"Too Many Dads in Doctor Who" by RitchandFamous →
The last fifteen episodes of Doctor Who have depended heavily upon Steven Moffat’s “Parenthood” theme. Lets illustrate it here:
- “A Christmas Carol” – the story of a boy who grew up with an abusive father, learning how to love.
- “The Impossible Astronaut” &
- “Day of the Moon” – involve an orphanage and a mysterious child who is later revealed to be River, and the child of Amy and Rory.
- “The Curse of the Black Spot” – a story about an estranged father who mends his relationship with his son.
- “The Doctor’s Wife” – we get a break here!
- “The Rebel Flesh” &
- “The Almost People” – a two-parter involving a subplot about a father hoping to get back to his son; also culminating in Amy’s labor.
- “A Good Man Goes to War” – Melody Pond is born, and the Doctor builds an army to non-violently rescue Amy and Melody.
- “Let’s Kill Hitler” – Amy and Rory discover they’ve already raised their daughter – woops!
- “Night Terrors” – a father learns to love his weird alien son, by inviting a stranger into the house in the middle of the night (wtf?)
- “The Girl Who Waited” – break
- “The God Complex” – break
- “Closing Time” – a father learns to love his baby with whom he’s had a hard time developing a connection
- “The Wedding of River Song” – Amy and Rory’s daughter, River, kills Amy’s best friend/her own husband – its like a American soap opera!
- “The Doctor, the Widow, and the Wardrobe” – When her children go missing, a mother takes space-miners hostage and drives a future-space mining thing, then pilots her family through the time vortex in order to rescue them.
Gordon Bennet, look at all that parenting!
I wanted to illustrate the frequency of the parenting theme in response to criticisms of “The Doctor, the Widow, and the Wardrobe”…
I’ve been troubled at how heteronormativity has come to signify humanity itself for people in Moffat’s scripts for Doctor Who. Think of all the times that someone’s life (or, indeed, the world) is saved just because someone is being really heteronormative (loving someone of the “opposite” gender, loving their child, parenting, marrying, etc.)
Interesting thought.
