The Doctor is not a woman

Last night, in the UK, the penultimate episode of Doctor Who was aired. Thanks to social media, it was easy to see how it ended - someone actually put the last two minutes of the episode up on Youtube. I won't spoil it for people - though I would dearly, dearly love to know *right now* who the next Doctor is going to be!

Special interest groups have been agitating for a female Doctor or a black Doctor - to which I say, no.

The show's producers have already laid the groundwork for this pandering by turning The Master into a woman. And Michelle Gomez did a great job with the role (in what I've seen of it so far - I have yet to see this third season as Amazon Prime is charging for that. (You can watch all of "New Who" at Amazon Prime for free, except for the latest Capaldi season. I seem to remember that several years ago, when I had Prime for a brief while, "classic Who" was free - but now you have to pay for it. Since I've got all of Classic Who on VHS which I'm eventually going to convert to DVD, I didn't bother!)

But I digress.

with others have been from a male standpoint. Everyone in the universe knows him as male, and straight. Yes, we got a line in "The Husbands of River Song" that she's bisexual and has had wives as well as husbands, so I can't say, "How is he going to make love to River Song if he's a woman?" - the showrunner prepared for that nicely, didn't he!

But the Doctor's favorite planet is Earth, Earth has always been a patriarchy and, yeah, white males have always been in charge - throughout the Western world, anyway. Is the Doctor going to give up that advantage just because he decides to "choose me this face" because the face reminds him of all the prejudice that minorities have to put up with? (Remembering, by the way, that in Africa, whites are minorities, in North Korea the sane are minorities, in China whites are minorities, etc.)

Throughout all his incarnations the Doctor has been male, straight - and though he's been made to apparently fall in love with a couple of his companions in "new Who" they have always been women.

That's who the Doctor is.

If the showrunners really want to have a strong female Time Lady, create one. Have her be the companion to the Doctor for a year, and if she's popular, spin her off into her own show and let Doctor Who ride off into the sunset. If they want a black Time Lord, create a new character, have her be a companion to the Doctor for a year, and if she's popular (because producers will want to combine two minorities in one - a black and a woman) give her her own series, and let the Doctor fade away.

But do not change the Doctor into something he isn't!

Peter Capaldi and the charities he supports

Continuing to search YouTube for videos of Peter Capaldi, and found a few that sadly don't have a lot of hits - videos where he is the patron of a certain charity and asking for donations.

I thought I'd share some of them here.

First is a video of Peter Capaldi as the Patron for Secondary 1st, a secondary breast cancer charity. Secondary breast cancer affects both men and women:

In this next video, Peter wishes the charity It's Good To Give a happy fifth birthday.

For Children in Need a couple of years ago, Capaldi visited a refugee camp.

A hospital in Malawi that can't care for its children

Pay it forward. Help those in need.

The Doctor Legos

Last night I was searching through YouTube, as usual, and accidentally came across the fact that Lego sets specifically for the Doctor exist!

This surprised me because while Doctor Who is a popular show,I didn't think it was popular enough to create Legos for!

There's a kit to create a TARDIS control room.

and a Doctor Who building set.

And if you're creative and have a camera on a tripod, here's the kinds of things you can do with your Legos! It's "The Doctor Who 50th Anniversary Show" done in Legos:

Get the Middle Eight Back!

I had intended to share a chronological history of my rediscovery of The Doctor, but I just came across an interesting bit of info that I decided I'd share immediately.

I was trying to find "the Great Curator" video (impersonator Jon Culshaw doing Tom Baker's and Jon Pertwee's Doctors) and another guy doing Mat Smith's and David Tennant's, and then decided to listen again to Peter Capaldi singing. Did a search on "Peter Capaldi singing" and came across this video (shared below) of Capaldi wanting "the Middle Eight" back in his theme music.

I love "the middle eight" part of the theme music, but I'd never known it was called "the middle eight." So I did a search on "Doctor Who the middle eight" and came across an article that discusses all of the Doctor Who theme music. A lot of what's covered in the article went over my head since I know nothing about music (except what I like) but now I know *why* I like certain of the themes more than othes.

Doctor Who theme artricle at the Tardis wikia. http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/Doctor_Who_theme

Manifesto

In this blog, I'll be chronicling my journey through the universes of Doctor Who.

In the 1970s and 1980s, I watched Doctor Who religiously. The Fourth Doctor, Tom Baker, was my favorite, followed by Jon Pertwee's Third Doctor.

I didn't care for Peter Davison's Doctor, liked Colin Baker's first few episodes but never saw his final season, and liked much of what I saw of Sylvester McCoy's Doctor. I didn't watch the Paul McGann movie, simply because of Eric Roberts as the Doctor.

When Doctor Who was rebooted in 2005, I watched two and a half episodes of the Chris Eccleston Doctor. I saw "Rose" and "The End of the World" and liked them well enough, somehow missed the third episode, "The Unquiet Dead" with Charles Dickens, and then watched about half of "Aliens of London." When all of the aliens started farting, I turned off the show and did not turn it back on until a couple of weeks ago.

I knew of the changes in Doctors, of course -that David Tennant had succeeded Eccleston, then Matt Smith, and then Peter Capaldi.(Presumably because I had done internet searches on Doctor Who in the past, my Google News page would always have news about what was up with Doctor Who, as the years went by.)

I was intrigued by Capaldi's Doctor, as he looked so similar to Jon Pertwee, but took it no further than that until, as I say, a couple of weeks ago.

As a freelance writer, I like to work and listen to music at the same time, or watch TV episodes that I have seen dozens of times before so that I can only pay attention when my favorite scenes come up, but at other times it's simply pleasant background noise.

I have always loved the music of Doctor Who, and after tiring somewhat of listening to the soundtracks of the various Pirates of the Caribbean movies (the best things about each one except the masterpiece that was the first) I decided to go with Doctor Who soundtracks.

In looking them up on Youtube, I would find the music but also clips from the various episodes of the "reboot" or "nuWho" as it is called.

I watched one called, "The Doctor Enters the TARDIS," because it had an intriguing title and description. It's a scene from the Christmas episode, "The Husbands of River Song."

It was a clip that included a scene of Capaldi's Doctor following River Song and someone called Nardole to the TARDIS, where River Song intends to steal it. The Doctor tells her she can't, she says "Why can't I."

Capaldi's expressions were just hilarious.

Then he enters the TARDIS and, since River Song doesn't recognize him, pretends to be shocked and amazed by the fact that the TARDIS was bigger on the inside than the outside.

I loved that scene, and decided I'd better revisit the Doctor again.

A thought to ponder
There are dozens of Doctor Who clips on YouTube. Many copyright holders will demand that clips of this nature be deleted, which has always seemed to me to be stupid. Let the clips remain and you get new fans! Take them down, and you lose fans. That was the case with me - and I doubt if I'm alone in this! How I did so, and how I "consider the Doctor" is the subject of this blog.