An Open Letter to Steven Moffat (Head Writer of Doctor Who)

Dear Steven Moffat,

I will begin this letter by assuring you that I am a diehard Doctor Who fan. I really do love the show. I especially love how the show can be used to make relevant social commentary in the middle of deep space hijinks. However since you have taken the helm of Doctor Whothere seems to be a problem. Apparently either you haven’t come to the realization that women are people or you are just really bad at writing female characters. You seem to do okay with characters created by someone else such as Donna Noble but when it comes to starting from scratch you seem to fall back on biology rather than humanity as your inspiration for characteristics. All throughout the latest season the character Amy Pond has been a mystery, is she pregnant? Is she not pregnant?

When we find out that she is indeed pregnant and has been imprisoned throughout the first half of the series with a perfect clone replica replacing her with Rory and the doctor. Now if I was Amy and I woke up to realize that I had been imprisoned and unconscious for the last nine months and that the first thing, I noticed upon awakening was that I was in labor, I would lose my shit. I would not go from giving birth completely unexpectedly to an immediate maternal bond with the surprise child. I would probably find it very difficult to accept that this child was in fact mine or feel any particular responsibility for it. If I was not completely in shock from the experience, I might muster some concern about the scary lady that wants to take the child for nefarious purposes but I might not immediately jump to “this baby is mine and I’m keeping it at all costs”.

Childbirth is a stressful experience and to find oneself in the middle of it without any warning or knowledge especially with the added stress of captivity would most likely cause most women to have a complete break with reality even if they are as indomitable as Amy Pond.

Women are far more than their ability to our children but you continue seem to not realize this. As a more recent example let us consider this years Christmas episode. There are so many things about this episode that make me want to scream. Now I know that the Doctor is brilliant and aware of it And that this comes with a major superiority complex but was it necessary to make the only reason that the children’s mother could save the day while he could not be because she had a uterus. Seriously Mr. Moffat? Just because most women have uterus is does not necessarily mean that they are more nurturing and stereotypically motherly. You could have gone with she was recognized at having great strength for holding her family together through the tragedy of losing her husband and children’s father to a horrible war but no she’s a woman so it must be because she had a uterus. Women are only powerful because they have uteri. No wonder you can’t seem to get away from the ridiculous and becoming very old story line of the love/lust triangle between Rory, the Doctor and Amy. For your information it is completely possible for two men and a woman to have crazy fun adventures without the women wanting to sleep with both of them. How do I know this? Because I have done it many times. Really, you can just keep it the sexual tension between Rory and Amy where it belongs and leave the Doctor and any other man who might happen along out of it. People are not the sum of their sexual organs or desires. Amy has shown herself to be very resourceful and despite her flakiness can be very emotionally intuned to others. She is saved the day without direct help from her uterus many times. So out of respect for all of the bad ass female companionswho come before her and who will hopefully come after please remember that though they are fictional characters they should represent real women who are oh so much more than their ability to give birth.

In closing I would ask that in future when writing a female character no matter how small her role that if at any point her actions or her purpose within a story boil down to the fact that she has a uterus that you seriously rethink that character.

Thank you

PS in the Christmas episode when the doctor asks the mother how she met her husband and she replies “he used to follow me home every day” you might want to rethink that to. Because that makes him a stalker and creepy. I really don’t think you want to be teaching the young girls who watch Doctor Who that stalking is an appropriate or romantic form of courtship.