Diagonally parked in a parallel universe...

bookishandi:

badassbadwolf:

There is something called the Bechdel Test. It’s a scale you run movies through to basically see how misogynistic they are.

The test is as follows: 1. It must have at least two named female characters. 2. They must speak to each other. 3. They must converse about something other than a man. Anything with a score lower than 3 fails.

I’ve run all of the episodes of NewWho through this test and here are my results:

Percent of failed episodes written by RTD: 9.7%
By Moffat: 55.6%
Percent of episodes in which there were two named female characters, but they didn’t speak to one another by RTD: 9.7%
By Moffat: 16.7%
Percent of episodes without two named female characters by RTD: 0%
By Moffat: 5.6%
Percent of failed episodes with RTD as showrunner (including those written by other writers): 20%
With Moffat: 67.8%
Percent of episodes in which there were two named female characters, but they didn’t speak to one another with RTD as showrunner: 10%
With Moffat: 25%
Percent of episodes without two named female characters with RTD as showrunner: 0%
With Moffat: 25%
Total percent of failed episodes: 35.2%
Total percent of episodes in which there were two named female characters, but they didn’t speak to one another: 14.8%
Total percent of episodes without two named female characters: 8%

RTD did a lot better than Moffat. This is not a go at him, just facts.

Over half of SM’s episodes failed. RTD neither wrote or was showrunner to an episode with less than two named female characters. Moffat wrote one episode with less than two named female characters, and a staggering 25% (1/4!) of episodes with him as showrunner did not include more than one named female character.

My data is here. You can check it if you like, and please tell me if you find any errors. Thanks!

Wow. I mean, we all know the Bechdel test isn’t perfect, but it is a good indicator for representation. And, this from a show which almost always features at least one main female character. Jeez. That’s astounding. 

I’d hate to see the numbers on a racial Bechdel test (replace woman with POC and man with white person, I wouldn’t count non-human looking aliens); I don’t think the full pass numbers would be very high for either, but thanks to MIckey and Martha, the partial-pass numbers would be higher in S1-4 (two POC who talk to each other)

Full passes off the top of my head: 

• Impossible Planet/Satan Pit
• Age of Steel/Rise of the Cybermen (do Mickey/Mickey interactions count?)
• Fear Her
• Smith and Jones
• Lazarus Project
• Gridlock (I think? Martha talks with Cheen about future desires, right?)
• Sound of Drums/Last of the Time Lords
• End of Time Pt 1&2

That’s actually a little better than I expected, all things considered. And there are a good number of half-passes. But the main number worth noticing is that in RTD’s time as showrunner a (still disappointing) 17.6% of shows passed a “racial Bechdel test,” while in SM’s time as showrunner, 0% passed.

Again, any version of the Bechdel test doesn’t prove a text is particularly progressive or that its representation is good, just that the representation is there (the fact that the test is so frequently failed points to a problem, of course) (also, I’d take more Ritas over more Gridlocks, even though Gridlock passed the test and the God Complex didn’t.). But I do think these hard numbers show that those of us who have felt a drop in some of the progressive representation of POC and women on Doctor Who is not just a fantasy or RTD fangirling.