Some Thoughts on Vastra and Jenny (Doctor Who)

Not a relationship spotlight, just a few comments about a certain Silurian detective and her lady love.  I have some sticking points with LGBTQ representation in Moffat-era new Who.  For example, I categorically refuse to believe that the phrase “gay-married” will still exist in 3000 years, especially since Who has established the 51^st century as a period of so-many-species-so-little-time “flexibility.” 

So how about Vastra and Jenny, Who’s most prominent queer characters these days?  As a concept, they’re fantastic.  Queer ladies in an interspecies relationship solving crimes in old London town!  I’m all over that.  And as characters, they work fairly well.  Vastra is highly intelligent and intuitive, and although Jenny is less educated – Dr. Simeon dismissively calls her “fatuous” – she’s pretty sharp and thinks well on her feet.  Both can kick some serious butt and are equally comfortable investigating with or without the Doctor. 

It’s in execution where I think they too often stumble.  On the butt-kicking front, I don’t know where they got those skintight cat suits.  That bit of wardrobe is nowhere near Victorian, and the anachronism always takes me out of the story.  Yes, they have some non-contemporary technology, and they have time-traveled before, but I just can’t with the cat suits.  They’re like a cross between superhero costumes and fetish gear, and they simply don’t work for me.  I much prefer what they wear in “A Good Man Goes to War”: trousers for Jenny, a skirt Vastra can move well in, and loose-fitting shirts that seem period-appropriate and make sense in a battle.

Then there’s the power dynamic.  I’ll be honest – I didn’t mind this before, because I had it in my head that Vastra and Jenny were into BDSM, and all the orders and “ma’am” business was a game for them.  Not sure why I thought that (other than the cat suits, I suppose.)  It had might have had something to do with Vastra using her tongue like a whip in “A Good Man Goes to War.”  However, BDSM doesn’t really seem to be the case, which makes me wonder what’s going on with them.  I get Jenny being Vastra’s maid in their first appearance; it’s unclear how long they’ve been together at this time, and it’s logical that they’d start as employer/employee and become lovers later.  When we next see them, though, it’s four years later and we’re told, repeatedly, that they’re married.  So why is Jenny still the maid?  In “Deep Breath,” Vastra calls it as a “pretense” to let squeamish Victorians think what they want, but Jenny herself points out that a public pretense doesn’t explain their private lives.  It’s a bit like Jane Eyre’s plan to keep working as Rochester’s governess after she marries him, and there’s a reason that would’ve been totally weird.  Does Vastra pay Jenny?  How much overlap is there between work and marriage?  How is it an equal partnership when one is literally subservient to the other?  “Deep Breath” is an overall misstep for them, I’d say.  Besides the employment situation, Vastra just sort of does as she likes with Jenny.  The scene where Jenny thinks she’s posing for Vastra who, instead of painting her, turns out to be working on something for the case, leaves a bad taste to me.

It’s a shame, because they can be great.  By far, my favorite Vastra and Jenny are in “The Name of the Doctor.”  It’s less tell and more show, trading repeated marriage mentions for regular signs of affection, and you can feel the bond between them.  I love it when Strax notes that “the heart is a relatively simple thing” (meaning medically,) and Vastra, looking at Jenny, softly replies, “I have not found it to be so.”  Gorgeous!  Can we get more of that Vastra and Jenny, please?