SPOILERS
Don't read until you have watched the specials and "Children in Need 2023"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RfLtAdSgWPQ
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So. I am having problems. Not the same as the problems other people are having, but related.
It does feel like Doctor Who is being dragged into the culture wars.
I need to clarify something right off the bat: I don't believe there are "two sides" to the ongoing discussions/rants that form the “culture wars”.
* There are people whose eyes, ears and hearts are open to ideas outside the worldviews of the society they inhabit (In my case, the Dominion of Canada, a British Colony, part of the Anglosphere)
* There are people performing "I am a good person" who have chosen what is often called "Woke"
* There are people performing "I am a good person" who have chosen anti-Woke.
* There are people who have actually given some thought to real issues, and actually believe something different. You may not agree with them, but you can at least understand them.
The two groups in the middle are just raging at each other, focused on each other and not any actual systemic or cultural issues. I don't even know if they see systems, only individuals they want to blame.
They are playing a game: They want to be right all the time. They want to "win".
Oh, sounds familiar.
I don't know if Russell T Davies (RTD) and crew see themselves clearly in these episodes.
Are they trying to be ironic? I'm #ActuallyAutistic so I can't tell, but they seem to be being honest in "The Message" they wish to engage in.
Davros was harmed during war, both mentally and physically. It is simply wrong to say "Oh, a villian can't be in a wheelchair”. Davros was born during the Thousand Year War between the Kaleds and the Thals.
Hurt people hurt people (people who have been hurt are more likely to hurt others – witness wars that have gone on for generations – people born in West Asia who have known nothing else).
A good villain should be a fully formed character that might even have war as a reason why they became so completely broken.
Having weapons in your personal transportation device (call it a "wheelchair" if you must differentiate a specific form for some ideological reason) of course makes sense, whether you are a Kaled scientist or work for UNIT.
Instead we get British Propaganda – you see, Davros must be German presenting as only the Germans – so many want to reference “Nazis” rather than Roman Christians and derived denominations in Europe – to push a BINARY narrative that the Germans were(are?) “bad”, but the Anglosphere that rebranded from the British Empire, the largest Empire humanity has endured, and that invented Eugenics, are “good”.
What I didn’t like about the writing of Doctor Who starting in 2018 was that so many of the characters felt like cardboard cutouts. They were simplistically “bad” and “good”, but with no actual motivation or complexity. I was so happy that RTD was returning because I felt he wrote characters well.
And then… well… I’m not sure if my optimism was well placed.
Let's take the “Binary… Binary… Binary….” scene.
I have always had a problem with the notion that gender or sexual orientation is binary, or that this is tied to reproductive organs. This is about ways people think, and assumptions imposed on people by a specific culture and that culture’s “gender norms”. This is something that isn’t visible to an outsider unless we speak about it, but I have never felt I fit in exactly with any of these narrow boxes.
I don’t think of gender and sexual orientation as a linear thing between “feminine” and “masculine”, but more like a spectrum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_spectrum .
Think of “feminine” and “masculine” as the amplitude, and specific traits or situations as being frequencies, and you get how complex a real fully formed and honest human can be.
And then we get some nonsense about how a “male presenting” entity can’t understand something because of external presentation. They took what could have been an amazing moment (non-binary, non-binary, and the DoctorDonna) and turned it into culture war "woke" nonsense.
This is where Doctor Who being “British” is getting annoying. So much British cultural propaganda seems to be embedded into the stories.
Maybe it is just a sign of the times, sorta like how “Twice Upon A Time” played with how the earlier doctors were more obviously misogynist.
The Doctor is an alien and was not socialized in Britain, any British Christian colony, or any part of the Anglosphere. So they will not have been socialized as an Anglosphere Christian Male. They will not have the limitations which British worldviews impose on societies which cause the problems which Anglosphere gender roles will have tried to impose.
To say that The Doctor has lived far longer than British Worldviews have existed would be an understatement, and the notion that The Doctor could be impacted by the few moments in time that the British and their culture have existed is laughable.
The “male presenting” part reminded me of a line from the TV series “Crashing Eid”. where characters are told that they eat for themselves, but they dress for others.
How someone “presents” does not at all limit or determine how someone thinks – it is how they present to others and what that other person does with what they see.
But, in the culture wars, real life is simplified into sound bytes that can be tossed at each other in rage. No nuance, nothing real – just cardboard characters with cardboard ideas.
Noise, Noise, Noise…. Driving everyone mad with The Giggle.
RTD and crew were clearly not wearing their Zeedex when they wrote specific aspects of the scripts for Children in Need and 60th anniversary Specials.
I liked Doctor Who when the walls were made of cardboard, but I’m having problems when the characters are cardboard.
/end of (this) rant
@russellmcormond
Recycling RTD, who turned the TARDIS into a snogbox, and a previous Doctor certainly hasn't made me any more of his fan than I was before.
Wake me up when Moffat gets his turn at getting recycled.
Hey, at least we all seem to forget the time the Doctor was half human 🤣
Are we talking about Rose Tyler? Did you also find it kinda creapy when an entity who is easily over 4000 years old (BigFinnish is cannon for me) being a little oddly affectionate with a 19 year old?
I know I get in trouble any time I bring that up.
On the other hand, big fan of the River Song character and that more complex relationship.
@russellmcormond
Oooo, you're speaking my language!
The Doctor's affections were always a cross-species mismatch, so perhaps one might equate his affections toward a 19 year old to any one of us having affections for a puppy.
But this hits on my big beef with Davies--each and every companion he started pairing the Doctor with always resulted in the poor lady getting smitten. Sure Donna was an exception, but just.
"to any one of us having affections for a puppy."
I loved when The Master (Missy
-- my favorite incarnation! I got to meet Michelle Gomez once) actually said that to Clara!
https://youtu.be/jE26WjP6HBk?si=CRr6f1KYHPMpZdRl&t=159
Other beings falling in love with The Doctor I get -- Captain Jack and Martha Jones had that chat.
I know I would be smitten, regardless of what face they were wearing.
But The Doctor is the *adult* in the room, and thus their reciprocation was what I found icky.
@russellmcormond
Another scripted remark is well worth noting, though--
"But you look so human!"
"Well, you look so timelord!"
There's more to be said about this interspecies relationships situation regarding Moffat, and that would be the marriage of a silurean and a human, and there was something there which wasn't an owner of a puppy.
It does speak to the rarity among the human species in the form of one person who isn't simply clever enough to understand an advanced alien partner but also being that much of a non-bigot...who is capable of dealing with members of her own species who, by and large, are bigots.
Moffat was also far-sighted to the point of portraying situations with automated systems that we now call "AI", so if ever Doctor Who could do with a writer addressing humanity's advancements as a species, it's now, and the proper man for that job is Moffat.
The only time Davies addressed the matter was with "Empty Child". Took a pass on such opportunities with the Cybermen & such.
At this point I thought I'd said the entirety of what I thought needed to be said about Moffat, but it was just now brought to my attention that the aforementioned Davies exception regarding AI-like issues, "The Empty Child", was in fact written by Moffat while he was working under Davies.
It stood out as being not typical of Davies and now I found out why--it is indeed the level of quality one can expect of Moffat, the same mind that came up with the Teselecta et al.
Moffat certainly had a healthier concept of non-binary genders than, apparently, Davies has but keep in mind who his bosses are--the Tories who are in power and necessarily choose to wank with the BBC, making Davies look worse than he would otherwise but for Tory demands.
Maybe. Davies wasn't so hot on his first debut, in my view.
Moffat, on the other hand, was all that and several servings of chips.