User:SOTO/Forum Archive/The Panopticon/@comment-1451563-20180913002703/@comment-1451563-20190115015410

Okay, that all sounds well and good, and perhaps I would agree in other circumstances (though Orr seems to be a different case altogether, and Alpha Centauri seems to be a bit questionable, too, grammatically, in that it didn’t identify as “they,” but perhaps I am lacking context, as I am less familiar with that character), except for the fact that in this one the show HAS already prescribed the specific pronouns to be used.

Grammatically speaking, “they” is not just “how English works”; it’s actually very dicey territory and highly dependent on individually specified circumstances and does indicate a specifically genderqueer identification, as I laid out in greater depth before. As for the theory that within the DWU that is the grammatically correct term, nowhere in Aliens Among Us is that confirmed from what I recall; there are no grammarians in the show. The characters simply use “they” (and sometimes “it”) because that’s what they personally decide is most applicable in that instance, as opposed to sticking with either “he” or “she” in this confusing situation which happens to be quite different from that of the Doctor’s. It seems to me that the Time Lords, however, have in fact been prescribed a specific, gendered system of pronouns from what we’ve seen so far that they themselves use. And the real world grammatical basis for a “they” usage does not apply as it does with Orr, since unlike Orr, those Time Lords haven’t expressed the actual preference to be referred to as anything other than “he” or “she,” but have in fact reinforced those terms and used them for general reference based apparently on birth/dominant sex, which makes sense when looking at the individuals from an overall historical perspective, seeing as the only deviations are at this point nothing more than minor exceptions to an otherwise very consistent and longstanding truth of their biologies.

Even using “he/she” (or “she/he” in the cases where the primary sex is female) for the Time Lords that have changed sex would be a radically more accurate and consistent method with the show’s established patterns and with the way the Wiki already treats these characters as it is now than the “they” alternative. The only reason I have been somewhat resistant to “he/she,” though, is of course because of its clunkiness, but perhaps there could be a way to minimize that drastically in order to prevent that clunkiness from being an issue.