34 Rory Williams from Gender Diversity in the Who-niverse [Video] (0:56)

Watch this entire presentation: Gender Diversity in the Who-niverse: Paving the Way for a Lady Doctor with Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] (36:58)

For her 5th Doctor Who lecture to the CPP community, Dr. Rosanne Welch discusses how society – and the show’s writing staff – prepared the audience for a major change in this 50-year franchise – the creation of the first Lady Doctor!

Transcript:

Rory is such a cool character. I know the joke has really died how many times almost as bad as South Park all right but think about what Rory did all right. First of all he willingly married somebody who was running around having these adventures right. When she was gone for a while he never lost faith that he would find her and that she would still love him. That nothing could happen that would make him stop loving her. He’s all about being a man in love with a woman. That is his definition in life right and usually that’s how we define women by the men in their life but Rory is defined by the woman in his life which is pretty cool and as we know when she was trapped in the Pandorica for a thousand years he willingly agreed to stay and guard her. That’s how much he loved her. So if I was thinking about sensitivity and emotions Rory is defined by his ability to love which again is generally gendered as a thing that women do best.

Follow Dr. Welch on Twitter and Instagram
https://twitter.com/rosannewelch – http://instagram.com/drrosannewelch

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Rosanne Welch, PhD

Rosanne Welch PhD teaches the History of Screenwriting and One-Hour Drama for the Stephens College MFA in Screenwriting.

Writing/producing credits include Beverly Hills 90210, Picket Fences, ABCNEWS: Nightline and Touched by an Angel. In 2016 she published the book Why The Monkees Matter: Teenagers, Television and American Pop; co-edited Women in American History: A Social, Political, and Cultural Encyclopedia; and placed “Transmitting Culture Transnationally Via the Characterization of Parents in Police Procedurals” in the New Review of Film and Television Studies. Essays appear in Torchwood Declassified: Investigating Mainstream Cult Television and Doctor Who and Race: An Anthology. Welch serves as Book Reviews editor for Journal of Screenwriting and on the Editorial Advisory Board for Written By magazine, the magazine of the Writers Guild.

Watch Dr. Welch’s talk “The Importance of Having a Female Voice in the Room” at the 2016 TEDxCPP.

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