Honorable Mention: Doctor Who’s Creator Wanted A Female Lead In The 1980s
Before we get on to why now is the right time for a female Doctor, let’s remind ourselves why it makes total sense for the Time Lord to become a woman at all: the creator of the show called for it to happen decades ago!
While Doctor Who‘s creation was very much a collaborative process (watch the excellent 2013 drama An Adventure in Time and Space for the whole story), it was Canadian TV producer Sydney Newman who came up with the central premise of the show and the character of the Doctor.
By 1986, Newman had moved on from the series, and was definitely not a fan of how it had developed. In a bid to fix the show, Newman sent the head of the BBCÂ this colourful letter suggesting that the next Doctor should be a woman:
“At a later stage Doctor Who should be metamorphosed into a woman. Don’t you agree that this is considerably more worthy of the BBC than Doctor Who’s presently largely socially valueless, escapist schlock? … This requires some considerable thought – mainly because I want to avoid a flashy, Hollywood Wonder Woman, because this kind of heroine with no flaws is a bore.”
While Newman’s criticisms of the show at the time are pretty strong, the thing to take away here is that the producer wanted the Doctor to become a woman as it would have social value and present an interesting alternate take on the idea of a female sci-fi/fantasy hero to contrast American superheroes like Wonder Woman.
