It’s not exactly that those things make Amy Pond a weak character. A key part of what makes Amy a problematic character is less to do with the way she behaves and more to do with how she’s treated by the narrative.
Take, for instance, Amy’s tendency to dress in a “sexy” manner. There is nothing wrong with wearing skimpy clothing but we see Amy though the lens of the male gaze.
Her choices have little to do with what she wants and what she gets pleasure from, but rather she is sexualized because that is what keeps the dads and teenage boys watching, don’t ya know?
The problem with the waiting, again, isn’t anything to do with Amy. She, after all, isn’t the only companion who has had to spend time waiting for The Doctor. Donna waited a year before she got her turn to travel in the TARDIS. The problem is that Amy is defined by this waiting. We know nothing about her life, her experiences, her passions. All we know is she is “The Girl Who Waited”.
Compare this with Donna who we know actively seeks adventure and The Doctor out. I mean, we know stuff happened in Amy’s life but none of that is explored in the show. Amy is only important in relation to The Doctor.
Lastly, Amy having a baby. Again there is nothing inherently wrong with having a female character give birth. The biggest problem with Amy’s pregnancy was that it was a mystical one. I’ve written more on why this is problematic here. What it basically comes down to is Amy had no autonomy throughout this whole arc. She has no choice, she has no ability to speak out about what’s happening to her and she has no opportunity to deal with the emotional impact these experiences would of had on her.
It’s not that Amy isn’t awesome (personally I love her, particularly in early series 5), it’s just that she is continually shit upon by the narrative.
Names are important not just culturally but specifically within the universe of Doctor Who: the Doctor’s choice of name and what it means both to him and to other people was examined under Steven Moffat in “The Beast Below” (when he stated that once he had ‘killed’ the star whale he would have to choose a new name for himself because, ‘I won’t be the Doctor any more,’) and again as recently as “A Good Man Goes to War”, when it was suggested that the word ‘doctor’ came from the Doctor himself in many languages and that it meant different things according to the role that the Doctor had played with respect to the culture which had given birth to that language. The Doctor’s ‘true’ name is a closely-guarded secret known only — as far as we know — to him and River Song; for the entire history of the show, the Doctor has controlled his identity by retaining control over the name by which people refer to him. The right to create and control his own identity, by creating and controlling his own name, is very significant and important to him.
In “The Eleventh Hour”, the adult Amy chooses the name ‘Amy Pond’ for herself — rejecting the Doctor’s favoured name for her, Amelia Pond, which she associated with the childhood she left behind when the Doctor broke his promise to her — and she continues to go by ‘Amy Pond’ after she marries Rory in “The Big Bang”. This is the name she has chosen for herself, as part of the adult identity she has created for herself. This is why it’s so disgusting that the Doctor frames ‘Amy Pond’ as a name which Amy has to shed in order to become an adult. It’s not a question of whether Amy is ‘allowed’ to take her husband’s name — of course she is, and if Amy had chosen to go by ‘Amy Williams’ when she married Rory in “The Big Bang” there would have been nothing contentious about it — but Amy did not take Rory’s name in this episode: it was bestowed upon her by the Doctor, as part of an ‘adult’ identity which he created and defined for her. Amy implicitly rejected the name of ‘Williams’ when she kept going by ‘Pond’ after “The Big Bang”, and she explicitly rejected it when she chose to name her daughter Melody Pond. The fact that this episode frames ‘Amy Williams’ specifically — the identity she’s expected to assume by the patriarchy as a holdover from a time when women were quite literally the property of their husbands — as the identity that Amy has to assume in order to be a grown-up (the fact that it associates her maiden name of ‘Pond’ with immaturity, as if her decision to keep her maiden name when she got married was nothing more than a childish whim) is almost a tangential detail, merely the icing on the misogynistic subtext cake. It’s not the name itself that’s the problem: it’s what it means specifically within the context of Amy’s storyarc. Doctor Who conflated the adoption of your husband’s surname with the idea of growing up. That’s the problem.
Moreover, the show implied that in order to be a grown-up Amy had to let go of her ‘childish’ dreams of adventure (the thing she has most consistently been depicted as wanting for herself) and settle into a life of domesticity with Rory. There is no reason why adulthood should be conflated with letting go of magic and miracles in a universe where magic and miracles — of which the Doctor is just one of many — actually exist. In fact, there’s no reason even in the real world why growing up has to entail owning a house and a car and living in a fixed location with your spouse; there’s no reason why the Doctor’s vision for Amy and Rory’s life without him couldn’t have included a provision for adventure — but it didn’t. He didn’t gift Amy with mountaineering equipment; he gave her a house — and he actually said that the “bigger, scarier adventure” was waiting for her inside that house. There is no way of reading that which doesn’t boil down to the idea that in order to grow up Amy had to give up on magic, and miracles, and adventure — in short, everything she ever wanted from life — and settle down to play house with Rory. In the end, Rory got everything he ever wanted — and Amy got Rory.
(source)
THIS IS AMAZING. YES.
(via stfu-moffat)
It is very difficult to not side-eye Moffat given the choices he makes in his scripts, the things he says and the way he conducts himself when responding to fans.
I don’t know if I’d go quite so far as to say Rory was intended to be an incredibly unlikeable character. I think he was probably intended to be, kind of, a foil to The Doctor. To highlight how wonderful and brilliant and amazing he is.
Nothing is created in a vacuum. I don’t think it’s so far-fetched to consider that Moffat’s opinions and beliefs will leak through into the scripts. But yes, this is the narrative reason behind the Sontaran being a male nurse.
All excellent points. I never thought of the Sontaran nurse in that way but now you mention it, it is very clearly framed as a humiliating punishment.
I see where you’re coming from with this but, personally, I don’t buy it. I personally feel that all of the things you’ve mentioned are undermined at one point or another during the show.
Whilst he is a male nurse, Rory is often implied to be, in the eyes of Amy, second best to The Doctor. So much so that one can’t help but feel Rory’s job is just another element of this.
He does take his wife’s last name but this is something used to symbolise Amy leaving behind her childhood and her imaginary friend and growing up. Demonstrated clearly in The God Complexwhen The Doctor refers to Amy as “Amy Williams”.
Also, so much emphasis was put on Rory being “man enough” to take his wife’s name. This would have only worked as a subversion of societal norms, for me, if it had been handled more like Gwen and Rhys in Torchwood neither of whom changed their names when they got married, but this is not mentioned by either one of them or anyone else (until Miracle Day).
Whilst Amy may be the more assertive one in the relationship this is, somewhat undermined for me, because, as Amy and Rory both grow as people, they start to embody far more traditional gender roles. This can be seen very clearly in AGMGTW when Rory, The Roman Centurion, goes off to fight whilst Amy runs off with the baby to hide.
Like I said, I do see where you’re coming from and I agree that at the beginning of series five these characters and their relationship certainly had the potential to really subvert the norm however at the end of the day this just wasn’t achieved at all.
Apologies. RTD stands for Russel T. Davies. He brought Doctor Who back in 2005 and was the shows head writer during the first four series and the 2009 specials.
And welcome to the fandom! :)
Seriously, how have I not mentioned this episode already?!
This episode is such a rare gem in it’s portrayal of mental illness. The subject was handled brilliantly. As someone who suffers from mental health issues this episode is just…so fantastic. (I’m bloody tearing up trying to answer this, the episode just means an awful lot to me.)
I can’t really form any coherent thoughts or opinions off the cuff but yes. Yes, serious props to Richard Curtis for the depiction of Vincent’s depression in this episode.
Queer Representation and Visibility in Doctor Who - Canton Everett Delaware III
Canton Everett Delaware III was a character introduced in the series six opener The Impossible Astronaut/Day of the Moon. We see him briefly, as an old man, in the present day. However for the majority of the episodes we see him as a young man in 1960’s America.
We learn early on that he was an FBI agent but was fired because he wanted to get married. It is not until the end of Day of the Moon that we are explicitly told that he wished to marry another man. He is recruited by President Nixon to investigate a series of mysterious phone calls and soon joins forces with The Doctor and Team TARDIS.
Canton is a great character in the sense that he doesn’t conform to the common stereotype of the effeminate gay man. Whilst it is always great to see queer men who don’t conform to this cliché, I am starting to sense a pattern in the portrayal of queer men in Doctor Who as badass, stoic types. Whilst I wouldn’t say this pattern quite falls into the realms of effemiphobia, I think it is time we see a queer man who embraces some more traditionally feminine pursuits.
There is, however, another very notable downside to this character. The only time Canton’s sexuality is explicitly acknowledged in the show is during his big “coming out” scene to Nixon.
It could be rationalised that, because of the widely held views regarding GSM folk during that time period, Canton would be somewhat reluctant to talk openly about his sexuality. However, given what we learn about his character, this doesn’t make any sense. To begin with Canton doesn’t bat an eyelid at the prospect of telling the president, the most powerful man in the world, about his relationship with another man. Rather, he relishes the opportunity to make Nixon squirm. So, why would he be reluctant to talk about it to, for example, Amy? Especially knowing that she is from the future.
This all leads me to conclude that the reason for only revealing Canton’s sexuality at the end of the program was to make a big deal out of it. On the face of it, there doesn’t seem to be anything particularly harmful about this. Sure, it’s hardly subtle but there’s nothing really wrong with it, right?
Well, if we compare this to the reveals of queer characters from RTD’s era there is a very clear difference. Whilst RTD’s queer characters really normalised non-normative sexualities, Moffat sensationalises Canton’s identity. This is harmful because, although it’s not outwardly hostile, it serves to other queer folk. What this means is the marginalised group, in this case GSM, is seen as separate. This, in turn, reinforces the attitude that members of the GSM community are not normal and it is this kind of attitude which is frequently used to justify oppressive behavior.
Overall Canton is a very enjoyable character to watch. I, along with many others, would love to see him make another appearance in the show (along with his other half). He is however fairly one-dimensional, we don’t get much insight into his private life, his family, his relationship. Whilst this is not problematic in and of itself, combined with the complete sensationalisation we see at the end of the second episode, it is yet another instance of Moffat’s, incredibly insensitive, exploitation of queer identities.
This is a pattern we continue to see throughout the rest of series six, as I will explore in my next few posts.
Yeah, absolutely. I know everyones not gonna agree with me and I’m certainly always up for hearing other peoples points of view.
