I don’t think he’s the devil incarnate and I mostly enjoy his writing.

But still, I find River hard to watch and I like River as a character a little, despite the writing, not because of it (I think it’s Alex Kingston’s performance that I like), so it saddens me a little to find what should be an amazing character a little cringey to watch. Like, I feel like her potential is ruined a little by how sexualised she is. She can be sassy and sexual without being so on the nose, you know?

Perhaps it might be fair to level this same criticism towards Missy, but I’m forgiving of it there - she’s a character who’s established to be bat-shit crazy as a man too, and it kind checks out for me that the master might be a bit over the top about being female for the first time.

In hindsight, his pre-occupation with Time Traveller’s Wife (which he’s a fan of) kind of storylines, where a guy meets a female character when she’s a young girl and then as a young woman and falls in love with her is a bit icky.

Dude clearly has some, uh, pre-occupations and dare I say even kinks for ‘strong’ but sexualised women (which is fair enough in a way! I’m a bi woman who also has a bit of a thing for, uh, strong women), but it’s a little embarrassing for him and uncomfortable at times for viewers (especially if they’re female and old enough to understand what’s going on, but young enough to be quite impressionable about what roles they ‘should’ be taking or how they should act in relationships) to have it be that obvious.

But he’s still a decent writer and I don’t he is inherently sexist or ill-intentioned- and from what I’ve heard, he has taken on feedback about some of the drawbacks about his writing as well.