25 Rose and Martha Jones from Gender Diversity in the Who-niverse [Video] (0:57)

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:

Then we have Rose who came into the new Doctor Who with Christopher Eccleston and stayed threw David and Rose is a interesting character because she looks like she’s not that smart — she’s a shop girl, she really can’t keep a job etc — but she always steps up to the plate when necessary. She’s always able to take care of The Doctor when he can’t and that’s a pretty powerful job if you want. And then we come to Martha — who some people think The Doctor didn’t treat very nicely because she was the girl after the girl he loved because he fell in love with Rose and then the new girlfriend shows up. But she’s not meant to be a girlfriend. Right? She’s meant to be a companion. Except that then she fell for him, which is always a bad thing. Don’t fall for a guy after the last relationship, but I think you can find that that shows us strength too. First of all, one of the best storylines was for a whole year she walked the Earth to tell people about The Doctor in order to save his life. It is a pretty cool episode, right? So that’s one thing, She essentially saves his life. That’s a strength.

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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