Whilst I agree the dialogue was very very clumsy, and wish that RTD would get some advice from women and trans people because he made some real errors in this episode, I still love the 60th episodes with all my heart.
The way I see this is that Donna just needed time. When she first became the DoctorDonna she wasn’t given a choice - he instantly wiped her memory. It was a tragedy but also a mistake for him to do. If she had more time, which perhaps she never would have gotten without having a child, she can realise that she can just let it go.
I don’t see it as an anti-men statement but more trying to be pro-women, but it is so clumsy it really could have used a rewrite.
But Ten and Donna will always be my favourite pair so I love this episode so much!
That line didn’t bother me at all and, you know what, sometimes the pendulum has to swing too far in the other direction before it settles at equality. One line that sort of insults men is really small fry compared to the constant sexism directed at women in UK TV. Two wrongs don’t make a right, but one pointed line isn’t going to upset me in an episode which was a love letter to the DWM comic and had Miriam Margoyles killing it as the Meep.
The writing of that scene was terribly clunky, but I think that line is jarring not just for being “anti-men” but also for the fact that Thirteen, the “female” Doctor, is the one with the most trouble letting go of them all. It feels very prescriptivist sexist. As a trans person, I can confidently say that presenting as a different gender doesn’t automatically make you act stereotypically like that gender. In general the episode was really clumsy with its handling of trans issues.
like RTD your gender essentialism is showing. Not to mention deadnaming Rose and thinking he’s so clever to do so bc her deadname means ‘doctor’ and how smug he is about everything in interviews etc patting himself on the back despite not having a diverse writers room
I actually thought the deadnaming scene was the best of the gender bits. It showed something that realistically happens to people, made it clear Rose is trans, and showed how the people who care about her support her through it. It was the least heavy-handed, and it was almost good. I haven’t seen any interviews about it so I can’t comment on that aspect.
I’m not trying to justify the hatred towards women (I despise those who hate women just because they are women).
Yet in this situation RTD kinda became the very thing he swore to destroy. Yes, as Shauny said, it could be pro-women, if it wasn’t written that clumsy.
If you just turn the tables, you just switch sides, you don’t eliminate the problem.
The issue is that there are ways to do this that don’t reveal a trans person’s deadname. It’s basically Writing Trans Characters For Cis Writers 101 not to reveal your character is trans by showing their deadname, and it shows that RTD did not do his due diligence in consulting trans people for sensitivity reading when he wrote the episode.
Because I’m being a terrible moderator and derailing @PalindromeRose 's lovely thread about Old Sixie with my intense dislike for Year of the Pig, I thought it only right I post my review of it here (and on the site). I wrote this a few years ago now and the key thing I took away from re-reading it is that I find the story frustrating and nowhere near as funny as it thinks it is. It is a rare example of a story I feel excluded from because I feel like I’m missing the ‘intellectual’ references particularly in terms of Proust - although as I say in the review, this may be me misunderstanding what Sweet is trying to do in the script.
But as it is, this a rare 0.5/5 for me (and that’s only because you can’t give 0/5 on the site).
100% agree, everything you said is why Pig just didn’t work for me either. I just didn’t find it funny. I’m glad other people enjoy it, but it just wasn’t the story for me. I don’t think I despised it so much as tapped out and got bored, but yeah, definitely one that I don’t think I’ll be listening to again
That’s fair! For me I loved it, I always feel deeply immersed into a Matthew Sweet script and this is no exception, in fact is one of my favorites. It also made me really want to read the works of Proust lol.
like RTD your gender essentialism is showing. Not to mention deadnaming Rose and thinking he’s so clever to do so bc her deadname means ‘doctor’ and how smug he is about everything in interviews etc patting himself on the back despite not having a diverse writers room 
