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A Very Small Doctor Who Gripe
I've really enjoyed this season of Doctor Who, more than any in years and years, and I'm looking forward to the finale next week--but I'm going to voice a small gripe because I haven't seen anyone else mention it, and I just want to make my point. Small spoiler for "The Legend of Ruby Sunday.
There's a throwaway (hopefully) line in which the Doctor says that, though he's had a granddaughter, he hasn't been a parent yet because timey-wimey. Point One, this is a retcon: Ten confirms, albeit briefly, that he was a dad, plus--as many have noted--there's Jenny. But DW retcons itself a lot; that's not my core problem.
My core problem is that I think this is a bad writing move within the context of DW's sixty-year history. Episode 1 (1963) introduces us to the Doctor as a grandfather, which strongly implies that he was a father. Now, that's not certain: he could an adoptive "grandfather" figure, for example, and we never get details, which--as time goes on--has probably been for the best. But Occam's razor suggests he's had at least one child, and has been suggesting that for over sixty years. That means whole generations of fans have grown up, written fan fic, daydreamed about the Doctor's life, etc. in millions of different ways, likely with the premise that he's had at least one child (beyond Jenny). And I expect that, for many, suddenly undoing that will require very heavy mental retconning of their views of the Doctor.
Now, any story about his background will bust fans' theories (which is why the details might best be left alone). But if it's any kind of story that actually presents him as a father to Susan's parent in the usual temporal sequence, it's something people could choose to incorporate into their mental landscapes, take-and-leave details, etc. But saying he was never a father for 2000+ years of life is a massive change to implicit canon, not only to the specific Susan story but to the Doctor's whole identity because being a parent shapes you. It makes who you are, profoundly.
I don't think that's a good move to pull. That's all.
There's a throwaway (hopefully) line in which the Doctor says that, though he's had a granddaughter, he hasn't been a parent yet because timey-wimey. Point One, this is a retcon: Ten confirms, albeit briefly, that he was a dad, plus--as many have noted--there's Jenny. But DW retcons itself a lot; that's not my core problem.
My core problem is that I think this is a bad writing move within the context of DW's sixty-year history. Episode 1 (1963) introduces us to the Doctor as a grandfather, which strongly implies that he was a father. Now, that's not certain: he could an adoptive "grandfather" figure, for example, and we never get details, which--as time goes on--has probably been for the best. But Occam's razor suggests he's had at least one child, and has been suggesting that for over sixty years. That means whole generations of fans have grown up, written fan fic, daydreamed about the Doctor's life, etc. in millions of different ways, likely with the premise that he's had at least one child (beyond Jenny). And I expect that, for many, suddenly undoing that will require very heavy mental retconning of their views of the Doctor.
Now, any story about his background will bust fans' theories (which is why the details might best be left alone). But if it's any kind of story that actually presents him as a father to Susan's parent in the usual temporal sequence, it's something people could choose to incorporate into their mental landscapes, take-and-leave details, etc. But saying he was never a father for 2000+ years of life is a massive change to implicit canon, not only to the specific Susan story but to the Doctor's whole identity because being a parent shapes you. It makes who you are, profoundly.
I don't think that's a good move to pull. That's all.
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The Doctor having been a dad, though, is something that's been explicitly mentioned several times -- "I was a dad once," a reference to having lost his children in "The Doctor's Daughter," "dad skills" from "Listen" -- and strongly alluded to elsewhere, as well. So it's beyond retcon and into flat-out contradiction, really, unless you do some serious jumping through logical hoops. Not, of course, that Doctor Who doesn't have just as much of a history of self-contradiction as it does retcon... But I don't love that one, either.
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