Sarah Barrett writes:   After a good few months’ worth of watching Doctor Who, reading Doctor Who scripts, talking to other people about their thoughts on Doctor Who, getting briefly sick of Doctor Who, watching more Doctor Who, and doing a tremendous amount of copypasting things into other things, here’s what happened.

(The Bechel test: The Bechdel test asks if a work of fiction features at least two women who talk to each other about something other than a man. The requirement that the two women must be named is sometimes added. Originally conceived for evaluating films, the Bechdel test is now used as an indicator of gender bias in all forms of fiction. Almost half of all contemporary films fail the test, and critics have noted that the test is most informative when applied in the aggregate, because individual works may pass or fail the test for reasons unrelated to sexism.)

Turns out that out of 117 episodes, 96 pass the Bechdel Test, giving Doctor Who an overall pass rate of… 80%! That strikes me as not bad, but not outstanding either, for a show that has so many female main characters. I give you a B+, Doctor Who. I know you can do better. Especially since:

The percentage of Bechdel Test passes between women of colour is low. 7%, and that’s really only because we had Martha as a main character, having conversations with her family and friends, for so long. The percentage of Bechdel Test passes between LGBT women is even lower – a mere 3%, and that’s almost entirely down to the existence of Madame Vastra and Jenny. The percentage of Bechdel Test passes between disabled women is lowest of all – 0% in fact – but I kinda expected that.

But I promised you some mild surprises, so here’s mild surprise number one: the Steven Moffat factor. The current Doctor Who showrunner receives a hell of a lot of criticism and often it’s deserved, but his series isn’t that far behind Davies’s series in terms of Bechdel Test passes. Davies’ series (1-4 plus specials) stand tall at 85%, but Moffat’s series (5-8) score 75%. Mild surprise number two: Steven Moffat actually wrote the most Bechdel Test-passing episodes. Not by much – only two more than Davies – but whaddayaknow.

Mild surprise number three (and the nicest of them) is that when these results were published on Doctor Who TV, the response was pretty positive, way more than I expected.