How The Doctor Who Reboot Misunderstands Transness
650 words
Not long after being reunited with David Tennant, and the brilliant Catherine Tate, Russell T Davies introduces this rebooted Doctor Who audience to a new character–Donna Noble’s daughter, Rose Noble. Rose, played by the talented Yasmin Finney, is a teenage transgender kid. The first episode includes her transness as a critical element to the plot–and in its attempt to showcase trans positivity, unfortunately, the writing of Rose ends up falling into some rather murky waters.
Firstly: it should be said. I applaud Doctor Who for attempting to show transness in a positive light, especially when considered as a British production. Britain is notable as a dangerous place for trans people, and attempts to normalize transness are welcome. But good intentions are also not above critique.
The first time Rose’s transness is brought up is as Rose and Donna are walking home. Some neighborhood boys, passing on their bikes, jeer at Rose, misgendering and deadnaming her. This is not the type of scene I personally would write, but I can understand its intentions (while wearing my charitable hat). It seeks to demonstrate the harsh reality of being trans and bullied, and establishes Rose’s resiliency in the face of this. Again, the intentions are here, and despite being clumsy, I have no real problem with this scene. The same can be said for when Rose’s grandmother chats with Donna about not knowing the right thing to say, and asks if calling Rose gorgeous was sexist. This, again, is a bit of a clumsy scene, but I can still understand the intentions. Normalizing these conversations can be useful — and we all love to see Donna be a good parent. I wouldn’t have written this in quite this way, as is, but I see the intentions.
However, as the transness starts to intersect with the magical sci fi of the show, my understanding and patience for what they were attempting to do falters. Upon meeting the alien, Meep, the doctor genders Meep as “he”, to which Rose snaps back, “did you just assume a male pronoun?”. The Doctor is then thankful to have been corrected. This gag, to me, too closely resembles the anti-trans meme of “Did you assume my gender?” to comfortably enjoy it–and it presents an interesting question: Why does the Doctor, a gender-fluid alien who literally changes between male and female forms–have less of an understanding of gender than a fifteen year old girl? This might seem pedantic–but it comes up again towards the end of the episode.
Later, after Donna does her heroics, and the threat of the episode is defeated (through the “nonbinary” scene, where Rose matches up with Donna’s “binary” timelord ramblings), Rose and Donna address the Doctor. Rose says that the Doctor has “All that power, but there is a way to get rid of it. Something a male-presenting Time Lord will never understand”.
This line implies something: that as soon as the Doctor regenerates into a male form, something shifts inside of him, an inherent “femaleness” becoming an inherent “maleness”. It assumes that the experience of gender is completely tied to physical traits, and nothing else. This, obviously, is not how transness works, and is gender essentialist. It completely ignores the Doctor as a gender-fluid entity, and instead codifies a binary inside of him: he is either male, or female, and jumping back and forth and between does nothing to break down the barriers between these two categories.
The line unfortunately creates an understanding of gender that is based on hard divisions and genetic differences–rather than the correct one, that gender is a socialized trait. The Doctor would not lose the female perspective he had as the 13th Doctor when his face switched to David Tennant's. Imaging so is a fundamental misunderstanding of transition and transness, and demonstrates a profound lack of imagination when it comes to how the Doctor conceives of himself and interacts with the world.
Again, I respect what they were trying to do — but in trying to stick the landing, they broke an ankle.
I am eager to see more of Rose Noble, and hopeful that further attempts to write her will be done with a little more research and thought.