Leela? Liz Shaw, whom Nick still idolises?), but if the companions were meant to be “one of the boys,” then why did they scream so much and sprain their ankles?

As Nick says, MX Brisbane has taken an article from The Daily Mail and made it nastier. That itself is an achievement, I suppose.

Oh, and the “critic” whom they cite as saying “They’ve completely demeaned Doctor Who by replacing good stories with slutty girls”? You can find the whole ugly comment, edited for the piece above, quoted here, in a forum discussion that rightly questions how the Daily Mail managed to make an entire news story out of a couple of anonymous comments on an online forum.

Anonymous comments do not a critic make, MX.

But it doesn’t matter where the “flood of complaints” vaguely referenced in the article come from. It doesn’t matter if some viewers think wearing a mini-skirt (with, I might add, an enormous jumper) is analogous to the type of outfits normally adopted while posing for a lad’s mag. It really doesn’t.

What matters is that the writer of this article thought “Who is the slut?” is an appropriate way of introducing the fact that the new companion has pretty legs and wears short skirts.

I would suggest what I think is an appropriate rebuttal to that attitude, but I’m sure you’ve all reached the same conclusion.

And to think some people say we don’t need feminism any more, because women have already gained equality. I would weep, but I think I’ll just have another drink instead.