Have to disagree totally on Dora who is the biggest wet of all Dickens wet heroines: Lizzie Hexam (Our Mutual Friend) barf, Dora, barf, Esther (Bleak House) barf,Little Dorrit for f***sake, Little Nell ditto....

Bella Wilfer is an honourable exception, being lots of fun when she is mercenary and heartless, but then she turns noble and good and joins the barf fest along with the rest.

Estelle is not barf making but seriously weird, so she doesn't exactly make the grade as strong feisty heroine, but Dickens didn't really Do That...

I do love him though, for the Hero as Adventurer stuff, all the wonderful characterisation, for his storytelling and for his brilliant and often profound social conscience. I appreciate Bleak House isn't one of your favourites, but Dead, your Lords Ladies and Gentleman and dying thus around us every day - which comes at the end of a rant following the death of Joe the street sweeper sends shivers up my spine.

They should have him in Dr Who... Oh they already have...

Don't remember the divine Joanna in this at all...

But I'm not using "femme fatale" in the noir sense of "feisty (anti-)heroine", but as a plot element, a literal "fatal woman" – a woman who is fatal to the hero's forward progress on his journey. And Dora's pretty fatal - if it weren't for her dying, Copperfield would have stuck with her for the rest of his life, never ending up with his soulmate, Agnes. It wouldn't have been a bad life, just not the best life.

As you say, there aren't really any feisty heroines in Dickens. Unless you count Belle in A Christmas Carol, who got out and built her own life once Scrooge started embracing the dark side.

For Who references, it's interesting to see Harry Lloyd (Will Scarlet in Robin Hood and Baines in Who's Family of Blood/Human Nature) in his debut here as young Steerforth.