“I'm so sorry, my child.”
What Doctor Who companion Bill Potts teaches viewers about foster care
The new character has the potential to shine a light on a group of children that people might not otherwise consider
Leanne Mattu
Wed 12 Jul 2017 10.12 BST
Last modified on Tue 17 Jul 2018 11.38 BST
Fans of Doctor Who started to learn about the Time Lord’s new companion a year before her first appearance. In that time, we learned quite a bit about Bill Potts, played by Pearl Mackie, and much of the media focus rested on the fact that she is the first openly gay companion.
What no one knew until the first episode was broadcast is something that resonates with me on a professional level. I work at Celcis – the Centre for Excellence for Looked After Children in Scotland – an organisation that works to make positive and lasting improvements in the wellbeing of children and young people who, for a variety of reasons, are looked after by the state, for example in foster care – children like Bill Potts.
Viewers first find out about her circumstances in a low-key way in the first episode, when she tells her foster mother, Moira, about The Doctor: “You know you’re my foster mum? He’s like my foster tutor.”
Fostering a child with complex needs means being their advocate
I was keen to see how this aspect of Bill’s character would be received by viewers, given that media portrayals of foster families are sometimes problematic.
The first thing I noticed is that Bill is a working adult in her 20s, but still lives with her foster mother, Moira.
Young people in care are often expected to become self-sufficient more quickly than their peers, but Bill’s situation is a nice example of the recent shift in policy that recommends young people have more gradual transitions to adulthood.
Although we see Bill move out in episode four, this doesn’t work out, and by the sixth episode she is back living with Moira.
I wonder how many viewers are aware that Bill’s experience isn’t the norm? How many would question the apparent ease with which Bill returned to live with her foster mother?
In Scotland, less than 3% of young people eligible for support after leaving care remain with their former foster carers.
The media response to Bill’s family background was interesting. One review read:
Moffat’s decision to write Bill as someone who has failed to get into the university that The Doctor has been lecturing at is troubling. Why is such a bright young woman shovelling chips onto the plates of students, rather than learning alongside them?
Such a storyline feels somewhat quaint and patronising today … it’s a shame that Moffat reinforces the notion that a person from a tough background ... will have a hard time pursuing higher education.
I can understand why the reviewer feels this was the wrong approach. Being looked after should be no barrier to accessing university, college or any other opportunity.
It’s a sad reflection of reality, however, that the pursuit of higher education for young people who have been in care is still challenging. Bill herself tells us that she “never even applied”, although she’s “always wanted to come here”.
We never find out why she didn’t, but lack of support or encouragement could have played a part. By reinforcing the notion that someone with Bill’s background might struggle to access higher education, I hope Steven Moffat has encouraged some viewers to wonder why that might be.
There were also some interesting comments about the relationship between Moira and Bill. One suggested Moira was “neither warm nor nurturing”.
Another described her as “emotionally absent”, and a third as a “neglectful foster mother”.
At first this was quite a leap to judgment, but episode six confirmed something hinted at in the first episode: Moira is oblivious to Bill’s sexuality.
Their relationship isn’t as close as it perhaps first seemed.
Although we find out that her mum died when Bill was a baby, we don’t know how long she has lived with Moira; perhaps, like many young people in care, Bill has moved several times and hasn’t lived with Moira long enough to develop a truly maternal level of closeness.
Children in foster care aren't waiting for a loving home – they are already in one
Andy Elvin
Bill does have a sense of connection with her biological mother, though. The Doctor, who learns that Bill has no photos of her, puts his time-travelling capabilities to good use by going back to get some. As social care professionals know, having photos may contribute to Bill’s understanding of her history and identity, which can be important for her wellbeing.
Bill’s mum is only alluded to briefly a few times, but in episode eight Bill’s ability to focus her thoughts on her mother is vitally important.
In a speech at this year’s Scottish Institute of Residential Childcare conference, Lemn Sissay spoke about the long tradition of fictional characters from “substitute care” backgrounds, and suggested that “the kid in care is used in popular culture because they feel so much”. Bill has amazing potential to shine a (fictional, wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey) light on a group of children that people might not otherwise consider.
Leanne Mattu is a research associate at the Centre for Excellence for Looked After Children in Scotland
[Level-507]
Now a charred post-apocalyptic wasteland with a few fires still burning. Cyber-Bill limps through the ashes and finds the Doctor, falls to her knees and touches him gently, weeping over him. A tear falls on his forehead. Then she stands and looks skywards as if screaming at the heavens. Rain begins to fall and a figure rises out of a very rapidly created pool of water.
BILL [memory]:
Promise you won't go?
HEATHER [memory]:
Promise.
Bill sees her Cyberman body fall backwards.
BILL:
Am I Dead..?
Wet Heather kisses her.
HEATHER:
Does that feel dead to you?
You're like me now.
It's just a different kind of living.
Water is pouring off Bill's hands.
BILL:
How did you find me?
HEATHER:
I left you my tears, remember?
BILL [memory]:
I don't think they're mine.
HEATHER:
I know when you're crying them.
Time to go.
BILL:
But The Doctor, we can't just leave him.
HEATHER:
Of course we can't.
And we're not going to.
Whoosh!
[TARDIS]
The women are now both completely dry, and the Doctor is lying on the floor by the console.
BILL:
I suppose this is the only place he'd rest in peace —
If there's any place he'd do that.
Heather operates the controls.
BILL:
How can you fly the TARDIS?
HEATHER:
I'm The Pilot.
I can fly anything.
Even you.
BILL:
So I'm like you now.
I'm not human anymore.
HEATHER:
I can make you human again.
It's all just atoms.
You can rearrange them any way you like.
I can put you back home,
you can make chips, and live your life,
or you can come with me.
It's up to you, Bill, but before you make up your mind —
She opens the Tardis door to reveal a bright star shining in space.
HEATHER:
Let me show you around.
BILL:
Back in time for tea?
HEATHER:
If you want.
BILL:
You know what, Old Man?
I'm never going to believe you're really dead.
Because one day everyone's just going to need you too much. Until then —
(kisses his cheek)
It's a big universe, but I hope I see you again.
There is a tear on his face.
BILL :
Where there's tears, there's Hope.
(to Heather)
Just one thing —
I've been through a lot since the last time we met, so I'll show you around....
They hold hands and step out into the infinite.
The regeneration begins....
“Don’t get me wrong — Self-Decoration is one of the greatest joys and privileges of being a woman, and it’s lots of fun...
....but •un•-decorating oneself takes one down to The Primitive, the level of Baba Yaga — it brings a woman down to the level where she is more able understand between
Life and Death
between
Birth and Rebirth
between
Choices of The World and Choices of The Inner World.”
Well. Frankly, I was surprised when you left.
I thought you'd bet on shooting your way out.
“I am.”
How sentimental of you, then.
Risking your revenge while saving their lives.
Almost reminds me of the Annika of old.
“Me, too.
Picard still thinks there's a place in The Galaxy for Mercy.
I didn't want to disillusion him.
Somebody out here ought to have a little Hope.”
Like you used to have before I took it away from you.
“Something like that.
You're stalling, Jay.
Your second security wave will be here in less than five seconds.”
Annika -
“He was a son to me, Jay.
This is for him.”
JOAN'S VOICES AND VISIONS
Joan's voices and visions have played many tricks with her reputation.
They have been held to prove that she was mad, that she was a liar and impostor, that she was a sorceress (she was burned for this), and finally that she was a saint.
They do not prove any of these things; but the variety of the conclusions reached shew how little our matter-of-fact historians know about other people's minds, or even about their own.
There are people in the world whose imagination is so vivid that when they have an idea it comes to them as an audible voice, sometimes uttered by a visual figure.
Criminal lunatic asylums are occupied largely by murderers who have obeyed voices.
Thus a woman may hear voices telling her that she must cut her husband's throat and strangle her child as they lie asleep; and she may feel obliged to do what she is told.
By a medico-legal superstition it is held in our courts that criminals whose temptations present themselves under these illusions are not responsible for their actions, and must be treated as insane.
But the seers of visions and the hearers of revelations are not always criminals. The inspirations and intuitions and unconsciously reasoned conclusions of genius sometimes assume similar illusions. Socrates, Luther, Swedenborg, Blake saw visions and heard voices just as Saint Francis and Saint Joan did. If Newton's imagination had been of the same vividly dramatic kind he might have seen the ghost of Pythagoras walk into the orchard and explain why the apples were falling. Such an illusion would have invalidated neither the theory of gravitation nor Newton's general sanity. What is more, the visionary method of making the discovery would not be a whit more miraculous than the normal method. The test of sanity is not the normality of the method but the reasonableness of the discovery. If Newton had been informed by Pythagoras that the moon was made of green cheese, then Newton would have been locked up. Gravitation, being a reasoned hypothesis which fitted remarkably well into the Copernican version of the observed physical facts of the universe, established Newton's reputation for extraordinary intelligence, and would have done so no matter how fantastically he had arrived at it. Yet his theory of gravitation is not so impressive a mental feat as his astounding chronology, which establishes him as the king of mental conjurors, but a Bedlamite king whose authority no one now accepts. On the subject of the eleventh horn of the beast seen by the prophet Daniel he was more fantastic than Joan, because his imagination was not dramatic but mathematical and therefore extraordinarily susceptible to numbers: indeed if all his works were lost except his chronology we should say that he was as mad as a hatter. As it is, who dares diagnose Newton as a madman?
In the same way Joan must be judged a sane woman in spite of her voices because they never gave her any advice that might not have come to her from her mother wit exactly as gravitation came to Newton. We can all see now, especially since the late war threw so many of our women into military life, that Joan's campaigning could not have been carried on in petticoats. This was not only because she did a man's work, but because it was morally necessary that sex should be left out of the question as between her and her comrades-in-arms. She gave this reason herself when she was pressed on the subject; and the fact that this entirely reasonable necessity came to her imagination first as an order from God delivered through the mouth of Saint Catherine does not prove that she was mad. The soundness of the order proves that she was unusually sane; but its form proves that her dramatic imagination played tricks with her senses. Her policy was also quite sound: nobody disputes that the relief of Orleans, followed up by the coronation at Rheims of the Dauphin as a counterblow to the suspicions then current of his legitimacy and consequently of his title, were military and political masterstrokes that saved France. They might have been planned by Napoleon or any other illusionproof genius. They came to Joan as an instruction from her Counsel, as she called her visionary saints; but she was none the less an able leader of men for imagining her ideas in this way.
