Poll: A question for those whom wanted a female doctor (Season 8 Finale Spoilers)

[Ronald Nand]

my issue is it seems people put all sorts of "conditions" on the casting of women, [i/]"oh but ONLY if its super duper legit and GOD FORBID not some part of an affirmative action plot"[/i] they can never "just" be female...[b/]we never question a charachter being a man, its always a given[/b]

I think what he was driving at was if you were going to something as drastic as changing the Doctor's gender, something that has been the same for about 60 years, the actress who plays the new doctor has to be worth that change, everything will be riding on that actress performance, if any portrayal of the doctor has to be perfect it would be that one.

Doing this change simply for the sake of it and not finding an actress whom has a bad or average performance can carry the change would would be disastrous.

[snip.

we can argue till were blue in the face as to weather or not a female doctor would be "inappropriately changing an established character"

but that's (kinda) beside the point. You're assuming more than one major female character is a deviation from a perceived "norm"

there's no logical basis for that, there's no logical reason that the make-up of any cast of characters HAS to include more men than women [footnote/]taking into account the setting/story obviously[/footnote]

I'm not against adding more female major characters, if a characters is well written, fun to watch and is portrayed well, then I want to see that character in the show regardless of whether their male, female, alien, human, etc. So if a new female character meets those characteristics, then I want to see her in the show.

What I am against is adding more female characters by changing established characters gender, I still stand by that. I like that they add new female characters to the show, the past three seasons have added plenty of interesting female characters we have Madame Vastra, Jenny, River Song, Madame Kovarian and now the Master (or Mistress we haven't been really told what to call her now).

Also don't we have a large female presence in Doctor Who, a lot of the recurring supporting cast is female (Vastra, Jenny, the unit commander), the companion has always been female for the new series, recently the major character for each seasons arc have been female (River Song, Madame Kovarian, The Master). The only strong male presence in the series has been the Doctor and the companion's love interest (keep in mind I don't know every episode by heart, so I'm probably missing some characters).