Bicyclops posted:

It looks like Mel's quest to get the Doctor to go on a carrot juice diet isn't over. I hope Chibnall is saving enough of these kinds of letters than he can wallpaper his office with them at some point.

The_Doctor posted:

The trouble there, is that PETA are godawful people.

Wheat Loaf posted:

Hypothetical:

Suppose a woman had been cast as the Doctor in, say, the 1970s or 1980s. Realistically (i.e. not unattainable Hollywood movie stars), who would have been a really good casting choice?

Diana Rigg is an obvious choice, I suppose. But I have a notion of Anna Carteret as well.

2house2fly posted:

One of them had a go at me once for fishing for compliments

Bicyclops posted:

It looks like Mel's quest to get the Doctor to go on a carrot juice diet isn't over. I hope Chibnall is saving enough of these kinds of letters than he can wallpaper his office with them at some point.

Cojawfee posted:

The Doctor should be like PETA and show her love for all forms of life by euthanizing 400 dogs at the end of the season and dump them in a dumpster.

Bicyclops posted:

Joe Lidster: Hm... Intriguing idea...

CommonShore posted:

The problem I have with the aviatrix costume is that it's a feminized version of a masculine style, a bit of a sex symbol (leather ), and my not at all influential judgement tells me that's the wrong way to go on this (i.e. it suggests too much that 13 is just a crossplay version of a male character).

CommonShore posted:

It's still a fun idea for a costume, but this is why we need to keep English majors around

docbeard posted:

And every single one of those dogs was a companion transformed into girl-dog hybrids (yes, even the men), in a very special collaboration with Philip Martin.

Bicyclops posted:

Oh man, that is fantastic news, if only because it means somebody is looking into making some of the CD-only ones available digitally (I actually had to buy the disc for Her Final Flight). I'm sure it's kind of a labyrinth for them to even figure out who to ask if they're allowed to. Glad to see they're making an effort.

CommonShore posted:

Ok! I'll throw some of the ideas I had out there, too!

Earlier, I said "like Susan," but that was just really a wider point of reference. My first thought was that they were going to give her something feminine but not prissy or sexy.

The Audrey Hepburn casual look a) evokes the early series via Susan, b) is feminine but not erotic, c) is a reasonably practical style for an adventurer. If some iconic bit were added to it a la Tom's Scarf I think it would be a great costume with lots of room for minor variations between episodes and seasons.

corn in the bible posted:

Unfortunately the inevitable death threats a lady Dr who will receive will cut her tenure short

Wheat Loaf posted:

BBC publicity still circa 1979 featuring the Fifth Doctor and her companion, Turlough:

Joanna Lumley on the set of Sapphire & Steel posted:

"For gently caress's sake, I can't do this. I don't understand it. I really don't loving understand it."

corn in the bible posted:

Unfortunately the inevitable death threats a lady Dr who will receive will cut her tenure short

Astroman posted:

I do agree that racism can happen unintentionally. I don't believe it happened here though. Give me an example of a time when a black person was portrayed in a negative light, as a villain or flawed character where you DIDN'T think it was racist (if you can)--and I'll show you how somebody, somewhere could argue it's racist.

pgroce posted:

It is.


It's actually really simple to fight: Put more minorities in media in absolute terms, and in the same variety of roles we put non-minorities.

Simple, but hard. Hard, but not impossible. And harder than it should be because of all the people at all levels throwing their hands up and saying "Well, we can't just do THAT" when, yes, actually, if we just made it a priority we could.


Yes. Because the pervasive omission of their experiences in our media effects both the majority of places where they are conspicuously absent and the few places they are represented, because absolutely every aspect of the representation is a large part of their total representation in media, and because people tend to take things from the environment that reinforce their worldview and discount things that don't, so the troublesome, stereotype-reinforcing parts are asymmetrically more troublesome than the uplifting, assumption-breaking parts are redemptive.


Wrong. You make that world better with more representation, as I outlined above. But you don't stop pointing out the problem, because then people will assume it doesn't exist, because that's what they want to be true anyway.

We aren't advocating censorship, we're pointing out problems with the already-heavily-censored status quo and advocating relief of that censorship.

Forget he Doctor and companions, we need a black female showrunner and a show where the Doctor can meet Marsha P. Johnson and take Harriet Tubman out to fight Daleks and go back to Churchill and call him out for being a murderous colonialist rear end in a top hat. If that offends you, you're not being offended by censorship, you're being offended by the prospect of seeing speech that you find off-putting, which is kind of the opposite of being offended by censorship.

And if that doesn't offend you, why does a little "BTW, that one portrayal had some racist bits to it" criticism put you in vigorous opposition for several pages?

Gaz-L posted:

This is a circular argument, dude. You're basically saying because opinions on this vary, that no opinions can be valid. And you've been VERY firm on the 'it's not racist if they didn't mean to be' train which is also a non-starter unless you actually believe, say, the Disney people went into Song Of The South thinking "Gosh, we should totally portray those n*****s in a foolish, subservient light to put them in their place!". Very few people THINK they're wrong or set out to hurt others. And as Bicyclops said, no-one is trying to say that one mistake makes Doctor Who into A Bad Show That Is Terrible And Racist Forever! Criticism of this type is not much different than saying the set design was poor or the editing disjointed, while still enjoying the other parts of an episode. Like, I've been watching Futurama again recently and good god is there some really iffy transphobic comedy in there that I found funny 15 years ago, but cringe at now, because I've matured and learned, and even actually know some trans people, so the tastelessness and meanness of those jokes now comes off as offensive. That does not mean that every other joke or episode of the series is worthless, just that you have to go "Yeah, that was pretty bad, if they did it now, maybe do something better", just like you would if you look at anything that has flaws.

2house2fly posted:

Naismith thinks he can control the Master, making him stupid. A more intelligent man might have taken more precautions, or had the good sense to just shoot the Master on sight or avoid him altogether. Black people having statistically lower IQs than other races is a right wing talking point I've heard a million times.

Astroman posted:

No, what I'm saying is it's possible to find offense or racism anywhere if you try hard enough, and not every one of those may be actually racist to any reasonable white person.

Murderion posted:

Not being as smart as a Time Lord supergenius is kind of a gimme for Doctor Who, he was certainly intelligent enough to see potential in the alien sciencemajig and get it mostly functional (with a full scientific team, but hey, he's business clever not science clever).

Having him shunted off to the side with zero ceremony in favour of a pair of white villains is bad, though.

Narsham posted:

People can argue anything about anything. What's at stake here isn't "I think that is/isn't racist" but rather the framework within which that argument is made. A racist depiction of, say, three black brothers doesn't rely simply on someone being offended. It involves the ways in which the depiction reinforces pre-existing racial stereotypes about black men. In this instance, it's Steptoe and Son IN SPACE!

Vinylshadow posted:

Pesky Splinter posted:

My all-time favourite Sapphire & Steel quote;

Facebook Aunt posted:

I doubt that anyone disagrees that institutional racism and unintentional racism exist. We're all Woke as hell. The disagreement is that we don't see it in Journey to the Center of the Tardis. "Working class salvage crew in space" is in no way a black stereotype, much less a negative stereotype. Some folks reframe it as "carjackers in space" but there is no carjacking of any kind so that's not even a stretch, it's a flat out fabrication. They let their sibling rivalry get out of hand in a big way, but that also isn't a black stereotype.

These men aren't criminals. They are scrappers. Recyclers. That is objectively a good and valuable contribution to society. They are rough working class fellows, but there is nothing wrong with that. Yeah, when they find themselves in a bizarre situation their behavior is not exemplary, but that's true of like half the one off characters of in the show.

There is nothing in the episode to be indignant about. There is no racism, no injustice here.

Jerusalem posted:

David Tennant rules

bobkatt013 posted:

What does he know about Doctor Who?

Astroman posted:

This is what I've been trying to say all along, but far less concisely.

Astroman posted:

No, what I'm saying is it's possible to find offense or racism anywhere if you try hard enough, and not every one of those may be actually racist to any reasonable person.