User:SOTO/Forum Archive/The Panopticon/@comment-2162194-20130713192557/@comment-5918438-20160113180211

Well for the sake of completeness, from the prelude: "He was finely-chiselled, bald and tatooed, his face not quite of either sex." Just a few sentences later, "She was the Priestess of the Travellers, as Christopher was their Priest."

Haven't checked the novel itself, but this definitely seems to an indication that Christopher is thoroughly male, simply sexless. Maybe androgynous in appearance, but referred to by he/him pronouns, definitely at least once identified as male, and Paul Cornell makes a clear distinction between Christopher, the (male) "priest", and Máire, the (female) priestess.

I do think he continues to be relevant to this thread, though, because of the way the idea of lacking/having indeterminate sex was dealt with in this DWU story, in terms of pronouns.

Anyway, on Alpha Centauri, the character's very first scene certainly uses he/him pronouns ("The delegate from Alpha Centauri, member of the Galactic Federation, presents his credentials before his Majesty, King Peladon."), but then we have this exchange:

Jo: No, I think he's rather sweet. Or is he a she?

Doctor: Neither. She is an it. It's a hermaphrodite hexapod.

Then in the next story, though:

Doctor: Actually, you owe Alpha Centauri a very great deal of gratitude. Without him you'd have been lucky to have got out of there alive.

And that's just the first television stories. According to what's been said above, Alpha's been both he and it in separate stories. This is why I think, when pronouns are inconsistent, we go with them.