Category: Doctor Who

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.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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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 had Nyssa who I really enjoyed. Nyssa came in with the Peter Davison era with Teegan — who’s alright. Teegan has her moments. But Nyssa is an alien, super intelligent from her alien race and at the end of her time with The Doctor — thy end up on a planet where there’s a leper colony and nobody is taking care of these people and rather than — again — continuing to travel with The Doctor she chooses to stay and be a caregiver to these people. She’s a doctor so she can take care of them and imagines that she will find a cure for this if she stays behind and he’s like “well maybe this will never be cured” and she’s like “it won’t ever be cured if no one tries.” So she’s willing to give it that time which I think is a beautiful strength being evidenced by a female character. Not that hard.

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.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

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:

Sarah Jane is one of my favorite companions. She’s come from the old Who to new Who and then she even had her own program The Sarah Jane Adventures. So what happened was she came into the Third Doctor’s life. She was an investigative reporter so she wasn’t some girl who did nothing and she wasn’t just reporting on fashion and/or celebrities. She was an investigative reporter. She looked for things that were wrong in her society and she highlighted that with being her newspaper writer. So that’s how she came to meet The Doctor. She traveled with him through Tom Baker obviously. Then she left and returned in an episode called School Reunion with David Tennant. So in the new Who era and at that time, of course, time had passed and she was invited to continue traveling and she had the strength and the intelligence to say No. I need to move on with my life. I’ve been thinking of you for too long. I need to have my own life.

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

---

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.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

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:

…and I also just jokingly have to say, from a strength standpoint Jean Marsh, the actress who played that character (Sara Kingdom) ended up writing the miniseries “Upstairs, Downstairs” which was the “Downton Abbey” of your parent’s generation. Huge PBS show about the maids and the rich people living in a house. So literally it was a copy — or the predecessor I should say — of “Downton Abbey.” So she moved her career, using this acting career into a writing career where she could write the kind of representations she felt that the world needed. So that is pretty cool. Liz Shaw came up in the John Pertwee era, The third Doctor Who and she was a scientist so she was the equal to any of the men she worked with and sometimes she was smarter than they were, because she had a Ph.D. and she could do science and these guys sometimes weren’t — sometimes just military dudes. So Liz Shaw is a pretty good example of a strong woman we’ve met along the way.

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

---

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.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

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:

She really wants people, of course not, to be upset or worried about it. Which is important. Now, as far as I’m concerned when you think about gender, females have always been strong characters on Doctor Who. Going back to the early days and all these women have had really important jobs. From the very beginning, Susan, who was the first companion, his granddaughter, left because she wanted to rebuild the planet that she had seen destroyed. So she wanted to put her efforts into helping other people and using her talents for that. Right? She could have continued adventuring and having a party with her grandpa and all that meeting The Mayans, The Aztecs and what have you, but she wanted to do something more important and that’s a strength, right? I think that’s a woman who has active strength being shown. Then, as I mentioned, Agent Sara Kingdom. She switched sides. So she chose the good. So she’s a little bit like Darth Vader flipping at the end finally.

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

---

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.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

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 he wrote this lovely short piece called “Night of the Doctor” which blended the movie — that was not very good, back in the day — with the modern story and again gave us the concept that regeneration could change your gender. So they’ve been laying the groundwork. They had to warm us up to get us ready for this and it’s all the writers that did that work. Then, Chris Chibnall took over as I said as Moffat retired and I love what David Tennant said. He really thinks Chris is going to do a good job and I tend to agree because I love the work that Chris Chibnall has done in the past, soi am looking forward to what he might do with this character and he’s the guy who had the guts to say “I’m going to be the one who changes. I’m going to make the full change.” So that’s a big deal. When Jody was chosen, she knew there was some controversy — people back and forth on the idea — turns out it’s about 80 Pro/20% against it so the against people always get the bigger voices. So we have to be louder than them and make sure the show gets really good ratings to prove its a good idea to have switched it into a girl. So we have to have viewing parties on opening night, right. Write about it on your blogs and Twitter and all that.

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

---

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.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

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:

Have to give Steven for laying the groundwork finally and, as I said, if you look at his writing, when Matt changed he gave us “Not a girl. Still not ginger.” — a little ginger joke there. Which is fine. he made everyone think they were going to pick — oh my gosh I never forgot his name — Ron Weasley — yes — Rupert Grint, thank you so much. There was discussion that Rupert Grint would become a new Doctor, so a little joke there, the ginger is referencing that. So he knows what’s happening in culture. What people are saying about his program, right? So he laid that in. he also laid in in “The Doctor’s Wife” which is a marvelous episode — written by Neil Gaiman, wh you might know form American Gods and the other very cool novels. So they invited Nei Gaiman to come in and write an episode and they found old, dead, Timelords trapped in these little boxes and this is what he said about this guy, right? “He didn’t feel himself unless he had the tattoo. Or herself, a couple of times. Ooooo, she was a bad girl.” So Timelord who switched their gender It is possible. So Steven is writing or Executive Producing the writing in all these episodes. So he’s laying the groundwork for all this to happen.

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

---

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.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

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:

Going back to the 80’s, Sydney Newman, who was still in the BBC also said at some point in the history of this show The Doctor should become a woman. So this idea has been around for a while. I don’t think of the 80’s as that far back — but you all weren’t born — so it’s a long time ago to you and these ideas were there but among artists not quite in the major society. This is why art is so important. That’s how we influence society. So Sydney Newman thought that. We don’t get the stepping stones of a lady Doctor until we get Steven Moffat as I have said and his wife Sue Vertue. So a woman helped influence the time for this to happen and as you can see here this is not the cast of Doctor Who. So who is this?

Audience: Sherlock!

The cast of Sherlock, which Steven put together with Mark Gatiss and Sue produces. So his wife is his producing partner. he comes from a marriage where they are equally important in their job if in fact, she is not more important because she produces his work. She sells what he writes. So in a way, obviously, she has the power.

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

---

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.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

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:

You may never have seen a Tom Baker Doctor Who. You should check it out, but you have in fact seen Tom Baker as Doctor Who if you saw the 50th Anniversary special. That was his special guest starring moment. Right? And I think it’s quite adorable. It was quite fun. He was, as I said, replaced by Peter Davison who happens to be my favorite Doctor. Although there was some controversy with the announcement of the new lady Doctor. He actually said he was sorry that they had chosen to make her a female because boys would lose a role model that they needed. And there was a whole lot of … Oh, you’re old-fashioned. You’re all bad. We don’t like you. You have to listen to what he’s saying. He’s saying that what’s special about Doctor Who is he shows a different side of gender. He counters the toxic masculinity in our society. The kind of stuff that’s been discussed in the news right now over the Weinstein thing and Loius CK. The toxic masculinity. The Doctor has always been a man driven by his intellect, his brain. He’s not using violence to solve problems and so what Peter Davison was saying was he regretted little boys not having this kind of man to look up to. An argument on the other side could be why can’t little boys look up to women who are in power positions. So you could go and look at it that way. I think it goes either way.

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

---

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.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

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:

Is this the first time anyone’s ever considered a lady Doctor? As a matter of fact, it’s not. This has been in discussions for a while but it’s as if society wasn’t ready for it and they knew it. They had to wait for us to catch up to what the writers wanted to do. Tome Baker who some of you, if you know old Who, should know as one of the most popular, previous Doctors — he actually said, when they were switching Doctors and that was in 1980 — “I wish my successor, whoever he or she might be, the best of luck.” So he was already planting the seeds of this possibility and I think that’s really interesting in 1980. What’s funny is, I often tell people, it’s wonderful to watch news from other countries to realize there are different perspectives than our American perspectives and my favorite story is, in 1980 when they announced the new Doctor, the first story on the BBC news that evening was that Peter Davison would take over for the job of Doctor Who from Tom Baker. The second news story in England that day was that Ronald Reagan had just won the American presidency.

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

---

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.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS