Christopher Eccleston’s call for more female writers

Now, an easy recommend: Sarah Phelps. Done a lot of stuff, but recently did a spate of Christie adaptations, culminating in last year's The Pale Horse, which up the gothic horror elements of the original. Need proof: www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7fGhHzRGG4

Tell me you don't want this lady doing a Holmes Gothic story.

if the writer has a good script then sure go for it, i think that everyone should be given a chance to write for the show and especially Big Finish

Not exactly a cyber woman, but I have thought for a while now that I am surprised DW has never done a take on “The Stepford Wives”. It would be a much better fit for 13 than 9 though.

I imagine that an Ecclestonian Cyberwoman might be remisincent of the gynoids in "Christmas on a Rational Planet", alhtough I doubt he's read that....

It's also worth noting that Steven Moffat insisted that female writers and directors weren't keen to write for DW, the implication being that those Chibnall brought in weren't necessarily interested in the show so much as worrking for Chibnall or with the changes he was bringing in.

I find that hard to believe! I bet there are plenty of female writers and directors who would clamor to work for Doctor Who if they were just asked. As much as I love some of the things Moffat did during his time as showrunner, that sounds a bit like stereotyping women as not being interested in sci-fi. A stereotype which is very much not true there are tons of women who love Doctor Who and sci-fi in general, myself included.

As someone who sees nearly two-dozen women writing fiction on a weekly basis -- consistently, through COVID and everything else, as part of a writers group -- the fact that there's such a disparity is commonly bewildering to me. Not just in Doctor Who, although it does bear prominence because we had Verity Lambert at the very beginning. We had Jacqueline Hill, too, playing a role that was given essentially equal importance with William Russell's Ian (one for each format -- history and science). It's not as if the show wasn't built to have a space for that perspective.

Part of the problem does feel like outside preconceptions with science fiction as a genre. Really quite naff stuff that people hear about ("I've heard such-and-such..."), but don't actually know first-hand. Grapevine gossip. Sci-fi has a history of being perceived to seek legitimacy among other genres (*clears throat* elitist bafflegab). It contributes to strange doublethink like where someone feels comfortable writing something in the genre, but calls it "fantasy" instead, as a buffer. The impression I've got from the age of post-Marvel films is that it's gotten a lot more difficult to look upon sci-fi and speculative fiction as niche. Not when you have one of the highest-grossing films in Hollywood history now being a science fiction film like Endgame. It's so prevalent in pop culture escapism these days, it's difficult to miss.

Rounding back to the subject, all I can say is, it's worth making the space for these creative voices to be explored. In fact... *kicks open door* If there are any female writers looking for avenues to explore their craft, Divergent Wordsmiths is open to everyone. We are interested in your stories and what you have to tell.

(Side note: Eccleston's observation about "the Doctor's admiration for Gaia", specifically, is a really interesting concept. Nigel Fairs's More than a Messiah, back in the 1980s -- or 90s, depending on the version -- dealt with the Doctor being romanced by a planet. Unsuccessfully, unfortunately, as both misconstrue one another. As Time Lord or world. Nevertheless, the Doctor is one of the very few characters in fiction I can see carrying that off successfully. A budding attachment with the embodiment of a living world. They'd be one of the few who understand that perspective. The Ninth Doctor perhaps most blatantly in his "I can feel it," soliloquy in Rose.)