InsaneJournal

Is it me or did Lady Christina just seem like someone's idea of a hot kickass girlfriend who was exciting enough to be Sexy Danger but not enough to have her own adventures and life and ideas? But alas, the Doctor has manangst. Time Lord angst. Whatever. That's all that's preventing him from taking her along. It's not like she would get distracted by shiny things or anything. (Okay, who doesn't get distracted by shiny things? She just seemed more distracted than sensible.)

She just seemed very fawning, and I had kind of expected the Doctor to see through that, find out what she wanted from him, and defeat her -- this was actually so bad that I assumed she was an alien thief masquerading as a common Earth trope but actually with much more elaborate plans. When he didn't "see through it" it became clear that there wasn't anything more to her and that's how the writers thought she would act -- fawning and cutesy and lovestruck. Despite being ready for anything and not unused to bizarre situations of her own design. If you're going to have a ridiculous cliche in your script, and you're not going for metahumor, you'd better work twice as hard to make her seem like she has an inner life. Especially in Doctor Who, because otherwise people are going to think the character has more going on, and not in a good way. And she could've been an alien, you know?

Anyway, when I write I try to keep in mind that every character is the main character in their own head.

I feel weird about objecting to this because I loved Bela on Supernatural, and she's a very similar character -- with one exception. She wasn't a thief with a heart of gold, doing it for the adventure, she was (mostly) a straight-up selfish doing-my-own-thing bitch, and when her own life intersected with the show's plot, she didn't drop everything in the sudden realization that she was a secondary character. I'm not saying she didn't have any redeeming characteristics, but they took an awful lot of drama to come out, and I was hoping to see more of her. I miss her.

I am entirely weirded out that I'm saying Supernatural did a better job of female characterization than Doctor Who, because even with all the issues DW and TW has with women, SPN usually has more.

Thoughts?

Oh, and there's Amazonfail, of course. I have nothing of import to add, except that if you are boycotting them, you might also want to take a look here. Some notable things owned by Amazon: IMDB, Mobipocket, Audible.com, AbeBooks, and they apparently partially own LibraryThing. I have no personal experience with anyone's recs for alternate internet book retailers, but apparently there is talk at Powell's of having an LGBTQ-themed Amazonfail sale, which suggests that they are at least willing to take advantage of their competitors' craniorectal issues rather than imitate them.