Hoyden talk about the myth of the bra-burning feminists, an idea which has been used to try to make women look stupid for decades, and how the false story was spread.

The Moffat’s Women series continues on Tor, with a comparison between the main female character in this Christmas special and last year’s. I find it very interesting how quickly people have leaped to criticise Moffat for writing a story in which the mother is the hero, so this article made me happy.

Sarah Rees Brennan’s response to the post we linked to in Galactic Suburbia about the wealth of positive girl heroes in YA right now.

One that I meant us to discuss on GS but forgot at the last minute (sorry, Sean!) – Sean the Blogonaut surveys his reading after a year of trying to change his reading habits, genderwise.

Linda Nagata talks about her rationale for self publishing rather than going back to big publishers.

The ever awesome Mary Beard comments on the latest salacious media drama about Ancient Romans and brothels. Yes, really. As ever, her pragmatism wins the day.

Alison Bechdel’s new book is to have an opening print run of 100,000 copies and a massive publishing/publicity campaign when it’s published in May, which is extraordinarily good news. It’s a comic book about a lesbian and her relationship with her mother, people!!! In all seriousness, Bechdel is an extraordinary writer-artist, and Fun Home was a brilliant, fascinating memoir about her father and herself. The only flaw in it was the almost-invisibility of her mother as a character, which was why I (and I imagine, 100,000 other people) was so keen to hear she was working on a sequel about their relationship. To see an LGBTQ title getting such mass promotion and support is excellent, because it is a book which should absolutely transcend any idea of a niche market.

And it gives you all five months to read Fun Home while you’re waiting!

I was interested in this article about how DC Comics have beat the pants off Marvel with their New 52 and then kind of horribly fascinated at how little information the article actually has. It entirely focuses on the print sales, mentioning the whole e-sales and day and date matters as some kind of quirky twist on the tale, but not actually citing those RATHER MORE INTERESTING statistics.

I continue to be annoyed that this entirely dull and by the numbers rendition of Justice League is in their top three sellers. Thereby proving, sadly, all over again, that comics readers don’t care about women. BAH I SAY. Still, could be worse. It could be Red Hood and the Outlaws.

“Parents from around the UK said the ‘damage had already been done’ and that they had been forced to come up with ‘all kinds of explanations’ about why there was a human inside a Womble.”

HOW MANY KINDS OF EXPLANATION ARE THERE?

Elsewhere in the world, Aqueduct Press continue their marvellous blog series of posts about the Best Reading, Listening, Viewing, etc. in 2011. I like especially that the contributors are asked to talk about what they enjoyed, but not limit themselves to work published this calendar year. And I was honoured to be asked to talk about my own favourite things of 2011. I forgot lots of things, of course, but that’s what my own blog is for!

Also, Brit Mandelo of Tor.com blogs about her new reprint anthology, Beyond Binary, which includes a story by MEEEEE as well as a whole bunch of more famous and wonderful writers. Hooray for genderqueer SF being talked about!

Nnedi Okorafor blogs powerfully about her discomfort in discovering, in the wake of her marvellous World Fantasy win for Best Novel, that the trophy depicts the head of a very racist, unpleasant person. Ie. H.P. Lovecraft. Which has led to all kinds of conversations across Twitter and other forums about, you know, what kind of alternative trophy could better represent excellence in fantasy fiction, or the history of fantasy literature. I suspect TRADITION is going to win out on this one, or at least a combination of tradition and resistance to change, which are not entirely the same things, but personally I can think of a whole bunch of other unpleasant heads which could take his place. Like Medusa!

Sarah Rees Brennan continues to point out the horrible double standard we have in our culture when it comes to talking about female fictional characters, as opposed to male characters, and the extra levels of perfection (BUT NOT TOO PERFECT) that fictional women are supposed to attain.

Meanwhile, a chap explains male privilege to other chaps. I always enjoy a good explanation of such things, that can be widely linked to, and makes a postitive contribution to the conversation. A part of me though is always a little bit sad, knowing that women have been patiently (and sometimes less than patiently) explaining things rather a lot longer, and it often seems like the message is more heartily supported and embraced when it comes in a male voice. Sigh.

Speaking of men fighting the feminist fight (and don’t think I’m not grateful, cos I’m busy baking shortbread and wrapping Christmas presents, yo no this is not sarcasm, I am actually too busy being barefoot & domestic to deal with internet feminism right now) Mondy has been talking about the latest Gardner Dozois Best of Science Fiction anthology, and the importance of looking at gender breakdowns. I’m linking to his blog because that’s how I take my internet these days (livejournal, I do not miss you and your nested comments of rage) but apparently there’s a whole lot of something-something going on in the comments of said LJ, which I think is under the name mondyboy. My Christmas present to myself this year is not reading said comments. LIFE IS WONDERFUL AND I AM ON HOLIDAY.

Meanwhile, DC Women Kicking Ass, a fabulous Tumblr, is talking about the failure of mainstream comics to market effectively to women, when they have actual properties women who don’t necessarily hang out in comic shops (WHO KNEW?) might be interested in.

Another of my pet topics, that of gendered toys, made the news this week with the announcement that Hamleys, the iconic toy store in London, is getting rid of its ‘boys’ and ‘girls’ floors. This comes after an ongoing Twitter campaign complaining about them, though they claim it is a coincidence that they made the decision. At a time when the gender divide of toys is getting worse and worse, it’s nice to see such a positive step. Having been raging about Lego excluding girls from their main range of toys for years, I’m now discovering the wonderful world of action figures thanks to Raeli’s action figure obsession. And once again, it turns out, the representation of female characters in comics and superhero movies turns out to be a hell of a lot better than what happens in the toy industry. Damn it.

(after feeling guilty for realising that it didn’t occur to me until recently to buy my Doctor Who fangirl daughter a sonic screwdriver, purely because she’s a girl, I had a revelation this week that I have also never been able to bring myself to buy her a toy oven/kitchen set BECAUSE SHE’S A GIRL, even though she adores such toys when she plays with them elsewhere. She’ll live, I reckon.)

Some baking goodness, because linking is easier than actually baking. My friend Iz who is currently building a Moomin House out of gingerbread sent me a Finnish gingerbread recipe which comes with images and instructions that have been enabling her in this wild endeavour. And elsewhere on the internet, keeping in mind that I have to figure out what kind of Doctor Who birthday cake I am going to produce a certain little girl in January, I found this brilliant design for a Dalek Smash Cake, which can be taken apart to discover the jelly mutant dalek inside.

Finally, my favourite Christmas post of the week is by Neil Gaiman, who talks about his Jewish childhood and the desirability of Christmas trees. As a non-Christian, lapsed pagan who is big on traditions being flexible, the Christmas tree is probably the most powerful image of what the festival means to me, and I love hearing about other people’s emotional attachment to it.

I can’t express enough how awesome it was to have two little girls decorating the tree with us this year, and that Jemima is now old enough to hang decorations without automatically gnawing on the tree branches, or stealing plastic-wrapped candy canes to see how many she can fit in her mouth. Also, that Raeli has now heard my stories behind every collected-while-travelling Christmas decoration so many times that she can recite them herself, and she has her own collection of decorations and stories from daycare, kinder and prep, thanks to the crafty factory that kicks into gear in schools across the country at this time of year.

Did you know that the Wombles were aiming for the Christmas No. 1 single this year in the UK? DID YOU?

Meanwhile Bitch Magazine is doing a new blog series which looks at the portrayal of pregnancy, childbirth and early childhood/parenthood in TVland. I have Strong Opinions on this topic, so looking forward to reading what they have to say.

Tehani posted this link about which comic book superheroines deserve their own movies. Which is all very well, but let’s face it, Hollywood has badly let down the female superhero (and not the other way around). I can’t help thinking their stories would be better served by taking visuals out of the equation and going straight to the novel.

So if anyone wants to hire me to write a Huntress novel, I’m available! Or Wonder Woman, come to that…

Gail Simone tweeted this article which looks at two different kinds of representation of race in current DC Comics, comparing the Static Shock approach (he just happens to be black, yanno) with the Firestom approach (actual discussion of racial issues in the text). It’s a thoughtful piece, and I think demonstrates that both approaches have value, and it’s important to have both kinds of representation of race in stories – if all stories with characters of colour were about race, or all stories with characters of colour were NOT about race, we would have a real problem.

I do love it when people point out that these things are not either/or!

Jo Anderton, whose debut novel Debris (Angry Robot) I loved when she sent it to me for blurbage (it’s about magical architects! and magical garbage collectors! And it has technology mixed in with magic, plus a professional heroine who is flawed and cranky and acquires a TEAM, and has sex without it having to be her true love!) has done an interview over at Rowena’s blog.

The Indie Publishing (from pro perspective) posts are continuing in abundance at Tehani’s blog. Shaun Tan is her latest guest, and I thoroughly recommend his love letter to the Australian SF small press, with some insights into how working for Aurealis and Eidolon led to his later, dazzling career.

Nisi Shawl talks about queer themes (and often the lack thereof) in steampunk, over at Tor.com with the brilliantly-titled article ‘The Steampunk That Dare Not Speak Its Name‘.

Some Tansy-specific links: Kylie Chan’s recent reading including some lovely comments about Power & Majesty; Sean the Blogonaut did a great review of Love and Romanpunk as an e-book; you can find me guesting on the Book Nut podcast, talking about children’s and YA fiction; and I am excited to be reading at the Reading Room exhibit at the Tas Museum in Hobart this Sunday.

Strange Horizons have found their fundraiser slowgoing this year, I think, possibly because the Kickstarter phenomenon means that many of us have reached donation fatigue. But it’s the last week for donations, and such a good publication that many of us take for granted. If you like what they publish and you haven’t donated yet, please head over there – or help out with passing the word. There are some wonderful prizes up for grabs, including my own trilogy and an entire subscription to the Twelve Planets. And bonus prize draws all this week!

The final of season 6 of Doctor Who screens tomorrow in Australia – and sure I’ve already seen it (romanpunk for the win!) and love it to bits, but I now get to watch it with Raeli and see if she can wrap her head around all the anachronisms and timey plot twists. I’ve enjoyed this season very much, and luckily for me I like River Song a lot, and have enjoyed getting to see a whole lot of different sides to her in the arc stories this year – I think how much you enjoyed the arc probably depended a lot on how pro-River you are.

This (spoily for the last ep!) post talks about River’s actual timeline, as based on the last ep of Doctor Who Confidential – I think we need charts, people!

I’ve enjoyed Amy and Rory too – as companions they have got lost at times in this busy season but the final episode ties it all together and shows yet again that a journey doesn’t make complete sense until you get to the end of it. I wanted to put up a vid that sums up how squeeful I was about them in the last ep, but decided not to risk spoiling people yet. So instead, here’s the story so far of River & the Doctor [before The Wedding of River Song, spoilery for all her other eps]

EPISODE 38

In which none of your fearless podcasters are impregnated by mysterious aliens for the duration of a single episode, nor do any of us experience a rapidly accelerated pregnancy or give birth to an otherworldly demon/alien/vampire. Also: Batgirl, Bujold and a cranky feminist rant or two.

News

Cordwainer Smith Rediscovery Award – given to a living writer for the first time, Katherine MacLean.

Mythopoeic Awards

World Fantasy, of course!

World SF Travel Fund raising money to send Charles A Tan to WFC

The Mystical Pregnancy trope - torture porn? Reproductive terrorism, exploiting women for being female.
Violent degradation of women’s bodies for plot.

Vote For Top-100 Science Fiction, Fantasy Titles
Swedish Writing Fairy crunches the numbers

Andromeda’s Offering Offspring Issue 1 – new fanzine to “open up new female voices in SF, raise the awareness of female SF writers and share ideas.”
(you can find them on Facebook apparently)

Where are the women in the new DC Comics?
newsy report
proper interview with Batgirl crusader

SF Signal Episode 70 – 6 men talk about their favourite podcasts and illustrate what we mean by gender disparity in SF gatekeeping
Alisa makes reference to recent Mind Meld

What Culture Have we Consumed?

Alisa – Passage by Connie Willis; Red Glove by Holly Black; The Lifecycle of Software Objects by Ted Chiang;
Alex - Diplomatic Immunity and Cryoburn, Bujold; Chicks Dig Time Lords, ed. Lynne Thomas; The Sparrow, Mary Doria Russell; Shades of Milk and Honey, Mary Robinette Kowal (http://wp.me/p11HLi-Nf); Songs of the Earth, Elspeth Cooper (abandoned). SF Squeecast.
Tansy – Glenda Larke-Stormlord Rising; Malinda Lo-Huntress; Penni Russon-Only, Ever, Always

Feedback
lovely review at Hoyden About Town

Please send feedback to us at galacticsuburbia@gmail.com, follow us on Twitter at @galacticsuburbs, check out Galactic Suburbia Podcast on Facebook and don’t forget to leave a review on iTunes if you love us!

image by perpetualpanda on Deviant Art

Timmi Duchamp at Aqueduct Press looks at the Women’s Hour SF discussion with particular concern for what Gwyneth Jones said about feminist SF vs. SF written by women.
EDIT: Gwyneth Jones’ right of reply, also on Aqueduct Press.

My Mum passed me this link to a cheering and inspirational article about the new generation of activist feminists in the UK (though as Kirstyn McDermott pointed out to me, obviously whoever composed the photograph of the group was not thinking with the feminist half of their brain)

Niall at Strange Horizons links to some Wiscon panel summaries. Sniff. One day my Wiscon will come.

A powerful post by Colleen at Chasing Ray about the ‘are books too dark for our teenagers because everyone knows bad things don’t happen unless you read about them’ stupidity.

Diana Peterfreund on why her latest book was so hard to write, how having babies makes books even HARDER to write, and why it’s important to own the hard work as well as the magical moments of the writing life.

Nicola Griffith (she has been on fire lately!) comparing two LAMBDA acceptance speeches and considering the gendered differences between them.

And oh, the piece of news that most excited me this week: the new Chameleon Circuit album has finally finished production and is available for pre-order, shipping in July. Eeeeee!

EPISODE 34

In which we surf the wave of feminist SF news that has deluged the internet this fortnight, plus Margaret Brundage, why YA books are allowed to be as dark as they want to be, the Tiptree Award, Connie Willis, were-thylacines, Ted Chiang and Alex finally discovers Bujold…

News

Nicola Griffith on the m/f imbalance in an informal SF favourites poll in the Guardian
The Guardian: Damien Walter, author of the poll & followup articles revises his comments in response to Griffith
Niall Harrison follows up on Strange Horizons
Cheryl Morgan on invisibility of women (some really interesting discussion in the comments, too)
The Guardian again, asking with wide innocent eyes if SF is inherently sexist
Ian Sales announces the SF Mistressworks blog project
Nicola Griffith asks you to take the Joanna Russ pledge

Gwyneth Jones, Karen Traviss & Farah Mendlesohn talk on radio about the perception of women in British SF http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b011c220
Transcript here: http://vectoreditors.wordpress.com/2011/06/04/womans-hour-women-and-sf/

MK Hobson on the term ‘bustlepunk’ and why there is a place for a domestic sub-genre of steampunk
MK Hobson’s follow up post on the assumptions made about works coded ‘female’

2011 Chesley Award Finalists
Cheryl Morgan on female & trans artists

Nine Reasons Women Don’t Edit Wikipedia
(interesting, I think, in light of the recent spout of incidents we’ve watched, notably the one with Nick Mamatas where winning World Fantasy Award was considered too regional to be significant)

Wall Street Journal on YA fiction

Change to the Norma eligibility guidelines

Why Galactic Suburbia T-shirts are no longer available through RedBubble.

Con Quilt

What Culture Have we Consumed?
Tansy: Thyla, Kate Gordon; Will Supervillains Be on the Final? Naomi Novik
Alisa: Coode St Podcast with Ellen Klages, Eileen Gunn and Geoff Ryman; Connie Willis – Even the Queen; Octavia Butler – Bloodchild
Alex: Chill, and Grail, Elizabeth Bear; The Lifecycle of Software Objects, Ted Chiang ; Welcome to the Greenhouse, Gordon van Gelder; Steampunk! Kelly Link and Gavin Grant.

Please send feedback to us at galacticsuburbia@gmail.com, follow us on Twitter at @galacticsuburbs, check out Galactic Suburbia Podcast on Facebook and don’t forget to leave a review on iTunes if you love us!

Thought the First: I totally love that people spot this stuff now and call it to Galactic Suburbia’s attention rather than the other way around. In many cases, they parse it so we don’t have to.

Thought the Second: I totally ran my eye down the page and thought: Okay, not many women are having their work nominated here, but it does look at least like they asked lots of women their opinions. My informal survey made me think the genders of authors asked to contribute was roughly even.

Just as the conversation started getting interesting, I thought I’d better check the numbers, and before I had even got halfway down the page, Kirstyn got in ahead of me:

@fearofemeralds
Best SF? Authors asked:16M/8F; Authors rec’d: 20M/4F. Only 1 M author rec’s book by F (and yes, it was Le Guin’s LHD): http://bit.ly/k5fH73

So that’s some more interesting things. Half as many women as men were included in the article as providing recommendations – and that was enough for me, an active and switched-on feminist hobbyist-Table of Contents-critical-appraiser (no, it doesn’t all fit on a business card) to think it was roughly even. When I saw what the real numbers were, I wanted to throw a cup of tea over myself.

Kirstyn presented the information that there were 16 men and 8 women surveyed, and yet 20 male authors were recommended, and only 4 women. She noted that only one male author recommended a book by a woman, and that it was Le Guin’s Left Hand of Darkness.

The Twitter conversation got a bit muddled at that point and I want to reiterate that none of us rolling our eyes meant anything derogatory at all to Ursula Le Guin, to that book (which is an acknowledged Great Work of the science fiction field) or to Kim Stanley Robinson, who chose it as his pick. It was an awesome choice, and he deserves kudos for remembering that women write science fiction too.

The reason there was eye-rolling is a carryover from many discussions we’ve (i.e. Galactic Suburbia and Friends) had about similar lists over the last year (The SF Signal MindMeld has been a common source for these) and more, which has brought up the anecdotal evidence that, when asked to recommend Great or Important or Best SF books, men are far more likely to produce lists of all male works, while women’s lists tend to be more gender balanced. In a large majority of cases where men do recommend a work by a woman, it seems to be Ursula Le Guin and particularly The Left Hand of Darkness.

I’m not saying, I repeat, that this is always the case. But it’s a common pattern, and one that interests me greatly. Why that book, in particular? Apart from it being awesome, which is a perfectly valid reason, why is that the science fiction book by a woman which seems to most often get remembered and recommended by men? More to the point, why are so many others consistently forgotten, unless the actual theme of the question specifies that we’re talking about women’s work?

Now, a list like this does not provide especially hard data about what people actually think, gender-wise. A list of one (which is what each author was asked for, individually, with no reference to each other’s picks) is not the sort of thing that calls up conscious thoughts of balanced representation. It’s only when a bunch of lists of one are put together into a list of, oh, 24, that the patterns start to look rather telling. I do think that this is at least partly how the sausagefest that is the SF Hall of Fame comes about (1 editor, 1 writer, 1 artist, 1 other, oops they’re all blokes again) – though I’m not convinced that’s much of an excuse.

On the other hand, as many of the MindMelds and indeed a lot of the last year’s themed lists in the Guardian itself (not gender specific) have shown, there are plenty of people who, when asked to make a list of many authors or works, still manage to come up with all or mostly men.

(Which is not to say that anyone who mostly remembers or values works by men, especially in a field as male-dominated as science fiction, are sexist or anti-feminist or any of those things – mostly it just means those are the books they like, and everyone is free to like or dislike books based on their own preferences. It’s just, you know, Worth Noticing The Patterns)

The information that jumped out at me from this particular Guardian list was not that almost all the men asked reached first for a male author or his work, but that 5/8 of the women also did. Again, this is not to criticise their choices. It’s an excellent article in that every choice is presented and described in very personal, intimate terms. The unfortunate gender balance is a pattern that emerges from the article, and does not take away from the quality of the article or the individual responses.

Except… well. It kind of does, doesn’t it? When you look at it as a whole. And I do wonder why only 8 women out of 24 were seen as enough. A list like this is almost always going to be male-heavy because of that old chestnut of men dominating science fiction (as if 80 years of ignoring women’s work was a justification for continuing to do so in the name of historical veracity), but while I wouldn’t have expected 50-50 in people’s answers, why such a huge disparity in the people of whom the question was asked? Even if less than half of those women themselves picked other women, the article would certainly have felt more balanced with wider diversity in the people included.

Or were the Guardian, like my subconscious unthinking inner reader, happy enough with the gender balance as published because, you know, it sort of felt about even?

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Then, if you can, come join us at Swancon on Easter Sunday for the live recording of EPISODE FREAKING THIRTY!

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EPISODE 29

In which we rant about feminist issues and gender disparity (are you shocked?), Alisa proclaims the death of bookstores and publishing, we look at branding and internet dramah, plus a million zillion award shortlists, TANSY BEING A TIPTREE JUDGE, a Swancon preview, and… um. It’s a bit long. But full of crunchy Galactic Suburbian goodness.

News

Diana Wynne Jones passed away, many people said good things about her on the internet

Shaun Tan wins the Astrid Lindgren Award
Guardian coverage; Shaun’s personal take on the award

Carol Emshwiller’s 90th birthday celebrations

25 A&R franchises in Australia go indie
(apologies original link vanished)

Strange Horizons – dealing with the low numbers of female reviewers
Original post, counting up numbers of female reviewers and women’s books reviewed in SF markets

The Age on the poor numbers of women’s work being reviewed (in the literary “mainstream”)
and coverage of a panel on the gender disparity, again in literary mainstream

Prometheus Awards nominees, from the Libertarian Futurist Society:

Running Press, Tricia Telep and Jessica Verday

http://charles-tan.blogspot.com/2011/04/essay-clarifying-issue-of-wicked-pretty.html

http://blog.outeralliance.org/archives/791

http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/print/20110404/46703-the-misinformation-age-what-happens-when-a-headline-goes-viral.html

TANSY BECOMES A TIPTREE JUDGE!!

Aurealis Awards: www.aurealisawards.com/finalists2010.pdf
Ditmars: http://2011.swancon.com.au/2011/03/natcon-fifty-ditmar-awards/
Tin Ducks: http://2011.swancon.com.au/tin-duck-awards/
Chronos Awards: http://arcadiagt5.livejournal.com/362522.html

Livejournal not so live this week – AK has existential crisis about blogging & identity.

Feedback
Aishwarya, Kaia, Adam

Competition winners!

Swancon Preview
Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!
Our live panel is 9:30 am on the Easter Sunday, bring coffee!

Please send feedback to us at galacticsuburbia@gmail.com, follow us on Twitter at @galacticsuburbs, check out Galactic Suburbia Podcast on Facebook and don’t forget to leave a review on iTunes if you love us!

So the other night, when my honey was away for work and the kids were in bed and no one was being wrong on the internet, I settled down with some sewing to watch it. I was a bit worried that the suck fairy might have visited since I last inhaled this one, especially as I have heard so much fan dismissal of it as a story, but my worried were unfounded.

Battlefield is AWESOME.

For a start, it’s gorgeously shot on location. They actually used money on it, in a way that surprised me – several uses of a helicopter, for instance, and at least half as much military hardware than we saw in the whole original UNIT years.

Also, it’s a clever story. At times it is a little thinly expressed, and there’s certainly a much larger epic tale going on here in between the scenes we actually see, but it centres around Arthurian legend, we don’t actually need to be told all the details: there’s Morgaine, there’s Ancelyn (Lancelot), there’s Mordred, the Doctor might be Merlin, it’s science fiction not magic, let’s do this thing!

(apropos of nothing, is there Mordred/Ancelyn slash out there? I know there must be, there’s everything slash out there, I learned my lesson when I checked on the existence of Crookshanks/Padfoot, but still… if there isn’t Mordred/Ancelyn, there is something very wrong with the internet)

Jean Marsh playing Morgaine was not a particular revelation to me. I always loved her in this role, though my brain had understandably squished it together with Queen Bavmorda in Willow, a far less subtle take on the Evil Queen Sorceress type character that Marsh does so well. Morgaine looks magnificent, and owns every scene she is in.

The thing I had not quite put together when watching this many times in my teens is that Jean Marsh is being reunited here with Nicholas Courtney, who played her brother in The Daleks Masterplan back in the 1960′s. Perhaps it’s that I have actually listened to the audio of that story in the last year, so it meant more to me than a random piece of Who trivia, but it was lovely to see them together, threatening to kill each other, and so on.

By far the most extraordinary Morgaine scene is where she discovers the significance of a War Memorial in the town, and is furious at her son for allowing her and her soldiers to desecrate a sacred site. The exchange she has with the Brigadier, when they agree to a ceasefire so she can honour the fallen from Earth’s World Wars, is utterly compelling and shows that Morgaine is not just Bad Lady™ but works to her own logic. We see this dichotomy later where she kills a UNIT soldier in cold blood, then turns around and gives the blind landlady back her sight as payment for Mordred’s drinks. The unpredictability of her honour system and compassion makes it more believable when, in the climax, the Doctor has to convince her that causing destruction and death on a massive scale is not in fact something that she wants.

The Arthurian cycle is responsible for some iconic female characters, and it is lovely to see such a major actress take on a legend with a science fictional twist, and play it completely straight. Having been really impressed with Jean Marsh in audio interviews published with her recent Sara Kingdom Big Finish plays, I was also delighted to see a DVD extra all about her work on Doctor Who. She’s a wicked, lovely old lady now and tells marvellous anecdotes about plotting incestous vibes between her Joanna and Julian Glover’s Richard the Lionheart (“I know what you’re up to,” said Verity Lambert) and how she kept sandwiches in the box that was attached to Sara Kingdom’s belt. She also analyses some of the characteristics of Morgaine as a character, with great detail and insight.

Lovely though Jean Marsh’s Morgaine is, as one of the best female villains of Doctor Who, it wasn’t only her which made me sit up and start thinking that Battlefield might be one of the most interesting Classic Who stories from a feminist point of view. Between script editor Andrew Cartmel and writer Ben Aaronovitch, this story is one of the final wave of Classic Who which was to be so influential on the two decades of books and audio plays which were to follow. You can see the seeds of the New Adventures here, with an ethnically diverse cast of characters, and and emphasis on the role of women in the military.

Let’s talk about Brigadier Winifred Bambera (Angela Bruce). The idea of passing the Brigadier baton to a black woman is a brilliant one, but the writing and performance here makes it far more than a literary gimmick (or as the writer suggests, a shorthand technique for making it feel like the near future rather than the present). Bambera is a lovely grumpy military leader, competent and aggressive but maintaining a sense of humour throughout. I loved watching the Angela Bruce of the 21st century describing with her eyes alight how she got to play with broadswords and be in choreographed fight scenes, and about how important it was to have a role like this available to a black woman. But she does it so WELL, it makes me a little sad that Angela Bruce didn’t go on to become an action hero.

Bambera is most definitely an action hero. No one questions her leadership (apart from one minor joke by Brig Classic where he assumes she will be male, and that is saying more about him than her). She is bold, competent and smart – but also impulsive. She also gets one of the most satisfying and subtle romances of 1980′s Who, with Ancelyn (Marcus Gilbert), a floppy haired blond pop-star-looking interpretation of the Lancelot character. And, I have to say, the most likeable Lancelot I’ve ever seen. The two of them absolutely relate as equals. There’s a joyous scene where their mutual warrior natures clash and they end up basically trying to beat each other up in the background of a scene between the Doctor and Ace.

Later, they catch up with the others, Ancelyn is in handcuffs and quite obviously in love, happily informing them all that “she vanquished me and I threw myself upon her mercy.” He is my favourite kind of male warrior character, the type who is so confident in his own masculinity that a powerful woman delights rather than threatens him. From then on, their courtship dance is one of embarrassed hints, jeep driving, broadsword fights, and fiery mental undressing. I love them to bits.

Oh, and yes. Did I mention? It’s never stated, but certainly implied that Bambera is Guinevere. Her real name is Winifred after all, which is practically the same thing. Considering that even in pro-feminist retellings of Arthurian myth, Guinevere usually gets the irritating drip end of the stick, it’s so exciting to have her represented here by a tough-as-nails, sarcastic, occasionally violent black female Brigadier who can wither you with her steely stare.

I also very much liked Lavel, a Russian wisecracking helicopter pilot who happens to be female. Her scenes with the Brigadier and later with Mordred are excellent, and most importantly, there is nothing about her role which made the female casting necessary – in the 70′s UNIT years she would have been a bloke, plain and simple. I also like that she and Bambera’s 2IC are obviously not English by their accents, which helps to give more of a sense that UNIT is a global organisation.

But I haven’t even talked about Ace (Sophie Aldred) yet! This story showcases her really well as a character and is surprisingly lacking in angst. Don’t get me wrong, I loves me some angsty Ace (Acengst!) but considering so many stories of this era have her dealing moodily with mother issues, guilt issues, clown issues, cute bloke turning out to be evil issues and friends kidnapped by cat people issues, it’s kind of nice to see her just having fun, kicking arse and blowing things up.

I particularly like that Ace stands in for young Arthur in the Camelot Metaphors Contest, being Merlin’s apprentice as well as accidentally drawing the sword from the stone. She also makes a great 20th Century lady of the lake in her bomber jacket and leggings, and cuts through the ego of the knights with her casual attitude. She is also paired with Shou Yuing, a Chinese-English girl who actually has little role in the story, but serves to give Ace someone to talk to (not, with my Bechdel hat on, about boys or male drama, but about blowing shit up). Their friendship is challenged in a Powerful (and yes, angsty, can’t get completely away from it) scene where they have to guard Excalibur in a chalk circle, with their emotions and fears being turned against them.

The father-daughter relationship between the Doctor and Ace has never been so evident as in the scene where she has to explain to him that she gave the sword up to Morgaine to save her own life, and he agrees that was the right thing to do: “Exotic alien swords are easy to come by… Aces are rare.”

Later, she hurls herself into a vortex to get silver bullets to him, and he knows she has them even before she tells him – because of course she does! Their trust in each other and mutual respect is just lovely.

I really like the fact that this story, the first real UNIT story in more than a decade, explores violence and military solutions in a sophisticated way. We see that UNIT is now far better equipped to deal with the alien menace than ever before, thanks largely to Brig Classic’s influence on them, but there’s also a strong thread about the futility of war and violence. The Brigadier actually knocks out the Doctor, to take over the job of shooting the Destroyer – on the surface it’s explained as him seeing himself as more expendable than the Doctor, but I like to think it’s also about the Brig preventing the Doctor from bearing arms, because that’s not his job. It makes for a marvellous coda to the UNIT years and to their long friendship.

Something I found interesting in the extras is how Ben Aaronovitch, the writer of the show, actually feels his script was a failure. In particular (MAJOR SPOILERS IN CASE YOU HADN’T ALREADY NOTICED) he feels that he made a wrong narrative move in letting the Brig survive the story rather than being killed off as was originally planned. Personally I think that the Brigadier surviving is a far more interesting result, particularly because the narrative of the story was set so obviously on him dying heroically. Aaronovitch lamented that the baton was supposed to be passed to Bambera and now it wasn’t – but um, actually, the baton WAS already passed. She is the Brigadier, she runs UNIT, she has the job. Brig Classic didn’t come out of retirement because the job was too difficult for her to manage, he did it because the Doctor had turned up.

The Brigadier, crucially, does not take over from Bambera in the field. He operates instead, much like the Doctor, as a vigilante and independent troubleshooter.

Also, and here we get back to the feminist issue, there’s Doris. In the opening scenes of the story, the Brigadier’s wife has a very traditional role. She represents happiness, domesticity and safety, and she questions his choice in returning to the field, even as she shows her resignation that she always knew their peaceful life together was temporary. Crucially, she has no idea who the Doctor is. Official secrets act or not, what does it say about their relationship that her husband never mentioned he was once good friends with a man from space?

If the Brig had died, Doris would be a tragic and slightly pathetic footnote, one of those characters in Spooks or The Bill or other shows where people regularly get killed off for queen and country. It would have been BORING as hell. Instead we get a quirky but (I think) amusing epilogue in which the two halves of the Brigadier’s world have been smushed together. Doris meets not only the Doctor and Ace, but also Shou Yiang, Bambera and Ancelyn, and the younger women sweep her off in Bessie for a day out. It’s all a bit cheesy but after four episodes of watching so many women kick butt, I rather appreciated the laden-on-with-a-trowel feminist message at the end, with the ladies taking the Doctor’s souped up roadster for a spin, and the gentlemen left behind to see to the house. Doris is most definitely giving her husband a gentle dig for abandoning her for his adventures, and making it clear that he gets to have a turn of doing the housework, and waiting for his honey to return.

Sure, one of the most epic stories of the era ends with a wry chuckle and the Doctor volunteering to cook supper, rather than an almighty bang, but considering that the story was bangs galore, I’m okay with that.

Also I choose to believe that Doris and the girls totally drove to Cambridge and picked up Dr Liz Shaw before they went on their adventure. She could do with a day out, I’m sure.

PS: Just discovered there’s a second disc with an edited-together version of Battlefield and extra scenes. Wheeeee!