When Peter Capaldi took over as the new Doctor for Series 8 of Doctor Who, fans were promised a darker, more unlikable Doctor than his previous incarnations. Capaldi described his interpretation of the iconic character as “darker” and “less user-friendly.” Jenna Coleman, who portrays the Doctor’s companion Clara, described Capaldi’s Doctor as “A lot less human-friendly and a lot less patient. He’s more removed and inaccessible.” This new Doctor’s unlikability could have been a liability — and there was some hand-wringing that this more unlikable Doctor would alienate younger viewers — but overall his unlikability was marketed as a deliberate selling point. Showrunner Steven Moffat specifically credited Capaldi’s interpretation of the Doctor with reinvigorating the show and preventing it from stagnating.

The deliberate promotion of the new Doctor as more unlikable than his previous two incarnations raises an intriguing question: Could a woman portray the Doctor the same way Peter Capaldi portrays the Doctor? And would the show’s producers have been able to promote the show the same way if a woman was taking over the role?

The question is no longer a rhetorical thought experiment. With the introduction of Missy as a female regeneration of the Master the question has been definitively settled — Time Lords are capable of changing their sex and/or gender on regeneration, and the Doctor CAN be played by a woman. At this point even those who oppose the idea of a woman portraying the Doctor agree that he will almost certainly be portrayed by a woman one day.

That means that, eventually, the writers and actor will have to grapple with how to handle some of the Doctor’s more unlikable characteristics. The Doctor is the show’s hero and protagonist, but he can also be incredibly unlikable at times. He’s been arrogant, manipulative, patronizing, rude, deceptive, dismissive, callous, pompous, selfish, condescending, and just plain grumpy. He’s deliberately belittled and insulted his friends, manipulated and deceived his companions, and done some truly horrendous things (let’s not forget that one of the Doctor’s latest triumphs was to downgrade a double genocide to a single genocide).

The Doctor attempts to do good and right wrongs in his travels, but he is fundamentally a renegade. He doesn’t like to solve problems kindly and patiently while working within existing systems. He’s happiest when he’s upending order, dismantling existing systems, and generally just fucking shit up. He has no respect for authority and suffers no fools — which is probably why one of the most common greetings he receives is “Who the HELL are you?!"

Even his companions think he’s a bit of an ass sometimes. They may enjoy traveling with him, and may even indulge or ignore some of his more unlikable characteristics (a sarcastic "Thanks” in response to a patronizing comment, an eye roll in response to an insult). But nearly every companion has criticized the Doctor’s treatment of them at some point: Ace and Clara were furious with the Doctor for deceiving and manipulating them; Rose and Donna called out the Doctor for patronizing and dismissing them; Jo and Sarah Jane pointed out when the Doctor was being insufferably pompous or arrogant.

The Doctor’s unlikable qualities are essential to making him an interesting and believable character. Nobody wants to watch a perfect character with no flaws; nobody would find such a character to be remotely interesting or believable. Personally, I think the Doctor is most interesting when the show is examining his most unlikable characteristics.

But audiences undeniably have a double standard for unlikeable male and female characters. We love and celebrate our male anti-heroes. We enjoy their lighthearted moments of arrogance, laugh appreciatively at their pompous wit, and seek out their motivations and influences to understand their darkest, most violent moments.

We don’t afford the same treatment to our unlikeable female characters. We bristle at their arrogance, attack them for their confidence, and neglect (or outright refuse) to examine the motivations for their actions. And god forbid they say something even slightly mean to one of our treasured male anti-heroes, much less stand up to them. It’s why we seek out motivations for Jaime and Tyrion Lannister’s cruel actions but simply dismiss Cersei as a bitch. It’s why we have uncountable gifsets devoted to admiring Sherlock’s insults, but despise Sally Donovan for making a few mean comments in return.

The most prominent and horrible example of this hatred towards unlikeable female characters is the vitriol that Anna Gunn faced while playing Skyler White on Breaking Bad. Her character was loathed so much by a section of the fandom that a number of people made personal threats against Gunn. In an essay for the New York Times, Gunn wrote that her character faced so much sexist hate because Skyler White was not the archetypical female character:



“Vince Gilligan, the creator of “Breaking Bad,” wanted Skyler to be a woman with a backbone of steel who would stand up to whatever came her way, who wouldn’t just collapse in the corner or wring her hands in despair. He and the show’s writers made Skyler multilayered and, in her own way, morally compromised. But at the end of the day, she hasn’t been judged by the same set of standards as Walter […] Could it be that they can’t stand a woman who won’t suffer silently or ‘stand by her man’? That they despise her because she won’t back down or give up? Or because she is, in fact, Walter’s equal?”

I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say that it is very likely that the Doctor’s arrogance, determination, and occasional rudeness — qualities fans have tolerated and even praised — will be perceived as bitchiness once they are portrayed by a woman. In this environment, is there a space for a woman to portray a character like Peter Capaldi’s Doctor?

Even fans who don’t have a sexist reaction to a woman portraying the Doctor’s more unlikable characteristics may still be uncomfortable with shifting the moral dynamic of the show. The female companions are often given the task of tempering the Doctor’s rage and pulling him back when he’s about to do something he’ll later regret. There’s an undeniably gendered aspect to that dynamic: men can be portrayed as complicated and morally uncertain, but woman are most frequently portrayed as paragons of morality who must reform men and bring out their better nature. Though the female companions aren’t always morally perfect characters, and sometime even encourage the Doctor to be more aggressive or commit violent acts that even the Doctor is uncomfortable with, they tend to be portrayed and perceived as the moral center of the show.

But when a woman eventually portrays the role of the Doctor, that moral dynamic will shift. A woman will be portraying a complicated and morally uncertain Doctor. And though there is no requirement or guarantee that a woman Doctor’s companion will be a man, it is likely that a male character will be the one acting as the Doctor’s moral guide, checking her behavior and questioning her ethics.

And that’s not a dynamic everyone is going to be comfortable with. Fifth Doctor Peter Davison said as much in an interview he gave earlier this year:

Davison said the key to the success of the modern Doctor Who series was the dynamic between a troubled Doctor and strong female companion. “It seems to me if you reverse that, if you have an uncertain, fallible female Doctor with a really strong male companion, you’ve got more of a stereotype than anything else.”

This can be generously interpreted as Davison being concerned that a female Doctor would be constantly lectured by her male companion, which is valid. But underlying this statement is a preference for the current moral dynamic of the show, where the male Doctor is allowed to be complicated and morally questionable, while the female companion must be the center of all that is good in the show.

It may seem odd to demand that my female characters be fallible, morally uncertain, and ethically questionable, but the simple truth is that I don’t want my female characters to be perfect because women are not perfect. I don’t want us to be put up on a pedestal, I don’t want us to be held to an unattainable standard. I want my female characters to mess up and make morally questionable choices and struggle to figure out how to do the right thing because I struggle with all of these things as well. Basically, I want my female characters to be treated like humans … or like 2,000 year old Time Lords with two hearts trying to be more human.

So just like the canonical groundwork has been laid for a female regeneration of the Doctor, the textual groundwork must be laid to encourage the audience to accept a woman portraying the Doctor.

Thankfully, Moffat already appears to be doing this. In an interview with zap2it, he described his ongoing process:

“You can’t just spring it on people out of the blue because large audiences are – by their nature – conservative […] It’s been consciously part of my approach to 'Doctor Who’ is not just implanting the continuity that it can happen – which is demonstrated with the Master turning into Missy – but also to have female characters who get a bit Doctor-y,” he explains.

For him, it started with the Doctor’s wife. “River Song … She was interesting,” he says. “I quite consciously thought, 'If the Doctor is going to have a someone who’s sort of his wife, she’s going to be a bit like him.’ She’s kind of a lady Doctor. That’s what it would be like, she runs around with a sonic [screwdriver] and flies the TARDIS and is flirtatious and unreasonable in a crisis.” Of Course, Clara’s got a bit of the Doctor’s personality in her as well, which doesn’t hurt.



Series 8 continued laying the groundwork for a woman Doctor with a subplot about Clara becoming increasingly like the Doctor. Thankfully, they didn’t just focus on Clara becoming more confident and comfortable traveling through time and space, they also focused on Clara adopting the Doctor’s most unlikable characteristics. She began lying to her closest friends, and she was willing to be utterly ruthless to get what she wanted. In the volcano scene, she was every bit the Oncoming Storm that the Doctor ever was.

Of course, Moffat himself hasn’t been exempt from stigmatizing women portraying more unlikeable characteristics. While Clara has increasingly come to reflect the Doctor, she has also faced an unusually high number of insults attacking her confidence and assertiveness, and most of these have come from the Doctor. Over her tenure she’s been called bossy, a control freak, and an “egomaniacal needy game player.” And all of this is because she is confident, assertive, and likes to establish the terms of her relationship with the Doctor.

And while River may be one of the most Doctor-ish characters in modern Doctor Who, she is also part of a trend of powerful female characters whose power is tempered by or expressed primarily through their sexuality. River will deceive and manipulate you with a flirtatious wink and a lethal kiss. Tasha Lem attempts to control and oppose the Doctor by ogling his naked body and seducing him over a bed-shaped altar. Queen Elizabeth, one of the most powerful women in history, will follow the Doctor like a lovesick puppy. And Missy, the first female regeneration of a character who had until then been portrayed by male actors, would be the first incarnation of the Master to be explicitly flirtatious with the Doctor: referring to him as her boyfriend and making out with him.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with a female character being confident and comfortable with her sexuality, and I’m certainly not arguing that women in positions of power must be portrayed as asexual in order to be perceived as powerful. But there’s a bit of a fantasy involved when female characters exert their power — particularly over men — by flirting with them. Female characters don’t exert control solely on their own terms, they exert control primarily by appealing to the straight male protagonist. And to a certain extent, this seductive leadership is appealing to the presumed straight male audience. There’s less space for women to simply lead — to be assertive, commanding, confrontational, curt, and uncompromising. If they have to portray these uncomfortable, unlikeable characteristics, they must first be softened by a flirtatious touch to convince the male characters and the male viewers that they’re really not as mean as they seem.

Which brings me back to Capaldi’s Doctor. While the Doctor may have always been a bit of an unlikable character, we were promised something on an entirely different level with the Twelfth Doctor. This wasn’t going to be a Doctor with a generally affable personality that had moments of darkness or rudeness. This was going to be an in-your-face, aggressively rude, deliberately unlikable Doctor. It didn’t matter if you were a friend, foe, or casual acquaintance — the Doctor wasn’t interested in playing nice. Capaldi’s Doctor wasn’t without has moments of tenderness, but he doesn’t ever attempt to soften his confrontational attitude, and certainly not by flirting.

Despite some minor hand-wringing, Peter Capaldi’s Doctor has been overwhelmingly welcomed by fans and praised by critics. And though the Doctor’s aggressive new persona was a shock to Clara, and certainly caused discomfort for those around him, he’s largely accepted as he is — no justifications, no excuses.

And so we return to my original question: could a woman portray the Doctor as deliberately unlikable as Peter Capaldi has been portraying the Twelfth Doctor? Would fans accept a rude, callous, grumpy, morally compromised Doctor portrayed by a woman? And could the production team deliberately market a woman portraying the Doctor that way?

Though science fiction has produced plenty of unlikable female characters, including many that have received praise from fans and critics alike, Doctor Who is in a unique position. It carries 50 years of history — and 50 years of baggage. When a woman becomes a Doctor they won’t just be introducing an unlikable female character on her own terms. They’ll be introducing a female character as a version of a male character, creating a whole series of contradictory expectations for her. She’ll be carrying the legacy of a character who has only been played by white men, and who has had a fairly consistent gendered dynamic with his largely female companions. By simply existing she’ll be upending a lot of preconceptions about what characteristics and personality traits are inherent to men and women.

And she’ll be facing a small but vocal group of fans who will resist her on principle and will be determined to tear her apart in any way that they can. On their own they can’t do serious damage, they are not a majority of the fandom. But there’s nothing media loves better than to promote conflict, so I’m certain their gendered insults against her will be given a much larger platform than they deserve.

I may sound pessimistic, but I’m actually stubbornly optimistic that a woman Doctor can be successful, even if she’s as grumpy and unlikable as Capaldi’s Doctor. Or maybe I’m just stubborn. The best way to get an audience to accept unlikable female characters isn’t to wait for some mythical moment where we think they’ll be completely tolerant and accepting, it has to be done by showing them over and over again what unlikable women are like. It’s done by forcing them to confront their own biases and prejudices repeatedly.

And who better to do that than the Doctor?