NYSM: Of Gallifrey and Girl Fridays...

Sitting here at the airport  waiting for my flight to Sydney for New Years fun - and abusing my fair share of frequent flyer free wifi - I just saw an internet meme which noted that if ‘three wise women’ had visited Nazareth all those years ago instead of their male counterparts, the birth of Jesus Christ would have been much better organised.

Listen - Gold, Frankincense and Myrrh are great for a New Year soiree in New York or Sydney, but they would have been no match for diapers, a tasty casserole and actually arriving on time rather merely using a star as a GPS. Women may not yet rule the world, but we’re the people who make it run smoothly behind the scenes.

In the media it’s much the same. Women are cracking the glass ceiling behind the scenes and yet it still appears to be a fractured effort in front of the camera when it comes to the kind of product Impact readers adore.  There’s numerous ladies who lunch, but few are considered good enough to launch. It’s improving, to be sure, but I can’t help but notice that the trend is not so much to create new and unique women of power on the screen, more to weld them on to an existing franchise.

Men (and women) have their dark and brooding male-led franchise icons: Batman, Superman, James Bond, Jason Bourne, Jack Reacher and John McClane (2013’s  A Good Day to Die Hard - or, as I like to call it ‘I Know What You Did Last National Lampoon’s Russian Vacation’ -  the latter included only as a result of my festive sense of compromise). But though there are some strong actresses appearing in those titles, where are their own action projects?  The long-AWOL Lara Croft is one of the few mainstream entries, with only the likes of horror-romps Resident Evil and Underworld (with Milla Jovovich and Kate Beckinsale respectively) getting other name-checks. The Avengers have their more than capable Black Widow, but no sign yet of her solo mission. Yes, I know, Wonder Woman finally got cast, but only as part of a Superman movie that already has Batman as its main guest-star. The long and winding road to get the Amazon in a film of her own continues to be long, winding and nowhere near its destination.  SOME day my Diana Prince will come...

Television fares better with a blossoming array of female detectives, particularly if you come from Scandanavia, but its still got room for improvement. Like many, I sat down with a large martini to watch the Christmas outing of Doctor Who – after spending SO many hours avoiding the internet (“spoilers, sweetie…”) in the wake of the earlier UK  showing that my friends presumed I’d probably died or gone to New Jersey. And here too we have another example of credit overdue...

The Doctor, for much of my childhood this asexual alien with the chaotic appeal of a cheeky uncle or not-quite-trendy teacher, has been somewhat reinvented as a Dread Pirate Roberts who thinks his mode of transport is 'Sexy' and quite likes to ‘sonic’ the ladies  (though, not you understand in an overt, Torchwoody way). The ‘assistants’ have, at last, become ‘companions’ (Elizabeth Sladen and Sarah Jane Smith, we still owe you so much for blazing that trail). But I can’t help noticing that the modern Gallifreyan Gal Fridays (or should that be 'Saturdays'?) are still made from a one-size-fits-all template. They are grafted on to the main body of the piece, achieve goddess-like powers and then… well, are largely surplus to requirements and have to pay for their moment in the spotlight. Now, I’m all for us seizing cosmic power, but literally?  

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