Gender Bender / Live-Action TV

Oh...boy.

Gender bending in live-action TV.

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• Babylon 5: Delenn was originally supposed to have been male or neuter in the first season, before entering the chrysalis and becoming female, but the idea was dropped. Sources differ as to the exact details and reasons for this: either they couldn't get Mira Furlan's electronically altered voice as "Male Delenn" quite right, or Mira Furlan refused to play Delenn as a male.
  • They did use this idea in the original pilot as aired, but dropped it for the series, and later rebroadcasts of the pilot have Mira Furlan's unaltered voice. Unfortunately, there's nothing that could reasonably be done about the Male Delenn makeup (which looks remarkably like the original G'Kar makeup, particularly noticeable in their scenes together).
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer
  • Invoked by Willow, in "Earshot" who suggests this as one of the possibilities after Buffy touches a demon and is set to take on a part of it.
  • The Big Bad of Season 5 regularly transformed between the evil female demon Glorificus aka Glory and the nice male doctor Ben Wilkinson.
  • Discussed in "Him", after an unpopular boy uses a magic jacket to make any woman who sees him wearing it fall madly in love with him; the magic takes effect on Willow, who (after being reminded that she's a lesbian) decides to turn him into a girl so that they can be together. Fortunately, Xander and Spike interrupt her before the magic ritual is completed.
  • In "The Killer in Me", Willow is briefly cursed with a Glamour that changes her into a double of Warren Mears ^note (the man responsible for the death of her first girlfriend, Tara). The curse also causes Warren's personality to gradually override Willow's own — and eventually influences her to try to re-create his attack on her friends.

• Charmed (1998): Occurs in "She's a Man, Baby!" as part of a spell to help the sisters trap a succubus. Prue makes quite a handsome man.
• Doctor Who:
  • This trope has been used a few times in the case of the Time Lords, who change bodies upon death:
    • In "The Curse of Fatal Death", an Affectionate Parody created for the 1999 Comic Relief appeal night, the Doctor cycles through all of his remaining regenerations in quick succession, with the final one being Joanna Lumley. The Doctor's female companion (who was engaged to him) is understandably rather disturbed; his arch-nemesis, the Master, somewhat less so. The former enemies walk off arm in arm.
    • The Big Finish Doctor Who audio drama "Unbound" episode 6 "Exile" postulates "What if the Doctor evaded punishment at the end of "War Games". In this alternate timeline, the Doctor commits suicide, and the story establishes a rule that there will be a sex change whenever a time lord commits suicide. Thus, the Doctor regenerates as a female third doctor voiced by Arabella Weir.
    • In "The End Of Time" The Doctor himself briefly thought he had become female when he regenerated into Matt Smith, and noticed how long his new hair's bangs were.
    • An unseen character called the Corsair was known for this. "The Doctor's Wife", in which the Corsair is first mentioned, is the first confirmation in the TV series that a Time Lord can regenerate as the opposite sex:
      The Doctor: See that snake? The mark of the Corsair. Fantastic bloke. He had that snake as a tattoo in every regeneration. Didn't feel like himself unless he had the tattoo... or herself a couple of times. Oh hoo, she was a bad girl!
    • Neil Gaiman (who wrote the episode) also confirms the Corsair having a couple of female regenerations in The Brilliant Book 2012. The Corsair also gets a reference in the 2012 novel adaptation of "Shada", in which the Fourth Doctor alternates between male and female pronouns while gossiping about them to Romana.
    • The book Engines of War reveals that the Time Lord Borusa, seen exclusively in male bodies in the series, had also had at least one female incarnation from before the Doctor knew him. In the Gallifrey series, an alternate universe is also seen in which Borusa is female (played by Katy Manning, of all people).
    • The first on-screen Time Lord example is Missy, the Big Bad of the revival's eighth series, who is revealed to be a female incarnation of the Master. The trope is notably shown in a very positive way, and the character happily identifies and presents as female, without any kind of angst about the change (despite their previous male incarnations being somewhat disdainful of women).
    • In "Hell Bent", the commander of Gallifrey's armed forces, a white man, regenerates into a black woman, commenting afterward that her previous self had been her only male incarnation to date. The trope is again shown in a positive way, with no angst over the change.
    • The Doctor does become female in "Twice Upon a Time", regenerating from the Twelfth Doctor into the Thirteenth Doctor. She is pleased with the result, exclaiming, "Oh, brilliant!" upon seeing her reflection for the first time. Her version of the Master has gone back to male after being Missy.
    • And, in the 2022 special "The Power of the Doctor", the Thirteenth Doctor regenerates back to male as the Fourteenth Doctor.
  • In the Tom Baker-era story "The Hand of Fear", the Kastrian Eldrad regenerates from a single hand into a female body, apparently based on Sarah Jane's. Upon being injected with a deadly poison, she regenerates, into a male body. The Doctor is surprised, and Eldrad calls him out on his confusion, saying he should know all about regeneration and its possibility for changing gender (making this the first implication in the series that regeneration could produce a sex change).
  • Zig-zagged in "New Earth": the villainous Cassandra, a trans woman from the future (who surgically altered her body so frequently in the pursuit of youth and beauty that only her eyes and a flap of skin remain), tries to stave off her impending death by transferring her consciousness into Rose Tyler. The Doctor quickly sees through the ruse, and orders Cassandra to leave Rose's body; she complies — by transferring herself into his body. Cassandra (and the audience) are amused as she revels in her handsome figure and new "parts" ("And hardly used!") with David Tennant hamming it up like a campy Austin Powers (while Billie Piper is unable to keep her composure). Circumstances force Cassandra to abandon the Doctor's body, however, and she spends the rest of the episode jumping between Rose and several other female hosts before settling on the body of Chip, her male servant (and the only voluntary host of the episode).
  • At the end of Part 1 of "The End of Time", the Master uses an Applied Phlebotinum machine to rewrite the genetic code of every human on Earth (save for Wilf and Donna), changing the world's population into clones of himself — the women included. Which would be terrifying, if it weren't for the hilariously OTT resulting scenes, including an evilly-grinning Master clone in a pretty pink dress and an entire White House press pool of Masters (many of them in female clothing) hopping and applauding excitedly for their duplicate (who's just overridden Barack Obama).
• Earth: Final Conflict: "Boon's Assassin" has the Atavus turn a revived Taelon (Taelons are a One-Gender Race descended from the Atavus) into a female Atavus. Howlyn even asks Zo'or how he (the masculine pronoun is traditionally used to refer to any Taelon due to humanity's male-dominated culture) would feel as a female. Zo'or doesn't care as long as he survives. After the transformation, she absolutely delights in being a female and a sexual being. One of the first things she does is have sex with a human... before sucking out his life force. Howlyn is not amused. For reference, Zo'or was always played by a woman (Anita La Selva), so the choice of sex as an Atavus was easy in Real Life. Of course, for the most part, Zo'or still acts like the same obnoxious Jerkass he/she always was.
• A strange version of this trope appears in Elseworlds (2018). John Deegan has rewritten reality so that he is Superman. However, Kara soon realizes that technically he is not actually Superman, but rather a male version of herself, based on the scans that the AMAZO robot took of her. This is because she is from Earth-38, and the Book of Destiny that Deegan used to rewrite reality only contains information on things from Earth-1. Kara mocks him for being too scared to just go all the way and become her.
• Emerald City: Tip, Mombi's ward, takes "medicine" to suppress an apparent illness. In "Prison of the Abject" Tip escapes Mombi with help from Jack and Dorothy, Tip transforms into a girl overnight. It turns out the magic was to keep his identity safe. Later, he transforms back, relieved after struggling with having a girl's body. In "Lions in Winter" it is revealed that Tip is actually Ozma, the missing princess of the witches. In "The Villain That's Become" Tip takes on female form again to gain control of the witches' sisterhood as Ozma.
• Fantasy Island (1977) has the episode "The Big Switch / The Hooker's Holiday" in which Laura Walters wants her husband George to experience what it is like to be a woman. Rourke sees to it that both of them get a learning experience from the fantasy by swapping their bodies. Part of the time the audience is subjected to Voices Are Mental, with each of them retaining their own voice even in the body of the other. Rourke explains that this is only between the two of them, and their voices will match their bodies to the rest of the world. The audience only hears the voice mismatch when the two are alone together, or with just Rourke or Lawrence.
• Fantasy Island (1998) has the episode "Estrogen", in which Stan Rawlins asks Mr. Rourke to give him a better understanding of women. You can guess what happens. Rourke's assistant Ariel chooses to rename Stan's new form to Brenda.
• Fantasy Island (2021) has the episode "His and Hers / The Heartbreak Hotel" in which a couple, Daphne Madden and Zev Randall, want an ultimate adventure together which they hope will rekindle their romantic life. This fantasy winds up swapping their bodies.
• Briefly suggested in Friends in "The One With Joey's New Brain" for Joey's character of Drake Ramoray in Days of Our Lives; after Drake has been in a coma for five years, a storyline sees "Drake" undergo a brain transplant (the science of which is criticised by Ross) which essentially transplants the character of Jessica Lockhart into Drake Ramoray's body. Joey spends the rest of the episode getting lessons in how to be Jessica from the Cecilia Monroe who portrayed the female Jessica. In subsequent episodes of Friends, this plot twist in the soap opera seems to have been totally forgotten. All dialog suggests that Joey is back to portraying Drake Ramoray with Drake's original brain.
• A TV series Goodbye Charlie (1985) was planned starring Suzanne Sommers and John Davidson, a TV adaptation of the 1964 movie. Only the pilot aired. In this version, the womanizer Charlie died in a hang glider accident rather than being shot by a jealous husband. Charlie is already dead at the beginning of the show, so we never see the male version.
• Go Princess Go: This Chinese web series revolves around a time-travel-induced case of gender bending — the male protagonist time-travels into the body of a crown princess. The series was remade in Korea as Mr. Queen.
• Heroes: Once Sylar acquired the shape shifting ability, we saw him shift to females often enough.
  • In "Into Asylum" Sylar acquires the ability to shape shift, and his first transformation is into a female coroner.
  • In "Turn And Face The Strange", Sylar shape-shifts into the form of Sandra Bennett.
  • In "The Fifth Stage", Sylar shifts to become Nurse Hammer.
• Heroes Reborn: In "Sundae, Bloody Sundae", the Evo named Henry uses his shape-shifting ability to transform into Erica Kravid.
• Kaitou Sentai Lupinranger VS Keisatsu Sentai Patranger: In Episode 11, the Patrangers find themselves forcibly changed into the opposite gender by a Gangler, with Keiichiro and Sakuya changed into women (temporarily renamed Keiko and Sakumi) and Tsukasa into a man (she retains her name, since it's unigender). Thankfully, they manage to return to their proper genders by the episode's end. Rather than replace two actors and one actress with two actresses and one actor, the three transformed team members were dressed and made up as the opposite sex.
• In Lalola, a 150 episode Argentine Telenovela, "Lalo", a successful magazine editor who is also a macho, insensitive ladies man is cursed by a witch hired by a jilted ex-girlfriend and transformed into a beautiful woman. The rest of the series is the protagonist now calling himself "Lola" with the help of his female best friend who knows his/her secret facing the challenges of being a woman in the workplace while also trying to find the witch to reverse the spell. Another complication is one of Facundo, a handsome Nice Guy single father of a young girl falls in love with "Lola". It is later revealed the curse was a "Freaky Friday" Flip with Lola's body originally inhabited by Daniela, a Distaff Counterpart of Lalo who slept with the best friend of her fiance. In the final episode, Lola meets Daniela who is now inhabiting Lalo's body and has enjoyed freely having sex with many partners of both genders whereas before as a woman she was judged. There is one last chance to turn back into Lalo during a Lunar eclipse or the switch is permanent but Lola, who by now is in love with Facundo and realizing he/she is happier as a woman returns to him. This popular series has been licensed and remade in 12 countries, all of which are based on this same trope, though they sometimes vary on details.
• Love and Destiny: In episode 2 Jiuchen, returns to heaven after 50,000 years on ice to find his subordinate Shisan still caring for his home, but he is shocked to see how much Shisan (a female immortal) has changed. Later in the episode we learn Shisan used to have a beard, and that Shisan was a merman, one of Jiuchen's generals. In episode 7 that we learn that merfolk are born genderless and remain so when young. Shisan became male at first. But, then some time after Jiuchen went on ice, Shisan became enamored with Siming (Lord of Dipper of South, in charge of life and the fate of the human realm). So, Shisan took human female form and told him she wanted to get married. Siming did not react well, unable to get past the fact that she used to be male, something hard to forget at that time as she still had the beard. Shisan is portrayed by actress Guangzi Na. The view of her male form in flashback (complete with blue merman skin) appears to be either Guangzi Na or perhaps some extra in heavy makeup.
• Luna Nera: It isn't until "Light" that Ade's little brother Valente transforms into a girl with the first dark moon (solar eclipse) since his birth. Afterwards, Valente is re-baptised as the girl Luxor. And, then Ade learns that immediately after his birth, his mother Antalia changed him into a boy hide his identity from the Benandante (an Inquisition patrol of sorts). He was raised as a boy, and neither Ade or Valente knew the truth.
• Malcolm in the Middle: In "If Boys Were Girls" Lois, tired of her three boys constantly arguing, imagines them as girls instead, in a world where everything's better and they give her unconditional love. Malcolm, Reese, and Dewy become Mallory, Renee, and Daisy. But, as the fantasy progresses, she realizes that girls would be bad in different ways — bitchy and keeping all their secrets from her — and that her boys love her in their own genuine way. (The episode is also funny to watch to see Hal in a fatsuit and Francis, the eldest son, as daughter Frances who mentions husband Pablo (presumably a male version of his wife, Piama).
• Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers: In "Switching Places", it happened to Kimberly and Billy when his machine went haywire, subjecting them to a "Freaky Friday" Flip. (Billy fixed it before the situation at the end of the episode.)
• Misfits: Curtis gains the ability to change genders. Though he retains the ability until his death in season 4, his ability and female form, Melissa, was only shown a handful of times.
• Monkey (based off the Chinese epic Journey to the West) features this on occasion:
  • Buddha, in order to become more "compassionate", appears in his female incarnation in "Monkey Goes Wild Around Heaven", "Monkey Turns Nursemaid", "Pigsy's Ten Thousand Ladies", and "Mothers".
  • In "Monkey Turns Nursemaid", the bodhisattva Kuan-yin the Compassionate (a "goddess") is only seen in her "male incarnation", in pale blue robes and a lacy veil.
  • In "The Most Monstrous Monster", Monkey disguises Sandy as the woman Chun Sha in order to trick the Unicorn King.
  • In "The Country of Nightmares", the priest Tripitaka is a man (played by a woman) who when entering the City of Nightmares is magically transformed into a woman as a disguise. (And is promptly hit on by Pigsy).
• The Gumbies on Monty Python's Flying Circus briefly turn into girl-Gumbies at the end of "The Buzz Aldrin Show" for no particular reason. Their only reaction upon turning back is "OOH! THAT WAS FUN!"
• Mr. Queen: This is a Korean remake of the Chinese series Go Princess Go. Bong-hwan, a man, time-travels into the body of So-yong, a woman.
• NTSF:SD:SUV::: Parodied. In "Exes and Oh-No's!" we learn that Agent Trent Hauser used to be married to an attractive female agent whom he worked with on a mission. She later got a sex change that transformed her into an overweight guy. Cue Unresolved Sexual Tension between the two. S/he wasn't even originally a woman, apparently having once been a black man.
• Out of This World (1987): In "Evie/Stevie", Evie turned herself into "Stevie" to provide a date for her chronically single best friend.
• Quantum Leap: Each episode of the original 1989 series has Sam Beckett's mind "leaping" into some person in the past, sometimes male, sometimes female. Regardless of who Sam has leapt into, the audience sees Scott Bakula in the role, only getting a glimpse of the person's real appearance in a reflection or photograph. Through the series Sam had nine female hosts that made an appearance. There may have been other leaps never shown on screen. In addition, we had an "evil leaper" leap into the opposite sex as well.

• Quantum Leap (2022): This sequel series has Ben Song leaping into men and women of the past much as Sam Beckett did in the original series. Regardless of who Ben has leapt into, the audience sees Raymond Lee in the role, only getting a glimpse of the person's real appearance in a reflection or photograph. So far (the series is ongoing), there have been five female leaps, and one male leap that included a trans character.

• Red Dwarf:
  • In "Balance of Power", the hologram Arnold Rimmer changes his appearance to that of Lister's dead love interest, Kochanski. Even though he is a hologram he is quite able to... touch himself.
  • In season 3, ship's computer Holly redraws himself after an encounter with his Distaff Counterpart, and remains female for a long ways into the series.
• Sabrina the Teenage Witch: In "Sabrina The Teenage Boy", Sabrina, Hilda, and Zelda use a magical potion in the form of a soft drink called "Boy Brew" to become temporarily male, though Zelda only briefly.
• Secret Garden: This is a major plot device of this Korean drama series, in which it turns out that the female lead's dead father engineered a body swap between her and her soulmate, as a part of an elaborate plan to heal her from grief caused by his death, which was caused saving the soulmate's life. This is a complex love story with many different plot elements beyond the Gender Bender switch. They will be switched to the incorrect bodies three times over the 20 episodes, each iteration powerfully shifting the complex dynamics between them and with those around them.
• In Secret Garden Thailand (2019) there is something in the water. This Thai remake of the Korean television series Secret Garden has a CEO and a stuntwoman have their bodies switched after they are given a bottle of water "to go" at a restaurant in Japan. This is a complex love story with plotlines beyond the Gender Bender trope.
• Stargate Atlantis: In "Duet", due to a malfunctioning Wraith capture mechanism, Rodney Mc Kay and Laura Cadman wind up sharing the same body (Rodney's) for a while.
• Throughout Stargate SG-1, Earth's stargate teams must deal with a parasitic species known as the Goa'uld who have possessed human hosts and live as mythological people (mostly gods and goddesses) of Earth's past. The parasitic Goa'uld (and their more benign cousins the Tok'ra) are predominantly males but take either male or female human hosts. The few female "queens" seem to only take female hosts. In "The Curse", the male Egyptian deity Osiris acquires a new female host Sarah Gardner.
• Star Trek: Deep Space Nine:
  • In a minor example, Dax by way of The Nth Doctor. Dax is a Trill symbiote who inhabits humanoid hosts. In the series, Dax first inhabits Jadzia. Later in the series Dax inhabits Ezri. Both of them are female, but Sisko knew her in her previous male Curzon incarnation and calls her "old man" throughout the series.
  • In "Profit and Lace", Quark (for reasons having to do with a Ferengi diplomat) has to have a temporary sex change. Not only does he pop out of Sickbay as a physiologically complete Ferengi woman, his personality has suddenly altered to be completely feminine. Cue the parade of human female stereotype behaviors.
  • In "Tacking into the Wind", during an espionage mission against the Dominion, Odo (a shapeshifter) briefly assumes the form of the Female Changeling.
• In Star Trek: The Next Generation "The Host", a symbiotic Trill diplomat named Odan and Dr. Crusher fall in love. The Trill symbiote's host dies, and the Enterprise must rendezvous with a Trill ship so that Odan can be implanted in a new host. On the Trill ship, it turns out the new host is female. The sex of the host is of no concern to the symbiote, but it makes the romance with Beverly Crusher untenable.
• In the Star Trek: The Original Series "Turnabout Intruder", Dr. Janice Lester tricks Captain Kirk into a device that allows her to exchange bodies with him. She tries to take control of the Enterprise, thinking she is just as capable of command as he is.
• In Teen Angel "Date With An Angel", Steve decides to ask his crush Jessica, a popular cheerleader, on a date. Marty is afraid he'll be rejected, so he impersonates Jessica on the phone and agrees to the date. Rather than admit his deceit, he decides to morph into Jessica's double and go on the date in her place. The episode ends on a rather sweet note, as the date with faux-Jessica gives Steve the confidence to ask out the real one (who, as it turns out, has a great deal in common with him).
• Tomica Hero Rescue Force: "Kyosuke Heartbroken: Who is the Number One Bro?" has the Big Bad, inspired by the sex-changing ability of clownfish, create a virus to turn all men into women, thus robbing humanity of their ability to reproduce, and eventually causing our extinction. She's stopped, naturally, but not before she manages to transform the male heroes and many others.
• The Tonight Show with Jay Leno played with the trope on occasion:
  • A fake ad for something called For Men Only (a parody of men's haircare products) showcases a liquid that turns men into women. There are several male to female morphs in it, including one of Jay himself using the product.
  • Another episode has "Jay in drag" (actually a supermodel dubbed with his voice).
  • On the episode where Pam Anderson is the guest, Jay asks several questions about implants and then asks her "If you could be a man, who would it be?" Pam responds "I could be you!" Jay then exclaims "That's perfect. Why?" Pam's answer is "So I could sit there, torturing you, asking about your implants."
• The short-lived series Turnabout (1979) starred John Schuck and Sharon Gless as a married couple who purchase an Asian statue from a road-side Gypsy. Both confess they are bored with their careers and wish they could trade careers, and the statue does the rest. The series was a late-season entry and lasted all of 7 episodes. In 1981, episodes 1, 2, 5, and 7 were combined and released as the TV movie The Magic Statue.
• Upload: In "The Grey Market", Dylan attempts to update his avatar to his chronological age. The dead people are uploaded to the virtual world to look like optimized versions of what they did alive, and as he died at age eight he's stuck there despite being chronologically eighteen. Dylan has a black market "puberty hack" installed. It works, but because he didn't think to check what sex the patch was designed for it also turns him into a young woman. It's eventually reversed through emergency coding, but it leaves him with a renewed appreciation for women's issues over objectification... especially in the wake of strolling around topless before catching on to the change.
• Vice Versa: Due to a lab accident, the main character Thomas turns into his female self Emmanuelle (then Julia, in season two) whenever he hits his elbow.
• Weird Science:
  • At the end of the pilot episode "She's Alive", after Wyatt (the cautious one) tells Lisa (hot computer-created genie) that he's happy and she disappears, Gary (slacker) is ticked and states he'd only be happy if Wyatt was a killer babe. At that point, Wyatt is turned into a hot blonde.
  • In the episode "Feminine Mistake", Wyatt and Gary want to understand women better, but aren't satisfied with Lisa's help. So, of course, Lisa makes them look like girls. "Wynona" and "Garyette" get hit on by everyone including Wyatt's brother Chett. Played for Laughs as Wyatt and Gary see themselves as girls only in mirrors and the audience sees them as girls when they flirt with their minor friends (or have a hissy fit.) But when boys try to pick them up....
  • In "Quantum Wyatt", Gary is accidentally zapped into a phone sex worker.
  • In the episode "Grumpy Old Genie", an underage online thief steals Lisa's image, replacing it with Abe Vigoda. (Yes, TV's Fish.).
  • In "Bee in There", Wyatt asks Lisa to not only send himself and Gary back in time to 1987 but to leap them into their fathers a la Quantum Leap so they can teach their younger selves how to throw a baseball. Gary, however, leaps into his mother. This leads his dad and Wyatt's mother to believe that their spouses are having an affair.
• Wizards of Waverly Place:
  • "Third Wheel": Justin shape-shifts into Alex to trick Harper into helping him finish his float. The fact that he had no moral hesitation in willingly turning himself into his sister is surprising.
  • "Three Maxes and a Little Lady": Max transforms thanks to a mutant spell cast by Alex and Justin. He remains female for five more episodes until "Back To Max" (season 4 episode 10) when the spell is undone. Overlaps with Fountain of Youth; as "Maxine" is much younger than Max is normally.
• The X-Files: We have the aptly titled "Gender Bender", which revolves around a community of humanoid aliens with the ability to change genders at will. Said aliens secrete unusually high levels of Pheromones, which enables them to easily attract human sex partners; unfortunately, it also has a tendency to make the act itself fatal.

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