Zagreus Sits Inside Your Headcanon

Strong Female Character is, first of all, beautiful. She is invariably sexually attractive, or whatever the equivalent in the universe of the story would be. She is also decidedly heterosexual. But SFC doesn't have time for romance, because she has been hurt before or she is too focused on her work, whatever it is. She has many layers of emotional defense, she doesn't let anyone get too close. But deep down she just wants to be loved. There is a vulnerability to her, and probably only Male Protagonist can see it.

SFC is hyper-competent. She's good at everything and not to be challenged. She has no time for frivolity or distraction. She is generally liked, though clearly not someone you would want to go to a discotheque with (can you tell how hip and happening I am?) - which is to say she's not much fun. She's very focused and determined and not about to let any obstacles stand in her way. She certainly isn't funny.

However, she does not save the day. Sure, she's integral to the day-saving, it couldn't have been done without her, but she is not the hero of the story. She will probably even need to be rescued at some point. And unless she's lucky she will act as Male Protagonist's emotional reward for overcoming whatever he overcomes over the course of the story. Because he's the first person who really gets her. He's the first person who can see beyond her hard outer shell and into her fleshy underbelly.

A few examples of SFC, from across genres, include Neytiri from Avatar, the lady car from Cars, Astrid from How to Train Your Dragon, Sif from Thor, and Irene Adler from Sherlock. Now, these aren't necessarily poor characters in isolation (except the lady car from Cars). But I could go on with this list. Strong Female Character is everywhere. I am very tired of her.

Strong Female Character is a problem because she allows people to think women are now being written into films and TV appropriately. "Look, we're not making women weak and useless!" Well, yes. But that was not the only problem with the way women have been traditionally written in mass media fiction. It's a big problem, certainly, but another underlying problem is the way women are written as basically all the same. There are women who are very much like Strong Female Character, but there are many many more women who are not. Frankly, there are weak and useless women, too. The point is that women are many and varied and female characters should be, too. All that said...

Strong Female Character is a necessary step between terrible representations of women and good representations of women. The first few times SFC showed up she was probably very exciting. She should be in the process of being phased out, but I think the reason she's still around is because she feels safe. When you're making a movie, you only have time to develop so many characters. If you've decided that only one of your main characters can be female (which is a problem in and of itself), you become limited in the current climate of gender equality. If you give your one female character a flaw, you seem to be saying that all women have that flaw. So you have to make her flawless. The solution to this problem is obvious - have more than one prominent female character. They have to be different, so at least one of them can't be Strong Female Character. Jane and Darcy are able to be interesting because Sif is already taking up the SFC slot.

If you're a cool person, you're probably familiar with Red Letter Media's lengthy review of The Phantom Menace. You know the bit where he shows the difference between good characterization and bad characterization by having a few people try to describe characters without mentioning their appearance or occupation? It's really easy with C-3PO and Han Solo, and impossible with Qui-Gon Jinn and Princess Amidala. Try to do it for Clara.

Hard, right? She's, um... not super intelligent but not stupid either, she's like kind of a little bit flirty but not really. Basically her only trait is that she's good with children, but really we're only told that, not shown it. Matt Smith's Doctor (and Matt Smith himself, in fact) is clearly naturally great with kids, it doesn't have to be pointed out. Clara is a nanny but the kids don't seem to have any particular love or respect for her, and she runs into the little girl character in the Rings of Akhaten, but that's kind of it.

Part I

All over time and space, planets start receiving a garbled transmission repeated over and over again. To most species without sufficiently advanced technology it's assumed to be some kind of stray cosmic radiation, since it seems too nonsensical to be a deliberate message. But some races, though they can't understand it, can see that it's being transmitted to every point in time and space. That's impressive, to say the least. You can understand how the Cybermen would feel that something like that was worth checking out.

The Papal Mainframe also realizes the reach of this transmission and decides it is vital to find the source of the signal and contain it. That's some frightful technology, and there is an excellent chance that whatever the message is and whoever is sending it, some spectacular violence is going to break out if a million highly advanced races of varying military prowess are allowed to descend upon it at once. So they find the source of the signal, project a super shield around the whole planet and call in the Doctor.

The Doctor, of course, got the signal and was fascinated as well. He's on his way to investigate on his own (with funny little Handles in tow) when he gets a phone call from Clara. "I may have invented a boyfriend" she says. The Doctor makes a joke referencing how he once built a sexbot that looked like the Master (see: Scream of the Shalka. Also I may be projecting the whole sexbot aspect) and figures he might as well go have Christmas dinner with Clara. I'm eliminating the whole "you have to be naked to go to church" thing because I thought it was silly and unnecessary and not funny, so there's a moment of awkwardness when Clara's family asks why exactly she calls her boyfriend "the Doctor" instead and the Doctor says something alien and hilarious but humiliating to Clara. So they retreat to the kitchen and kidnap the turkey to cook it in the TARDIS. The moment the get the turkey in the "oven", the phone rings. It's Mother Superious. "Christmas dinner can wait!" says the Doctor.

Part II

Summoned aboard the Papal Mainframe, Tasha Lem explains to the Doctor and Clara that they've put a shield around the planet but they can teleport the Doctor to the surface to find out where the signal is coming from and what it means. The Doctor and Clara zap down to the planet and, after a brief encounter with Weeping Angels and summoning the TARDIS to escape them I guess, go into the tower where there's a Crack in the fabric of time and space (which should be a Tear, really, if it's fabric) and that's where the signal is coming from. Handles, now close enough to identify the distorted message, tells the Doctor that whatever it says it's in Gallifreyan. The Doctor says "that's not funny". Handles tells him that may be, but it's still in Gallifreyan. So the Doctor whips out the Seal of the High Council he stole from the Master and sticks it on Handles so he can translate the message: "Doctor who?"

So, the Doctor surmises, there are Time Lords through there and they're looking for him. All the Time Lords are trapped in a pocket universe, so presumably they're number one priority is getting back to the main universe and they're looking for confirmation that they're about to break back into the correct universe. So if the Doctor answers the question, some number of Time Lords will come through to a planet surrounded by Daleks. Bad result. He needs some time to work this out. Unfortunately, when Handles translated the message, everyone got the translated version and the metadata that the original was in Gallifreyan.

Now everyone's gunning for the planet. The Daleks and Cybermen and everyone are looking to go seek out the Time Lords and either trap them in the pocket universe for good or destroy them once and for all. The Papal Mainframe wants to destroy the planet so the Time Lords can't be found. They don't need to destroy them, but they can't let them come back and they can't let any of the monsters find them. But with the Doctor on the planet, nothing can happen. The baddies can only get small forces past the force field that will be repelled by the Doctor, and the Papal Mainframe isn't willing to destroy the planet with the Doctor still on it unless he gives them good reason to believe he's about to let the Time Lords through.

The Doctor sends Clara back home in the TARDIS and settles in to the defend Christmas.

Part III

The Papal Mainframe decides to dedicate itself to keeping the peace around Trenzalore, both keeping the Doctor silent by threatening the innocent people of Christmas, as well as helping repel the forces hoping to kill the Doctor and find the Time Lords. Madame Kovarian breaks off with a group who don't see the sense in making any attempt to keep the Doctor alive. They go back in time and conceive an insanely complicated plan to kill the Doctor before he gets to Trenzalore. It's so complicated because the prolonged exposure to the monsters we know as the Silence has driven all the humans insane to the point where turning the baby of some companions into a Time Lord, stealing her, turning her into a crazy person, putting her in a space suit, putting her in a lake, having the Doctor go to that lake for some reason, and somehow compel her to shoot him twice all seems like a good plan.

For years and years Trenzalore stays in a stalemate. Christmas is under constant attack and the Doctor is the only thing keeping the whole planet from being destroyed. Finally, after about 200 years the TARDIS crawls back, a traumatized Clara clinging to the outside. The Doctor shows Clara around and we have that touching scene with Handles, and then Tasha declares a temporary truce and summons the Doctor to the church mothership. That whole scene where they realize Tasha's been Dalekified stays the same, and the Doctor realizes it was a trap to get him off the planet after having infiltrated the Papal Mainframe and turned off the shield. He rushes back to the TARDIS, sends Clara home again, and returns to Trenzalore to make his last stand.

Part IV

Decades later, after years of all out war, Tasha realizes that the Doctor is running out of time and takes the TARDIS to collect Clara so she can be with the Doctor when he reaches the end, knowing that for all he wants to help the Time Lords he'll die before he actually says his name, knowing the planet would definitely get destroyed. Clara reunites tearfully with the now even older Doctor, but can't watch him make his last stand knowing he'll die.

As he leaves, she turns to the Crack and makes a decision. She's been keeping a secret too. You know when they were on future Trenzalore and the Great Intelligence was trying to force the Doctor to say his name and open his tomb and River said it instead? Clara was distracted by her failing heart, but she still heard River. She knows the Doctor's name too.

She makes an appeal to whoever is listening on the other side of the Crack to help the Doctor. Even if the Time Lords come through, war has broken out anyway and in any case they're the Doctor's only hope for survival. She says his name.

Instead of the collected armies of Gallifrey storming into the universe the Crack just seems to close and go away. In despair, Clara dissolves into tears.

Above, on the clock tower, the Doctor sees the Crack appear in the sky and beams new regenerations into the Doctor and disintegrates the Daleks, then disappears. The Doctor begins to violently regenerate and the clock tower is destroyed as it strikes twelve.

In the aftermath, Clara goes to the TARDIS and goes inside, expecting that horrible experience of seeing the empty space someone you love used to inhabit. But then the Doctor appears, young again, but still seeming a bit off and confused. He keeps talking to people who aren't there, and seems to have a very meaningful moment with someone Clara can't see. The Doctor gives a typical Matt Smith epic speech, delivered in his subdued mode with that teary-eyed smile. She tells him not to change and he says he's terribly sorry, but he must.

And then he's Capaldi. "Do you know how to fly this thing?" He asks, wild-eyed. He grins. They're crashing and he's trolling her. This is going to be good.

So the good idea was having a story where the Doctor had to stay put to save the day. Smith's Doctor was especially frenetic and afraid of staying in one place too long, so it was interesting to have him need to stick around in order for the lovely people of Christmas not to be horribly killed. It was interesting to watch the Doctor grow old, he hasn't done that since Hartnell. It's another thing he's been avoiding. Without those extra regenerations he ends up getting, the Doctor would have had a dramatically shorter life than most Time Lords. You're supposed to regenerate when you get old so you can "live forever, barring accidents", but the Doctor has been burning through his in thrilling adventures. Slowing down and aging out was a real departure for him.

The terrible execution was everything else. Why did having the message translated as "Doctor who?" let the Cybermen and the Daleks and everyone know that Time Lords they couldn't know still existed might come through a crack they couldn't know was there when the Doctor was forced to answer truthfully by a truth tower they couldn't know about? And why would hearing the Doctor's name tell the Time Lords it was safe to come through? The Doctor is followed by danger like a bad penny. The question should have been "Is the Doctor anywhere nearby?" and a truthful "no" would have let them know it was safe.

And the Silence aren't scary anymore? They were the scariest Doctor Who monster I had ever seen. It took me rewatching the Impossible Astronaut like five times before I could see them and not want to hide behind the couch. But they're just priests? Who for some reason make you forget your confession so you stay guilty and don't feel like you've confessed?

And if Matt Smith was actually Doctor #13, where was the Valeyard? He was a great idea and an excuse to revisit the Dream Lord and now he won't happen? Or he'll just happen at some other time in the Doctor's life? And since the Doctor didn't die on Trenzalore, did the Name of the Doctor never happen?

And isn't scar tissue stronger than regular tissue? And why do we keep talking about the Slitheen like they're a race or an army when they're an enterprising family with dubious morals?

And finally, the whole episode felt rushed and cramped and disjointed. No we shouldn't have sat through 300 years old repelling a siege, but everything else felt like an outline more than a script as well.