Dr. Who's Sci-Fi Girl Power
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Yesterday, actress Elisabeth Sladen died. She played Doctor Who regular Sarah Jane Smith, one of sci-fi’s first feminists, and a character dear to my heart.
For those not in the know, Doctor Who is a British TV series chronicling the adventures of the Doctor, a time-traveling “Time Lord” from the planet Gallifrey, who has a special affinity for Earth and its people. Specifically, he likes to take humans — often young women — with him on his adventures. As the show went on, these women would become more scantily clad and sexualized, and they were always conventionally attractive. But especially in the earlier years, the Doctor’s “companions,” as they’re typically called (“sidekicks” would be too demeaning), also served as a way for girls to get in on the action. I spoke with Prof. Seth Lerer, author of Children’s Literature: A Reader’s History from Aesop to Harry Potter, Dean of Arts and Humanities at UCSD, and longtime Doctor Who fan, who explained that the companions were “young women who were models for the audience,” allowing kids in front of the TV to imagine themselves as “the girl who travels with the Doctor.” Thus, he explained, Sarah Jane became “a model for the female viewer who inscribed herself in the narrative.”