So well, this current series. Some thoughts

[Gingerbread Demon]

Well I finally finished series one. On the whole it was good but there were one or two episodes I really wouldn't want to watch again.

I still feel a bit iffy about Space Babies. It's not a bad episode but neither did I find it a good one either. This is all just my opinion so don't jump on me please.

73 yards on the other hand, I just couldn't warm up to that one. I just didn't enjoy it at all.

Dot and Bubble was good if not at all subtle.

I really did like the two part finale and that one had me on the edge of my seat.

Whatever happened to the Osgoods from the previous series? I thought they were a part of UNIT?

Also since when does UNIT their version of Stark Tower? That's the very first thing I thought of the last time they had this in the show.

I read online that Ruby has special powers and can make snow fall. I thought this would be something neat like something she could do at will.

Turns out I was wrong and it seems to be situation related or if she's in some kind of peril.

Well that's all I have to say for now.

Overall I'd give the series a 7/10

 

[JD]

Osgood seems to have left since the last time we saw UNIT. I think most of this UNIT team is sticking around at least for their spin-off The War Between The Last & The Sea.

 

[jaime]

Osgood was overqualified for this version of UNIT.

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

Osgood seems to have left since the last time we saw UNIT. I think most of this UNIT team is sticking around at least for their spin-off The War Between The Last & The Sea.

Land & The Sea

Osgood was overqualified for this version of UNIT.

Oh by miles

 

[JD]

Oops yeah, Land not Last.

 

[Nerys Myk]

Surf and Turf

 

[bdub76]

If you liked Rogue, read the book. It fills in a lot.

Overall, my favorites of this season are: Boom and Rogue. Dot and Bubble is my third favorite. I didn't much care for the Ruby storyline.

I heard the overall fan favorite is 73 Yards. While I liked how it opened, I didn't much care for most of it. But I did hear that the crew did check to see if at 73 yards faces become hard to see, and it turned out to be true.

I am liking this Doctor more than Jodie.

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

If you liked Rogue, read the book. It fills in a lot.

Overall, my favorites of this season are: Boom and Rogue. Dot and Bubble is my third favorite. I didn't much care for the Ruby storyline.

I heard the overall fan favorite is 73 Yards. While I liked how it opened, I didn't much care for most of it. But I did hear that the crew did check to see if at 73 yards faces become hard to see, and it turned out to be true.

I am liking this Doctor more than Jodie.

Honestly I didn't care at all for 73 yards.... Dot And Bubble was as close to a Black Mirror as Dr. Who has ever got...... Such a frustrating ending and episode but also brilliant. Boom also I felt a bit meh about. In the end I changed my mind about the one with the babies after a rewatch and did not mind it so much. Essentially making the spaceship fart saved everyone.

Ruby has nice legs

 

[diankra]

Honestly I didn't care at all for 73 yards.... Dot And Bubble was as close to a Black Mirror as Dr. Who has ever got...... Such a frustrating ending and episode but also brilliant. Boom also I felt a bit meh about. In the end I changed my mind about the one with the babies after a rewatch and did not mind it so much. Essentially making the spaceship fart saved everyone.

Ruby has nice legs

The problem I have with Dot and Bubble is how it messes up the general 'Act as if you own the place' that gets over the Doctor (or companion) having dark skin. If it's important in one episode, why not others?

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

The problem I have with Dot and Bubble is how it messes up the general 'Act as if you own the place' that gets over the Doctor (or companion) having dark skin. If it's important in one episode, why not others?

I honestly don't know...... A fan theory said the racist time traveller in Rosa was from these people

 

[jaime]

The problem I have with Dot and Bubble is how it messes up the general 'Act as if you own the place' that gets over the Doctor (or companion) having dark skin. If it's important in one episode, why not others?

It also makes skin-colour based racism a universal constant in Who, which is something that didn’t occur before. Instead of being (much like in Trek) something that humans moved past in the future, it instead shows a much darker and unpleasant thing. It moves any discussion or use of prejudice in a story from SF allegory (as with the Daleks, pure in their blobbiness) into the direct and real… this strips away some of the inherent escapism in Who for a start. It has all sorts of ripple effects to how even past stories are viewed. Was Toberman an outright slave *because of his race* in Tomb? Did the Doctor stick perception filters over Ryan so Shelley and Byron wouldn’t notice? What about Sil’s carriers on Varos? (For some silly hyperbolic examples)

Which is not to say humans prejudices shouldn’t or can’t be addressed — Who has done that for *years* as part of its mix, particularly in the McCoy era. (Remembrance, Ghost Light, Battlefield) But you change the show when you make the subtext text, or you move it too much into ‘real’ drama.

It’s like how Who never touched WW2 — partially because it was too soon when the show began, but also because it pokes a hole in suspension of disbelief. Why didn’t the Doctor bring down the Nazi’s? Stalin? Mao? Genghis Khan? Particularly once the show stops doing pure historicals, the character is able to be more the ‘hero’ and fantastical hero narratives don’t fit in the real world. You can dance up to that line, depending on the tone of a given show, but Who can never really go there. (Hence ‘Let’s Kill Hitler’ lampooning the very idea, just to remind viewers how that works)


That’s quite aside from the fact that (a) it’s being written by well-heeled middle class white man (which doesn’t necessarily mean he shouldn’t or can’t understand or write about racism, but is factor here I think) RTD, who I strongly suspect doesn’t quite understand how racial prejudice works in the real world, beyond some pamphlets he read somewhere and (b) the narrative and dialogue repeatedly *lies* in order for him as to deliver a *gotcha* that is the sole reason for the episode to exist, and to put him explicitly in a position of judgement over the viewer. To the point he put his little video out.

There is more power in Ace’s reaction to ‘No coloureds’ (remembrance) or her line about ‘white kids’ fire bombing Manisha (Ghost Light) or ‘slitty eyed’ and self realisation before hugging Shou Ying (Battlefield) *and* more realism than in the clumsily crafted insult of Dot and Bubble.

 

[Starkers]

I think it's important to realise how despite being a 'well heeled middle class white man' RTD is a middle aged white man who understands the concept of prejudice more than the majority of middle aged white men ever could. You just have to watch "It's a sin" to see that.

And Dr Who never touched WW2? Never? Are you sure?

But we get it, you hate the current version of Dr Who and nothing it does is right.

 

[Starkers]

The problem I have with Dot and Bubble is how it messes up the general 'Act as if you own the place' that gets over the Doctor (or companion) having dark skin. If it's important in one episode, why not others?

It's a very specific example though. This is a society completely isolated from any people of colour, from the very concept. You could argue they live inside a bubble but I don't think they do, because you can see out of a bubble. Plus this isn't the Doctor swanning in and taking charge, he's just a face on a screen for most of the episode.

 

[matthunter]

It's also not the first time the "act like you own the place" idea was broken - it worked for Martha, but Bill got stuck with a racist attack in one of her early eps, and of course there's Rosa... and you might argue that whole episode wouldn't have worked without addressing racism, but that same argument could be made for Dot and Bubble.

 

[Starkers]

It worked for Martha in The Shakespeare Code but not Human Nature/Family of Blood

 

[jaime]

I think it's important to realise how despite being a 'well heeled middle class white man' RTD is a middle aged white man who understands the concept of prejudice more than the majority of middle aged white men ever could. You just have to watch "It's a sin" to see that.

And Dr Who never touched WW2? Never? Are you sure?

But we get it, you hate the current version of Dr Who and nothing it does is right.

Until the curse of Fenric, it avoided it for the reasons I stated. I should have specified in the classic era — NuWho was further removed, and *even then* it was in ways that didn’t deal directly with the war. It’s one of the reasons why Spymaster pt2 was such a mess.

RTD understands a form of prejudice (only too well of course) but not everything works the same way. It’s very clear from his writing in Dot & Bubble tbh. He either doesn’t quite get it, or he gets it and wouldn’t let that get in the way of the gotcha moment he wanted — which means he doesn’t really understand it after all. His writing has been very poor. Starbeast was a total fuck up in that regard too. (Consider: juxtaposing a ‘looks like a thing, isn’t a thing’ character and story against whatever that hamfisted trans storyline was, then also how in one scene the Doctor is classified as non-binary or both, until they need him to just be a silly male-identifier the next. Utterly poor. Oh — and the trans character isn’t trans as a human thing, no, it’s because Time Lord magic juju. Offensive.) He seems to have his worldview, a few pamphlets, and no real attempt at extending his thinking. But he’s old and living in great comfort. It’s to be expected.

Do I hate the current version? Hate is something I reserve for much bigger things. There are certainly elements and moments I do hate. Little things like sending two West Asian characters to concentration camps for example. Letting children die under ice, clumsily covered in dialogue. Other bits here and there. The old show even in its more offensive moments never managed anything quite so nasty.

I just use educated critique for a show I loved from a very early age and have been paying attention to to a greater or lesser extent at times for forty plus years.

 

[The Wormhole]

Dot and Bubble was just an attempt at subverting expectations. Everyone has for years wondered if there were a black Doctor, how would they do episodes set in the racist past? Well, in the first season with a black Doctor, he doesn't face racism in the past but instead in the future.

 

[jaime]

Dot and Bubble was just an attempt at subverting expectations. Everyone has for years wondered if there were a black Doctor, how would they do episodes set in the racist past? Well, in the first season with a black Doctor, he doesn't face racism in the past but instead in the future.

And did anyone think of the ramifications of that? Or how you get your first black doctor, destined to be a role model, and within a few scant episodes — no fucker listens to him because he’s a black man. They listened when he was a blonde Yorkshire woman, and even when he was a short gurning Scotsman, but suddenly a whole two-world civilisation of possibly-humans won’t even deign to have him as essentially a mini-cab driver when it will save their lives.
Not because they are idiots, or class obsessed, or think they know better — but simply because their futuristic tech-we-only-dream of civilisation are racist, and the Doctor is black.
Not going to mention the alleged micro aggressions that fail as a ‘subvert expectations’ thing, because historically speaking human colonists being unpleasant in a Who story is hardly new.

It didn’t work on a variety of levels, aside from the rather overt ‘living in a technological bubble’ allegory, which was dropped for the sake of the ‘twist at the end’.

And they should have the courage of their convictions — deal with humanities racist past, if you’re gonna go that route. Except Who has been on twenty years of ignoring that for the most part in historically set stories. The odd token line, and Rosa. That’s it.

They want to subvert expectations? Land the Doctor in Zimbabwe or bits of SA and defend some third or fourth gen non-racist white farmer. That would subvert expectations into the dust. Won’t happen though. (And frankly, is again a bit too real world to really be appropriate for a Who story.)

You don’t even have to address the race/ethnicity/position on the Dulux Colour Chart of the Doctor frankly. They avoided doing it with the Master to the point of handing him to the Nazis. (Admittedly, he may have got away with it… not everyone in India and surrounding countries was on the right side of that bit of history.) It has never mattered before, because that’s the reality in the escapist (but relevant and socially aware) fiction that Who is.

(Edit to say: I never wondered if they would, or felt that they should, address the doctors race. And I say that as someone who has always been very pro a black Doctor since… well, forever probably.)

 

[VDCNI]

There are no ramifications because this is one societies reaction.

There's not a shred of evidence that this will happen elsewhere.

It's complaining for the sake of complaining.

 

[jaime]

There are no ramifications because this is one societies reaction.

There's not a shred of evidence that this will happen elsewhere.

It's complaining for the sake of complaining.

Well, I find it disheartening that in the future racists will have dedicated colony worlds. Same problem with the villain in Rosa really. But I didn’t sit through that. (I was on a Who break at that point)

Frankly, I hope Big Finish do a box set where it turns out it was seven and Ace that unleashed the slug things because they were a planet of racists. At least that’s in keeping with some Who…