Chicks Dig Time Lords [Paperback]

This is a slim collection of essays documenting the female experience in Doctor Who fandom. These range from origin stories -- "how DW came to be part of my life" -- to essays exploring specific fannish activities, to what we on the intertubes would call meta about specific characters and themes. There are also a handful of interviews with actresses.

The first category dominates, and unfortunately, it's the weakest. Many are essentially variations on the same story ("I was watching PBS, for I, like all people in fandom, am American. And there was a peculiar British show which both scared and thrilled me"), which quickly grew repetitive. The highlight was Liz Myles's essay, which initially covered her introduction to Who-dom at her mother's hands, and then looked at the revival of Classic Who fandom from late 2005 onwards. Let me tell you, that warmed my black heart -- as did "Two Generations of Fangirls in America" by Amy Fritsch, about watching DW as a child, then introducing it to her daughter, and the thrill when their respective favourite companions -- Sarah Jane for the mother, Rose for the five-year-old -- met. The worst of this lot is Carole Barrowman's entry, which briefly touches on the surreal aspect of going from fangirl to family-of-actor, but says very little of substance.

Much more enjoyable are the essays about specific fannish activities. The obvious stand-out is the cartoon-format story behind Torchwood Babiez, which is funny, endearing, well-told and well-drawn. And it contains a chibi!Gary Russell, which is so cute, I would not be surprised to learn that the original version of "The End of Time" involved the Master turning all of humanity into chibi!Gary Russells, purely so that all of mankind could squee itself into oblivion. (Hey, this makes at least as much sense as anything else.) But I really loved all of these essays -- they include costuming, fan films, Tara O'Shea's adventures running the green room at ChicagoTARDIS (if that's not a fannish activity, I don't know what is!) and the zine scene. I would have liked to have seen something specifically about the craft of fic writing, but so many authors already have space in the book, and that sort of thing can so easily end in self-indulgence.

Then there's the meta, which ranges from a lovely piece about the author's love for Nyssa ("Girl Genius: Nyssa of Traken" by Francesca Coppa) to not one, but three essays about The Problem of Rose. The best is "What's A Girl To Do?" by Lloyd Rose, which is considered, well-written and contains ideas that haven't been beaten to death by fandom. The worst is "Two Steps Forward, One Step Back: Have We Really Come That Far?" by Shoshana Magnet and Robert Smith?, which makes a whole heap of really good points about a whole lot of things, but shoots itself in the foot by dividing female characters into categories of Having Worth (older, professional women), Marginal Cases (women in caregiving professions) and Don't Count (flight attendants, shop assistants, temps). This is a particular shame, because it also makes excellent and under-considered points about Jack Harkness as the acceptable queer (he's from the future, so it's okay, but don't let any of that gayness touch the Doctor!) and the problem of the black companions being the least loved.

But the meta I most loved was K. Tempest Bradford's "Martha Jones: Fangirl Blues", which utterly glows with its love for Martha, and its rage at the unfolding of her story. Reading it made me want to dance, first with the book, and then with my Martha doll. That alone was worth what I paid for the book.

The weakest essay overall was Kate Orman's "If I Can't Squee, I Don't Want To Be Part Of Your Revolution: Crone-ology of an Aging Fangirl", with its tendency to rewrite history and obsession with gendered behaviour (her tendency to become embroiled in fandom arguments is because she communicates LIKE A MAN, BABY, and not, say, because she created an anti-racism sidejournal that was not explicitly exclusive to white people, it just started out as explicitly unwelcoming to People of Colour, and currently it only frames itself as a non-safe space for PoC, so that's all right then). That is snarky, so here is a direct quote as evidence:

"So it's not hard to see why so much Internet discussion was (and is) "masculine" in nature: confrontational, brusque, concerned with winning the argument rather than with group bonding or soothing ruffled feathers. In turn, that helps to explain the grinding of gears that's happened so often when I've interacted with majority-female fandom: my learned "masculine" style of bluntly disagreeing and baldly arguing sends others into "face-saving" defensiveness ... So my bluntness shuts down some discussion..."

Yes, well. The essay ends with mention of dedicated forums for anonymous feminine with a dire warning that sooner or later, someone will Get Hurt. By this point, I was desperately sorry I'd read the essay at all; it lowers the whole tone of the book, and rather poisoned the remaining essays. It was a sad come-down after Liz Myles's essay, and rather depressing overall.

In short, would I recommend CDTL? With due respect to the contributers among my friends, I think it's one to get from the library. But I'm glad it exists, and I hope it doesn't mark the beginning and the end for female-oriented Doctor Who related titles.

As a chick who digs Time Lords, getting this book was a no brainer for me. I saw it for sale in the dealers room at the 2010 Gallifrey One convention and thought to myself, "I'll come back and grab a copy later". Of course, they promptly sold out of it. Thanks Amazon!

As I read through the book, I was reminded of Confessions of a Part-time Sorceress: A Girl's Guide to the D&D Game (Dungeons & Dragons), which is another book that deals with a female's perspective of what is considered to be a male dominated area. I say "a female's perspective" rather then "a female perspective" because that book is one woman's experience, just as "Chicks Dig..." contains a collection of perspectives from a collection of individual females. In both books the reader comes to realize that, vocabulary aside, the experience of enjoying something or coming to enjoy something you previously knew nothing about, isn't so much about gender. There could just as easily be a book called "American's Dig time Lords", "People Who Don't Normally Like Sci Fi Dig Time Lords", etc, etc, etc, and so on and so forth.

Yes the word "chicks" in the title, and all but one of the contributors are female (aside from an appearance by Garry Russell in cartoon form), but the book isn't just about women who are fans of Doctor Who. It's about fans of Doctor Who, period. And in a broader sense, you could say it's about the nature of being a fan. What draws a person to be a fan of something, what they get out of it and the community of other fans (or people who actively dislike the thing the person is a fan of) and how they relate to those people.

In Moths Ate My 'Doctor Who' Scarf, Toby Hadoke mentions how one of the reasons he was drawn to the character of the Doctor was the fact the character is more likely to use his brain then to fight back with direct physical violence. As a kid who couldn't physically match his class bullies, the ability to get through a situation with words rather then blows not only appealed to him but worked when applied in real life. Similar "identifying with the brainy character" can be found in "Chicks Dig..."

I wish I had something really profound to end this review on, but all I can say is this...

If you're curious about people who are obsessed with making costumes, knitting obscenely long scarves, posting to live journal pretending to be a fictional character, writing fan fic, building full sized replicas of police boxes, watching 30+ years of television or just about human nature in general?

You'll like this book.

I picked this book up at Gallifrey One and read the first 6 essays in a matter of a day. That is how enthralling this book is! The essays are all intelligent and very well written and flow together smoothly. The interviews fit in well between essays (I especially enjoyed the interview with Sophie Aldred). Most are touching and all are hillarious. My favourite is probably "Mathematical Excellence: A Documentary", and the essays by Lynne M. Thomas (Marrying into the TARDIS Tribe) and Tara O'Shea (The Tea Lady) were EXCELLENT (they most obviously had a passion for this project)! I found this book to be accessible and very positive. Also recommended is the essay by Lloyd Rose (her book "Algebra of Ice" s a cracking readDoctor Who: The Algebra Of Ice (Doctor Who S.) ) . Truly, whether you are a Die-hard Wholigan, a casual viewer, are looking for a good gift for or just trying to FIGURE OUT the Wholigan in your life, this is a definite must-read. Buy it, give it, read it, enjoy it!