#sabetha needs a holiday

[tobeathief]

Blow a couple bucks on me…

[theotherscarmanthewoman]

Doctor Who and the Bechdel Test: Series (Season?) One

A Note on Data Crunching

I am a terrible statistician (as evidenced by my accidentally numbering the episodes at 43 rather than 42 and then becoming enormously confused) and often the pass/fail decision for a genuinely debatable episode depended on whether or not I was feeling generous. However, what is very clear is that there are a lot of episodes in the ‘errrm...’ category, of which more anon.

A Note on Classification

Pass: yes, named women spoke to each other about something other than a man at some point during this episode.

Fail: no, named women did not speak to each other about something other than a man at some point during this episode.

Errrm...: this episode passed by the skin of its teeth or entirely debatably, either because women were in the same group conversations without actually speaking to one another or because their only verbal interactions were things like ‘goodbye’ (oh Ping-Cho!).

The Results

Pass (27/42)

An Unearthly Child

The Cave of Skulls

The Forest of Fear

The Dead Planet

The Escape

The Edge of Destruction

The Brink of Disaster

The Roof of the World

The Singing Sands

Five Hundred Eyes

The Wall of Lies

Rider from Shang-Tu

The Sea of Death

The Velvet Web

The Screaming Jungle

The Snows of Terror

Sentence of Death

The Keys of Marinus

The Temple of Evil

Strangers in Space

The Unwilling Warriors

Hidden Danger

A Desperate Venture

A Land of Fear

Guests of Madame Guillotine

A Change of Identity

The Tyrant of France

Fail (6/42)

The Ordeal

The Rescue

The Warriors of Death

The Bride of Sacrifice

A Race Against Death

A Bargain of Necessity

Errrm... (9/42)

The Firemaker

The Survivors

The Ambush

The Expedition

Mighty Kublai Khan

Assassing at Peking

The Day of Darkness

Kidnap

Prisoners of Conciergerie

Analysis

Of the 42 episodes in Series 1, only 27 pass the Bechdel Test outright, giving it a 64% pass rate. For a show in which women make up 50% of the recurring cast (which means there are always two women available to have a conversation...unless one of them is on holiday or the group splits up, of which more anon), this is pretty shoddy. What speaks to me most is the number of episodes in the ‘errrm...’ category, insofar as it says something about the quality of the exchanges between named women. Often they’re in the same conversations but not really talking to each other, or else they exchange words but don’t contribute to one another’s character development. This is also true of some of the ‘pass’ episodes (for instance, Barbara and Susan discuss Susan’s shoes in The Sea of Death but not much else). 

However, what really stands out thinking back over the episodes is how often an episode fails the Bechdel Test because the two women in the regular cast are the only significant women characters in a given serial. If Barbara and Susan get split up and there are no other women in the episode, the episode completely flunks the test. Whereas in a serial like The Keys of Marinus, the presence of side-characters like Sabetha and Kala makes it the only serial except the two bottle episodes of The Edge of Destruction to have a 100% pass rate. It’s also what makes Marco Polo pass the first 5 of its 7 episodes with such flying colours only to find itself on much shakier ground once Susan and Ping-Cho are separated. Indeed, one of the worst serials in terms of the Bechdel Test is The Aztecs, purely because Susan is sent off to the seminary in the second episode, and Cameca spends most of her time with the Doctor. 

As The Aztecs proves, whether or not an episode or a serial aces the Bechdel Test is not necessarily an indicator of an episode containing well-rounded women characters with bags of character development, or indeed the quality of the conversations between named women. For instance, the fantastic conversations Susan has with Barbara and Ping-Cho in Marco Polo may be shining examples of early character development in Classic Who, but this serial also contains yellowface, rape culture, women wandering off for the sole dramatic purpose of needing to be rescued later, and a band of ne’er-do-wells rolling dice for the privilege of slitting Barbara’s throat. In a similar vein, the 100% pass-rate of The Keys of Marinus belies the problematic nature of many of its subplots, which include domestic violence and attempted rape.

Having said that, the Bechdel Test remains useful, insofar as it throws into sharp relief both the staggering gender imbalance of the supporting cast and the extent to which many of the writers just didn’t know what to do with Susan. And boy are the stats going to spiral when there are no longer two women aboard the Tardis.

[tobeathief]

Sabetha cannot trust the other Gentleman Bastards alone for 5 minutes without returning to something on fire or Calo and Galdo at each other's throats on the way to Espara

[tobeathief]

Teen Sabetha @ teen Locke