How have scholarly debates about Doctor Who audiences and gender evolved over time and which scholars have been influential in this debate? (Draft – work in progress)
By Neil Hogan
This essay looks at the development of television fan studies in relation to gender through the lens of research on the long-running BBC TV science fiction series Doctor Who (1963-present), and references related research on fans of the NBC series Star Trek (1966-1969). Drawing on general fan studies on gender, this essay also looks at the issue of why the media fan base of Doctor Who is assumed to be predominantly female by researchers, and notes some of the differences researchers have discovered between male and female fans.
Audiences have been studied for thousands of years, from the spectators at the colosseum to the audiences at plays in ancient Greece to those that attended Shakespeare’s performances, but it is in recent times that this has become more granular. Thanks to the advent of TV, and later streaming services, and the appearance of defined groups of science fiction fans of specific television shows, researchers now have much to explore. Science fiction media fandom arguably began in earnest in the UK in 1963 with the family show known as Doctor Who. About an alien known as The Doctor who travels in space and time in a blue Police Box, the series soon gained 10.4 million viewers by January 1964 in its Saturday teatime timeslot (Ainsworth 2015), creating fans and spawning merchandise in the process. While the burgeoning fan base would have been worth studying, there weren’t many academics researching fan groups at the time. Jenkins (1992 pp12-13) said “The term ‘fan’ “…[had] earlier connotations of religious and political zealotry, false beliefs, orgiastic excess, possession, and madness, connotations that seem to be at the heart of many of the representations of fans in contemporary discourse” which might indicate an initial reluctance to explore this aspect of audience interest in the 1960s.
Fast forward to the 1980s, and scholarly research on fans had begun in earnest. Building on US research into Star Trek1—an American science fiction show about a diverse crew on a spaceship that explored the galaxy that had begun in 1966—science fiction researchers were able to explore the debates around fandom and gender, albeit through the lens of USA Star Trek dissertations, such Jenkins’ (1988) essay on women who write Star Trek fan fiction. Interestingly, these dissertations, theses and essays predominantly focused on the female fan (Click and Scott 2018). Examples include Blair and R. M. P. (1983) Sex and Star Trek, Cranny-Francis (1985) Sexuality and Sex-Role Stereotyping in Star Trek, and Bjorklund (1986) Women and Star Trek Fandom, to name a few. Star Trek fandom research had decided that active media fans were female, and science fiction researchers around the world began building their own research around this idea. This concept was reinforced in other studies. “…Media Fandom became the focus of scholarly attention because it was, and continues to be, a predominantly female area of fan activity.” (Morrissey 2019). “The fandom of the 1980s was still dominated by girls and women.” (LoConto 2020). According to Jenkins (1992, p48) “…the largely female composition of media fandom reflects a historical split within the science fiction community between the traditionally male-dominated literary fans and the newer, more feminine style of media fandom.” Fan studies research seemed to be stuck on this idea, equating media interest and fan involvement as something generated by females. Interestingly, Jenkins’ work Textual Poachers (1992), which predominantly talks about female fan writers and feminist writers, is frequently cited in works after this period. It is such an influential text on fandom that it has been cited 8919 times up to and including May 2022, according to Google Scholar.2
Interestingly, Jenkins continued to write that media fandom was “mostly female” (Jenkins 1992, p19). Later, though, Jenkins identifies that more work is needed in gender studies in fandom “…including the ways that the mixed gender composition of some online fandoms…might challenge historic divides between male and female fan practices and a new focus on understanding ‘fan masculinities’. (Jenkins 2014, p282). In Jenkins’ defence, he has stated that his research focus has been “deeply grounded in feminism” (ibid) and his work covers multiple fan groups rather than just Doctor Who, so much of his research is likely to be biased towards female fans.
However, this repetition of the idea that media fans are predominantly female, when considered against the evidence of the original text and the target market for that text, quickly becomes suspect. Much of the science fiction programming created in the 1960s through to the 1980s had been written for men and marketed to men. “Most TV programs, especially science fiction and crime drama, are geared at the 18-35 white male heterosexual demographic.” (Busse 2013). With reference to Doctor Who, Tulloch and Alvarado (1983) expressed their disappointment that for much of the early history of the show it “… maintained the male view of the world to which most ‘Sci-Fi’ subscribes…in terms of the roles women occupy within the series one would have to argue for the extreme narrative conventionality of Doctor Who.” With the show being targeted to men, it was unlikely to have a media fanbase that was predominantly female, yet researchers continued to ascribe to this idea.
Even so, it is possible researchers are conflating female fans with the feminisation of fans, causing male fans to become practically invisible. To discuss this concept of feminisation of male fans we need to look at Star Trek again. Jenkins, in Textual Poachers (2012), explored the debate of the feminisation of male fans with reference to a Star Trek sketch on a December 1986 Saturday Night Live episode, and noted one of the aspects of the male fans that were targeted was that “[they] are feminized and/or desexualized through their intimate engagement with mass culture.” This suggests that by simply engaging in a more than passing interest in media they somehow lose their masculinity, as though they should be out playing a sport instead.
But, what does Jenkins mean by feminisation, exactly? How are males made out to be females? For this we need to look to Hirschfeld-Kroen’s work in 2021 regarding the feminization of media. She says regarding tech work such as operators and typists: “This role has been promoted by corporations, nations, and mass media as feminine for over a century.” It relates to “Christian notions of sanctified feminine transmission” and its origins can be traced to the Western Union in the 1860s hiring women to send telegraphs. Hirschfeld-Kroen goes on to say that the “modern mediatrix [should be considered as] an essential theoretical and material foundation for film and media studies.” Considering this strange centuries-old construct is deeply entrenched in society, it makes sense that researchers default to assuming the majority of media fandom must consist of females if they’re understanding all discourses through this lens. So, while fans of Doctor Who were predominantly male for the first twenty years of the programme4, borne out by national publications in the UK such as The Doctor Who Magazine (1979-present) being mostly written by males, this ‘feminisation’, might have influenced researchers to consider that all fans of media were more likely to be female.
Yet, perhaps there is another reason for this feminisation. In studying Doctor Who fans, Yodovich (2020) suggests that fans adjust themselves to a state of “conditional belonging” “…a social, liminal state in which individuals’ access to the community’s goods is restricted, and they are not allowed to challenge the collective’s hegemonic values and norms.” Yodovich goes on to say that new members are treated as “second-class” until they prove themselves. This raises an interesting point. If fans have conformed to the accepted behaviour of what is considered to be a fan member for that particular group and only act that way within the group, and that group’s interests equate to feminine activities, then those male members might also subconsciously be seen as female.
Another possibility is that it may be pathologisation rather than feminisation. “Fandom, however, is seen as a risky, even dangerous, compensatory mechanism. The fan-as-pathology model implies that there is a thin line between ‘normal’ and excessive fandom.” (Jenson 1992, p18). It’s possible the cognitive dissonance of associating male fans with a less than masculine hobby, such as being a fan of a TV show, may result in an automatic feminisation as a way of interpreting this pathologisation. If fans are already considered to be psychologically abnormal, then applying a set of codes to a male fan that indicates they are behaving in ways that are different to what is expected of masculinity may then be interpreted as the opposite of masculine. This is, of course, assuming that the male fan is noticeably active. If he is a passive fan, then he can’t be part of any research.3 In any case, this situation of the pathologized fan was considered in fan studies for many years, though from the 1990s onwards researchers had begun work on overturning this assumption. (Jenson 1992); (Tulloch and Jenkins 1995); (Hills 2005). The focus also began to shift away from female fans and onto the fan community. Researchers, such as Bacon-Smith (1992), Jenkins (1992), and Penley (1992) became more focused on mainstreaming fandom, focusing on “the communal and creative dimensions of fan culture” (Click and Scott 2018), and attempting to remove the stigma of pathologisation. Busse and Gray (2011) noted that researchers had begun to “map out fans’ intricate and thoughtful engagements with popular culture texts, and with each other.” This suggests that the 1990s was a time when fandom was beginning to garner a sense of respect and agency.
Another debate on Doctor Who gender fan studies was touched on in the early 1980s in the seminal work The Unfolding Text by John Tulloch and Manual Alvarado in 1983. In it they explore the twenty-year history of Doctor Who up until that time (1963-1983). Every episode, with commentary, as well as considering fan engagement, and something unusual for fan studies at the time, positive support for fans. “[Doctor Who] has one of the best-organised fan club followings of any television programme in the world” (Tulloch and Alvarado 1983). While a focus on gender studies is lacking in the text, they do discuss Peter Davison, the fifth actor to take on the role of The Doctor, and the reaction by female fans. Quoting John Nathan-Turner, the then producer of Doctor Who, about why the ratings have increased: “…Peter has a huge following in the public, particularly among the female viewers.” (ibid). With Davison taking over the role in 1982, the producer’s focus of the show had shifted to the handsome leading man, reflecting the trend for attractive leads in TV shows in the United States. But, do female fans really focus on the attractiveness of the lead? And, if so, could a show having attractive stars suggest that more women will be watching?
With ratings increasing during Davison’s reign as the Doctor, “…first audience figures for the new Doctor were a very high eleven million” (Tulloch and Alvarado 1983), this suggests there’s some truth to this idea. In 2013, YouGov conducted a survey of 1,974 UK residents with the object of finding Doctor Who fans to ask further questions. “Who is your favourite Doctor?” was one of them. The number one ranking turned out to be David Tennant with 34% males and 55% females voting for him. (Tennant was the Doctor from the end of 2005 to be beginning of 2010 and was arguably the most attractive actor to play the Doctor in its history). Another question relevant to the discussion on male leads – “Should the next Doctor be attractive?” 9% of male viewers and 21% of female viewers said yes, which seems to suggest the belief that female audience members prefer an attractive male lead still holds true.
But, what about Doctor Who fandom, specifically? Are they mostly male or mostly female?5 Returning to the 2013 YouGov survey: the report confirmed that 32% of males and 26% of females expressed interest in Doctor Who. So, while fans are not overwhelmingly male in the survey, and 1,974 is tiny compared to episodes frequently getting millions of viewers, it does show that there are many males who are still interested in this type of media, and that researchers may need to take another look at the gender distribution of Doctor Who fandom.
Before concluding, it should be pointed out that there was an area of fan gender studies that was not focused on in this essay. A popular ‘subversion’ of the original text is slash fiction—fan fiction containing two or more protagonists from the canon that have been written to be sexually involved even though this isn’t in the main text. Slash fiction is predominantly written by female fans, and the existence of millions of these fiction stories may skew perception towards the idea that there are more female fans following Doctor Who and other science fiction shows than males. By ignoring this element, a much less gender imbalance in fan-produced works can be found, and the suggestion for future researchers is to also avoid this area, unless it is the sole focus, to get a better representation of the whole of fandom, rather than more granular information being swamped by the overwhelming amount of slash fiction available. In retrospect, perhaps it is the endless slash fiction that has convinced researchers that the majority of science fiction fans are female. Ironically, less research is needed in this area.
In concluding, this essay has mainly looked at twentieth century research and debates on fan studies and gender through the lens of Doctor Who fandom, with the view to discovering why media fans had been either assumed to be female or had been feminised. Due to the scope of the essay, many of the debates that occurred after 2000 could not be explored. These debates are wide ranging and creative as new scholars realise that there is no need to follow the old discourses. Exciting research has begun in Doctor Who fandom studies on bisexuality (Dee 2012), (Wilde 2015); omnisexuality and spontaneous generation (Coker 2011); gender dimensions (Jowett 2017); studies on child fans (Hunting 2019), and a lot more besides. Not only that, fandom has transformed as well so that many of the studies conducted before 2000 may no longer relevant to the current generation of fans. Fan studies have also shifted to focusing more on the individual fans rather than communities to get a better idea of how fans’ minds work. In this sense gender studies in fandom generally and Doctor Who fandom specifically have regenerated and evolved, with a myriad of paths now available for future research. With the role of the Doctor finally being given to a woman in 2017, with Jodie Whittaker taking on the part (Marsh 2017), and appealing to young female fans everywhere excited to finally be able to cosplay the Doctor as a woman, and the role then being passed to Ncuti Gatwa in 2023, (Belam 2022), a Scottish-Rwandan man who has a large gay following, no doubt gender studies debates on Doctor Who fans will continue to expand.
Footnotes
- There is a lot more ethnographic research available on female Star Trek fans than there is on male Doctor Who fans, with the sheer quantity of them ‘proving’ there are more female fans than male fans of media. However, conducting a quantitative study of this is beyond the purview of this essay.
- If a feminist work of this nature has been cited that many times, and likely a lot more than that considering those works that are not peer reviewed, it’s possible that much of the published works since then will need to be updated, or reconsidered due to being biased towards Jenkins’ feminist-focused research. View citations here: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cites=8816373169659289632&as_sdt=2005&sciodt=0,5&hl=en
- This essay will have to assume that there are passive Doctor Who fans out there, however, being passive, they can only exist as a theory as, as soon as they do something like fill in a survey or post online that they’re a fan of the show, then they’re considered active. This is one area of fan research that is lacking as ethnographers wouldn’t be able to receive a call or respond to a request from a passive fan, unless they stumble across them by accident. And, even then, it might be impossible to get any information out of them.
- My personal experience as a Doctor Who fan in the 1990s in Australia is that Doctor Who fandom was predominantly male. Having been president of the Doctor Who Club of Australia from 1994-1996, and one of the administrators of the membership database before that, I can attest to about 80% of members being male. In connection with the Doctor Who Club of Victoria I can also attest that the majority of people on the committee for that group were male at the time. Quoting Kate Orman, an author of seven Doctor Who books, and the previous president of the Doctor Who Club of Australia before my time in the role, “I was a rare fangirl in a sea of fanboys.” (Cornell 2009, p144).
- The original YouGov results can be found on their website: http://cdn.yougov.com/cumulus_uploads/document/qhu1lbwvjl/YG-Archive-Dr-Whoresults-040613.pdf
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