BBC responds to anti-trans complaints from Doctor Who viewers
British broadcaster fielded nearly 150 complaints about the Doctor Who 60th anniversary special "The Star Beast," for including Yasmin Finney's character Rose
Aux News Doctor Who
Doctor Who viewers are willing to accept a lot of things—fascist pepperpots, farting skinsuit aliens, children-kidnapping goblins with Christmas number 1 ambitions, the existence of travel in time and space in general. But some of them just couldn’t deal with a singular trans character appearing in recent episodes. To which, the BBC says: tough, you’ve gotta deal with it anyway.
It was reported last month that the broadcaster received 144 complaints about the first of the three Doctor Who 60th anniversary specials, “The Star Beast,” with Deadline noting that the complaints specifically accused the BBC of the “anti-male,” “inappropriate inclusion” of a transgender character in the story: Rose Noble, played by Heartstopper’s Yasmin Finney, the daughter of Catherine Tate’s returning companion Donna. Rose is shown as having been supported by her wider family in transitioning, while still facing transphobic bullying from other kids at school. A supporting character in the story, her trans identity becomes an important factor in the resolution of the plot, as well as a culmination of story threads from Donna’s initial exit from Doctor Who back in the 2008 episode “Journey’s End.” It’s unclear what exactly was deemed “inappropriate” by complaints, beyond Rose’s very existence.
It has to be stressed that this number of complaints represent an incredibly small fraction of Doctor Who’s audience: 7.6 million people watched “The Star Beast” within the first week of its broadcast in the UK, making it one of the most-watched shows in the country that week as well as one of the most-viewed and best-received episodes of the show in several years. For the most part, that audience then stuck around, and, would you believe it, Doctor Who was not immediately ruined forever for including a trans teen. They’re still making it, even!
In spite of this statistical blip in reactions, the BBC has to offer a formal public response to complaints which have either “generated significant numbers of complaints or raised significant issues” with its programming, and has now, a month later, done so in response to Rose’s inclusion in Doctor Who. “As regular viewers of Doctor Who will be aware,” the BBC’s response begins, “the show has and will always continue to proudly celebrate diversity and reflect the world we live in. We are always mindful of the content within our episodes.”
It’s about as politely dismissive as the broadcaster can get, but dismissive enough: Doctor Who is not going to change showing the full spectrum of humanity wherever it can. It’s certainly less blunt than returning showrunner Russell T. Davies put it during a press conference for the show last month:
“[There are] newspapers of absolute hate, and venom, and destruction, and violence who would rather see that sort of thing wiped off the screen destroyed,” the showrunner said of recent increasing attacks on trans representation in media and trans livelihoods at large in the UK. “Shame on you, and good luck to you in your lonely lives.”
James Whitbrook is deputy editor of Gizmodo’s IO9, which like The A.V. Club is owned by G/O Media.
36 Comments
Heeeeeeeeeey! An io9 writer doing a story on a platform I can comment on!
Somehow I started ungreyed at The Takeout, and was grandfathered in on AVC. I remain grey-invisible on io9 / Gizmoduck & Kotaku. I wish the sites were coded for the posters to cross platforms like the articles do.
io9 was the first of these sites I was ungrayed on (been with AVC since the old days), and one day I was grayed again. Only reason I can think of is that I told one of the old writers to give a series more than two episodes before writing it off as a failure. ::shrug::
You monster!
Good for you! My comments on AV Club stopped appearing, despite being a long-time commenter.
It seems like G/O is doing more cross posts this year. Yesterday, I saw a Kotaku article on Gizmodo.
Fewer staff, same number of platforms.
One of Germain’s reviews was posted as a Kotaku article proper (not cross-posted from io9). Makes me wonder if G/O is thinking of sunsetting io9 and moving its writers around…
Just checking if I’m able to post in AV. I was ungreyed on Kotaku, but it’s a crapshoot if I can post on here. I can post on Takeout as if I am ungreyed, but it shows up as a greyed non-guest post.
So is every article on this site about trans things now or…?
Saying the character is anti-male is obviously stupid. They might argue that it was anti-male for Donna to tell the Doctor that he would have figured something out if he was still a woman. But even that involved giving birth, so, you know, she has a point. Actually, it’s arguably more of an anti-trans thing to say than anti-male, now I think about it.
I love how the lack of sound makes it look like he’s not even typing anything, which makes it even funnier.
Somebody better not tell these Males For Men Internet Warrior Dorks that Star Trek’s got this thing call “Trans”warp drive. Their mom’s basements will collectively burn down when their heads explode.
It’s England, most of the complainer are women of TERF. They believe transgender are taking their jobs.
Meanwhile, the BBC is still perfectly fine with its reporters being openly trans and championing JK Rowling. So they can shut the fuck up pretending they’re on the right side here.
Or that they didn’t turn a blind eye to Jimmy Saville for decades.
BBC is a neutral evil, at best.
But making a trans character sympathetic is “bad writing”!!!!Am I doing this right?
Almost. Gotta say something like “Objectively bad writing!”
I will never understand bigoted Who fans. Their ideas are 100% counter to the message of the show. The Doctor would get in their faces and tell them how wrong they were. They would be the craven immoral humans collaborating with the Daleks.
The same applies to Star Trek fans. Both DW and ST were progressive from the start and have continued breaking ground. The trolls can’t seem to accept it.
It’s like they saw that one Black Mirror episode and didn’t realize it was satire.
I just *love* the troll complaints I’ve seen that insist that LGBTQ inclusion and storylines are the result of Disney’s involvement (because, you know, Disney is definitely known for all of their trans characters) and not because it’s an organic inclusion by the showrunner that brought us ‘Queer as Folk.’
Right? Did they forget Davies’ first run and the entirety of Torchwood?
Anyone who thinks the show will suddenly get “less woke” because Davies came back is in for a big disappointment.
144 dumb complaints out of 7.6 million.. Hope people like Youtube’s “The Critical Drinker” see this and finally realise they’re on the wrong side of this.
“In spite of this statistical blip in reactions, the BBC has to offer a formal public response to complaints…”Any my god why would they, over a 0.002% (rounding up) complaint rate? They probably got more complains about the bathroom wallpaper.
“Why did you go with Taupe?? It’s so boring!”
Anyone whose sense of self is so fragile that they take the existence of a trans character to be “anti-male” needs some deep and immediate therapy.
The “anti-male” complaint is probably due to the line in the episode “something a male-presenting Time Lord wouldn’t understand”.
You can complain about the quality of the writing here, but complaining that it’s intended to be offensive sexism is rubbish. The complainants clearly have never experienced actual sexism against themselves in their lives.
Go on Rotten Tomatoes right now and look at the audience scores for the recent episodes. It’s nothing but page after page repeating either “woke” or “cringe”.
Doctor Who has always been woke and cringe! At this point it’s a feature, not a bug. The show is held together by bubble wrap and bad political metaphors. One story in the seventies was inspired by how hard it is for freelancers to pay their taxes!
In any case, I pretty much ignore this shit, now. People have been saying “Doctor Who is dead” since Capaldi came on, and it’s just old at this point. As long as Doctor Who still sells more in merch than it costs to make, it’ll never go off the air.
If yer gonna get upset ‘cause a woman, or a black man, or a transperson is on-screen, then don’t watch.
We’ve had 50ish years of young women in short skirts running around in caves, but suuuuure the occasional insertion of representation is the biggest problem Doctor Who has ever had.
‘ People have been saying “Doctor Who is dead” since Capaldi came on, and it’s just old at this point.’People have been saying “Doctor Who is dead” since 1963.
Heh yeah, as soon as there was a second Doctor Who fan, the arguments began.
I really love that pretty much the instant it was announced that RTD was coming back as showrunner, he went on record saying he was 1000% pro-trans rights and saw it exactly the same as the gay rights struggle, etc. The man does not hold back and I’m glad for it.
Hate comes from fear, caused by a lack of understanding, empathy and imagination. I do judge these people for their lack of intelligence and the above qualities. Plus, why would anyone waste their time and energy about something that has no effect on them, and nothing to do with them?