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Ok, as long as this thread does not establish some deep conclusions about an alleged baseline gender in Time Lord society, let us discuss the pronoun. | Ok, as long as this thread does not establish some deep conclusions about an alleged baseline gender in Time Lord society, let us discuss the pronoun. | ||
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After all, we only have four types of personal pronouns. Thus, by the pigeonhole principle, whenever five characters are discussed, at least two of them are going to be pronoun-confusable. Whatever is decided in this thread, good editing was, is and will remain the only solution to unclear prose. | After all, we only have four types of personal pronouns. Thus, by the pigeonhole principle, whenever five characters are discussed, at least two of them are going to be pronoun-confusable. Whatever is decided in this thread, good editing was, is and will remain the only solution to unclear prose. | ||
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Latest revision as of 21:07, 27 April 2023
Ok, as long as this thread does not establish some deep conclusions about an alleged baseline gender in Time Lord society, let us discuss the pronoun.
First of all, there is, in my mind, zero problem referring to a specific incarnation by the gender of that incarnation. No reason to abandon doing that. The case of referring to several incarnations of the same gender is more subtle, but the simplest solution is, again, to use the common gender pronoun, given that it was the same person after all.
The real question, for me, is referring to multiple incarnations of both genders. Note that this is not at all that common an occurrence. For instance, if Missy is talking about her lifelong feelings or interests, I would still consider the female pronoun appropriate. If Missy talks about herself, as you say, she is probably referring to herself as a she. So really I can only see a problem when a third person refers to an absent Time Lord who changed gender or when the reference specifically addresses multiple-gender incarnations.
Unfortunately, given Tardis:Neutral point of view, much of what is written about the Doctor etc. must be written from the 3rd-person perspective (omniscient narrator) and from the point of view of the end of the universe. So no connection to a particular incarnation is possible. The neutrality and the randomness of the in-universe pronoun use, pointed out before, seemingly leave no choice other than a gender-neutral pronoun. No other choice would be neutral.
If we are lucky, Chibnall may insert some dialogue in the upcoming series that would give an in-universe solution. But for now, the only neutral way without imposing artificial quantitative or qualitative value judgements is "they" or "it" and I strongly prefer "they".
Finally, I would like to point out that "they" is not the cause of problems with clarity. One has exactly the same mess when five male characters have a scene together, making any attempt at using "he" problematic.
After all, we only have four types of personal pronouns. Thus, by the pigeonhole principle, whenever five characters are discussed, at least two of them are going to be pronoun-confusable. Whatever is decided in this thread, good editing was, is and will remain the only solution to unclear prose.
