Comments about the boy-heavy (well, all-male) roster of series five writers got me looking at details. By the end of series five we'll have had 73 episodes of new
Who, 69 by men, and 18 writers, only one of whom is a woman: Helen Raynor.
TW's also had two from Raynor, one from Jacquetta May and four from Catherine Tregenna: 7 episodes by women out of 31. If we count
SJA's 25 minute two-parters as single episodes for comparison purposes, it's had 18 episodes, all by men. Is that more surprising because of the female lead, or is it just me?
I thought it might be illuminating to look at the writing teams of other British fantasy/adventure shows. I don't generally keep track of who writes shows, and to be honest I wondered if there'd be loads of female writers with transferable experience not being picked up by
Who. Over three series
Robin Hood had two episodes each from Debbie Oates and Lisa Holdsworth, three from the Bev Doyle/Richard Kurti team, and one from Holly Phillips: 8 episodes out of 39 written or co-written by women.
Merlin's so far had only one over two series (26 episodes): Lucy Watkins, who also wrote one episode of
Demons and more than half of
Hex.
Primeval had two from the Doyle/Kurti team, one from the Caroline Ip/Ben Court team behind
Whitechapel and
The Hole, and one by Catherine Linstrum and Paul Mousley: that's 4 episodes co-written by women out of 23. Counting
Life on Mars/Ashes to Ashes as one show (shut up, it is in my head), it's had three episodes from Julie Rutterford and one from Nicole Taylor: 4 episodes out of 32 written by women.
Survivors had Gaby Chiappe writing 1 of 6.
Now, I'm no statistician, I could never even be arsed to memorise my times tables, but clearly there are women writing for other British fantasy/adventure shows, and it seems to me that
Torchwood and
Robin Hood have had more of them than
Doctor Who. 69 out of 73 episodes over five years being written by men strikes me as a rather unbalanced state of affairs, possibly indicative of some systemic problem which is excluding female writers and depriving us of the stories they could tell, and I wonder if anything could be done about it. What do you think?
Just in case it isn't blindingly clear already, I'd like to put on the record that I'm by no means presenting this as a serious study, but sharing some stuff I looked up so as not to fall asleep and be found dead in a snowdrift when they finally dig us out in June. I shall welcome corrections where I've miscounted or got writers' genders wrong.
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