Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart as Father Figure 2 from How Doctor Who Redefined Masculinity [Video] (1:35)

Dr. Rosanne Welch presents “How Doctor Who Redefined Masculinity: A Study of the Doctors and their Male Companions“ at the Cal Poly Pomona University Library. Dr. Welch teaches in the IGE (Interdisciplinary General Education) program.

Watch the entire presentation here

Transcript:

We learn that he has a daughter. So in the modern Who, the military person is Kate Lethbridge-Stewart, his daughter. So. she’s inherited her father’s job, if you will. She’s a science officer more than a military officer with UNIT, which is the group that takes care of all of that. So, we meet Kate and when we get to Death in Heaven the problem is all the corpses have been turned into Cybermen and their all rising out of the cemetery and, at a certain point, we lose Kate — they toss her out of an airplane, so we know she’s dead, right? Because she hit the ground, splat, she’s dead. Except among all the corpses we’ve been reminded is her father who has been turned into a Cyberman and when we go to that point in the episode we find out that she’s still walking around the cemetery. She hasn’t been harmed, because she never went splat. He caught her and brought her to the ground safely. He protected his child all the way to the end and then he went up to heaven with Danny. Danny pulled all the Cybermen out and it’s The Doctor — never salutes because he doesn’t like the military — but for this act — the act of saving his child, he’s going to salute and I think that speaks to what The Doctor thinks about what makes a man a man. And again, it’s all tied into being part of a family.

A clip from this 5th talk on various aspects of Doctor Who presented by Dr. Welch. You can find Dr. Welch’s other Doctor Who talks using the links below.

• Feminism in the Whoniverse
• Doctor Who and Culture
• Doctor Who Regenerated
• “How the Growing Popularity of the English Who-niverse Effected American TV” with Dr. Rosanne Welch

Follow Dr. Rosanne Welch on the Web and via social media at:

• Dr. Rosanne Welch Web Site and Blog
• Subcribe to Dr. Rosanne Welch on YouTube
• Follow Dr. Rosanne Welch on Twitter
• Dr. Rosanne Welch on Pinterest
• Dr. Rosanne Welch on Tumblr

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