I love Amy. I loved River Song her first two and a half years. I even like a lot of the one-shot ladies, like Idris, the dead soldier from “Good man goes to war,” the Muslim woman in the hotel.
That said, “Dinosaurs on a Spaceship” was the worst example of faux-feminist gender ideas since River Song swore undying love for the Doctor and had to be married to be shut up. I know it wasn’t that long ago, but maybe that’s the problem!
Amy’s barely worth mentioning because she has only two moments in the episode (although the gun thing was cool), and her pro-woman stuff is so clunky it’s cringeworthy: let’s talk about Nefertiti.
In an hour, the mysterious queen of all Egypt, the enigmatic face that has captured imaginations through history, threw herself at two men who then had to save her from being raped. This is not cool.
A pissed off queen walks onto the screen, and al she does is talk about sex. Her motivation for being there is that she really wants to bone the Doctor, while in contrast Cowboy Lestrade (no, I will not be looking up his name) has plenty of masculine motivation. She flirts with the man who physically threatens her, and concludes the episode by running off with him. It’s a rare woman who finds violent overtones sexy, and even rarer when they come with conviction from an armed man.
Then, Filtch (also not looking up the name) decides to “break” Nefertiti, who commits selfless feminine sacrifice into his lecherous clutches. No, really. Graves plays the moment well, but when that’s the only remotely sincere moment in your B-plot you’ve got a problem.
Finally, Nefertiti, the ruler of her people, responsible for the lives of millions, chooses at the episode’s end to let her hair down, abandon her people (her husband bored her), and go gallivanting off with Lestrade in a time and place where women actually have less status than in ancient Egypt.
I want to like Moffat, and I don’t want to bitch about this too much. What I want is for the urge to bitch to disappear. Make it happen, Doctor.
Remember the Ladies 