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Which season of Doctor Who should get a Blu-ray set next? This poll is closed. |
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| One of the black-and-white seasons |
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16 | 29.63% |
| Season 7 |
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7 | 12.96% |
| Season 11 |
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1 | 1.85% |
| Season 13 |
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0 | 0% |
| Season 15 |
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2 | 3.70% |
| The Key to Time |
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21 | 38.89% |
| Season 21 |
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0 | 0% |
| Season 25 |
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7 | 12.96% |
| Total: | 54 votes | ||
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DoctorWhat posted:The doctor doesn't want to travel with soldiers because the doctor wants companions who are creative, self-directed, and will challenge him. The entire purpose of military training is to take thinking feeling human beings and turn them into reliable executors of amoral orders. 1. Tell me you've never served in the military, without telling me you've never served in the military. 2. I see someone never watched the Pertwee years.
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Jan 1, 2024 15:32
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| # ? Apr 28, 2024 08:15 |
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I've watched a lot of Pertwee and the Doctor is constantly in conflict with the militarism of UNIT. His very second story ends in tragedy because the Brigadier murders the Silurians because the Brig's military inclinations and the Doctor's desire for understanding are in fundamental conflict. The fact that later UNIT stories become so enamoured with charming characters in a military context that they dispense with this fundamental conflict in favor of a workplace family dynamic doesn't mean that conflict was never meaningful. I've been paying too much attention for too long to be duped by narratives of brilliant, brave, self-sacrificing soldiers. If the purpose of military organizations was to make people brave, smart, and selfless for social benefit, that money would be spent on public works projects instead of bullets and bombs. And yes, I'm familiar with the Army Corps of Engineers and other military funding of public works. But we can all recognize that operations like engineering and coast guard work are entirely out scaled by imperially-motivated police action and regime change operations that alchemize chaos and death in the global south into economic benefits for the MIC. DoctorWhat fucked around with this message at 16:02 on Jan 1, 2024 |
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Jan 1, 2024 16:00
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DoctorWhat posted:I've watched a lot of Pertwee and the Doctor is constantly in conflict with the militarism of UNIT. His very second story ends in tragedy because the Brigadier murders the Silurians because the Brig's military inclinations and the Doctor's desire for understanding are in fundamental conflict. Nobody said anything about "narratives of brilliant, brave, self-sacrificing soldiers". That's just as much a fiction as your apparent belief that the military turns people into mindless drones with no sense of ethics or morals.
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Jan 1, 2024 16:03
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Sydney Bottocks posted:Nobody said anything about "narratives of brilliant, brave, self-sacrificing soldiers". That's just as much a fiction as your apparent belief that the military turns people into mindless drones with no sense of ethics or morals. It's not so much that it does as it's intended to do so.
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Jan 1, 2024 16:09
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I said that the purpose of military training is to produce a class of soldiers who act directly according to amoral orders. What other purpose could there be in such rigorous training and adherence to hierarchy than to create a soldier who will act before they think? Whether this strategy reliably dehumanizes people to the total degree intended is another question. I'm sure there are people in this thread who are basically functional human beings despite previous military service. But sublimating yourself to a hierarchical structure of state violence should actually disqualify you from the TARDIS crew, because the US and UK militaries aren't fighting Daleks and neither was Danny. Danny signed up for a job where he and his colleagues, just like their real life counterparts, were killing human children for the benefit of empire and oil companies.
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Jan 1, 2024 16:12
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ikanreed posted:It's not so much that it does as it's intended to do so. Having actually gone through military basic training, I can assure you that it isn't. A mindless drone that can't reason or function for themselves without someone giving them orders is useless to a military unit, because they can't make quick decisions under stressful circumstances. DoctorWhat posted:I said that the purpose of military training is to produce a class of soldiers who act directly according to amoral orders. What other purpose could there be in such rigorous training and adherence to hierarchy than to create a soldier who will act before they think? Whether this strategy reliably dehumanizes people to the total degree intended is another question. See my response above. You're making the fundamental mistake that the military just wants the human equivalent of Cybermen. It does not. quote:I'm sure there are people in this thread who are basically functional human beings despite previous military service. Gosh, thanks.  Get down from your loving ivory tower.quote:But sublimating yourself to a hierarchical structure of state violence should actually disqualify you from the TARDIS crew, because the US and UK militaries aren't fighting Daleks and neither was Danny. Danny signed up for a job where he and his colleagues, just like their real life counterparts, were killing human children for the benefit of empire and oil companies. Jesus, you're so far up your own rear end, I'm surprised you're able to watch the show. Done engaging with you any further.
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Jan 1, 2024 16:26
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drat this sure is some fine Doctor Who discussion
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Jan 1, 2024 16:29
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CommonShore posted:drat this sure is some fine Doctor Who discussion You're right and I apologize for my part in the derail.
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Jan 1, 2024 16:38
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In no way did this constitute a derail. Doctor Who is a science fiction and fantasy television program that frequently explores and addresses sociopolitical themes including militarization, imperialism and resource extraction. Using real world analogs and examples to engage with these fictional uses of political ideas and themes is appropriate.
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Jan 1, 2024 16:43
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Dehumanizing people because they were in the military once isn't appropriate or okay though
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Jan 1, 2024 17:45
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DoctorWhat posted:In no way did this constitute a derail. Doctor Who is a science fiction and fantasy television program that frequently explores and addresses sociopolitical themes including militarization, imperialism and resource extraction. Using real world analogs and examples to engage with these fictional uses of political ideas and themes is appropriate. It had broken away from Doctor Who though. Imo discuss those things while keeping it clearly anchored in the show and how those ideas relate to it.
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Jan 1, 2024 18:05
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I'm very upset that Dr who doesn't 100% reflect my opinions on what people don't count as people.
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Jan 1, 2024 18:08
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I must've missed the part during Pertwee's era where he told the Brigadier et al. that they weren't fit to travel in the TARDIS because they were all just pawns of the military-industrial complex. Maybe I'll do a rewatch, just to be sure 
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Jan 1, 2024 18:28
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Oh gently caress, is that why Moffat threw cyber Brig in at the end? So we knew the Doctor had realised his anti military stance was silly?
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Jan 1, 2024 18:30
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In all seriousness, while the Doctor (at least, the Third Doctor) decried what he saw as the military mindset, he did so without having to dehumanize or reduce his friends in UNIT to being just mindless drones in his eyes. He even chewed Jo out over it, when she was poo poo-talking the Brig one time, telling her he was doing his best under very difficult circumstances. The Doctor knew that just as there are idiots and incompetents and blood-thirsty maniacs in the military, so too are there essentially decent people who are just trying to do the right thing, which is what he saw in the Brig, Benton, etc. In other words, just like the real-life actual military.
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Jan 1, 2024 18:41
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Khanstant posted:Dehumanizing people because they were in the military once isn't appropriate or okay though The military aims to dehumanize people. It's very difficult to succeed entirely but that is the institutional goal. Me saying "the military aims to take human beings and change the way they think, in furtherance of imperial benefit" is not me saying "soldiers have forfeited their humanity forever". Separately from this, joining with a police force or military unit is, at least in the UK and US, a conscious choice. It's a decision to say "the improvements to my circumstances caused by joining this organization outweigh the costs that my participation will inflict on others". There are conscientious objectors and police abolitionists all over the world and history, refusing conscription because they refuse to take that bargain. Military volunteers have had enough hagiography.
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Jan 1, 2024 18:58
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Here was me thinking that the Brigadier was one of the most well-liked side characters in all of Doctor Who. I never knew he was a mind-washed imperialist drone.
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Jan 1, 2024 19:01
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DoctorWhat posted:And yes, I'm familiar with the Army Corps of Engineers and other military funding of public works. But we can all recognize that operations like engineering and coast guard work are entirely out scaled by imperially-motivated police action and regime change operations that alchemize chaos and death in the global south into economic benefits for the MIC. I'm not sure why you keep giving American examples (like the Army Corps of Engineers). I'm by no means saying that the British armed forces are clear of all wrongs, but you seem to be continually conflating the practices and institutions in quite different countries. I suppose you would say that they're all part of the imperial core or whatnot, but that appears to be particular to the ideological standpoint you're operating from. Do we actually know where Danny served? I assume it was meant to be Afghanistan or Iraq given that those are the two conflicts that Britain has had soldiers deployed in most recently (if he was going to kill a civilian it would probably be one of those two, though a generation earlier it would be much more likely to be Northern Ireland).
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Jan 1, 2024 19:03
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It's almost as if art produced in the imperial core is weirdly obsessed with redeeming and sympathizing with the agents of imperial violence
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Jan 1, 2024 19:03
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This derail reminds me of when Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS aired and uninformed Americans believed the character of Albert Steptoe was Black.
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Jan 1, 2024 19:05
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lines posted:I'm not sure why you keep giving American examples (like the Army Corps of Engineers). I'm by no means saying that the British armed forces are clear of all wrongs, but you seem to be continually conflating the practices and institutions in quite different countries. I suppose you would say that they're all part of the imperial core or whatnot, but that appears to be particular to the ideological standpoint you're operating from. UK involvement in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were direct extensions of imperial foreign policy. The lives and life experiences of Iraqis and Afghans were judged to be valueless in the face of the oil-lust of the global north. Blair and Bush and the rest were architects of mass death for profit, and the fiction of the victimized, bamboozled soldier is one finger of a larger cultural project to make war permanently ambiguous - complicated and sad and tragic but never a crime, never evil, never a choice made on the premise that some people count LESS, or not at all. Danny Pink signed up for that and through his direct actions a child died. That's the sanitized, redeemable version. The one where you learn a little lesson but the soldier remains now and tragic.
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Jan 1, 2024 19:09
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And while we're on the subject...if the Brig etc. are all just mindless pawns of the MIC, doesn't that make the Doctor even worse than them? He certainly has no problems willingly using UNIT's resources, equipment, and manpower, or throwing his UNIT credentials around whenever it suits him, even after he's left the organization. If the Brig and co. are all just mindless drones brainwashed by the military machine to do nothing but follow orders, what does that make the Doctor, who willingly associates with them and uses them for his own purposes? At least, given that "mindless drone " worldview, they have a (bullshit) excuse. What excuse does the Doctor have? Sydney Bottocks fucked around with this message at 19:14 on Jan 1, 2024 |
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Jan 1, 2024 19:11
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lines posted:Do we actually know where Danny served? I assume it was meant to be Afghanistan or Iraq given that those are the two conflicts that Britain has had soldiers deployed in most recently They said five years service in UK and Afghanistan.
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Jan 1, 2024 19:11
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DoctorWhat posted:UK involvement in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were direct extensions of imperial foreign policy. The lives and life experiences of Iraqis and Afghans were judged to be valueless in the face of the oil-lust of the global north. Blair and Bush and the rest were architects of mass death for profit, and the fiction of the victimized, bamboozled soldier is one finger of a larger cultural project to make war permanently ambiguous - complicated and sad and tragic but never a crime, never evil, never a choice made on the premise that some people count LESS, or not at all. I am obviously not defending the killing of civilians. The whole point of Danny's character, I thought, was to present someone who had done something for which they felt *personal* guilt. So I think you're being somewhat trite in your summary of it - I don't think he is redeemed by the narrative. I'm not going to get into the whys and wherefores and the justification or condemnation of those conflicts, because this isn't the thread for it. I was just asking if we knew specifically where he had served - because Afghanistan and Iraq were quite different conflicts taking place under different conditions, and I don't want to conflate them: but I have a notion that the show might have left it ambiguously "somewhere foreign", which I think is deserving of criticism. Edit: ah no, I see from a follow-up post that they were specific. Fair enough!
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Jan 1, 2024 19:16
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Matthew Modine said that originally, his character was supposed to die at the end of Full Metal Jacket; but he managed to convince Kubrick to let him live, because to Modine that was the true horror of war. Surviving a war, and having to live with the knowledge of the things you did to survive. Steven Moffat is hardly Stanley Kubrick by any measure, and lord knows I'm hardly one of his defenders, but I'm sure that was what he was trying to go for with the character of Danny. He probably handled it in the most ham-fisted way possible, but I'm pretty sure he wasn't going "a kid died, tough luck, huh".
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Jan 1, 2024 19:25
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Sydney Bottocks posted:And while we're on the subject...if the Brig etc. are all just mindless pawns of the MIC, doesn't that make the Doctor even worse than them? He certainly has no problems willingly using UNIT's resources, equipment, and manpower, or throwing his UNIT credentials around whenever it suits him, even after he's left the organization. You said you wouldn't engage with me further and I appreciated that because your form of engagement was to put words in my mouth. The Doctor is written with an extremely complicated relationship with the military industrial complex and with our societal notions of war and soldiers. As I said previously, culture in the Imperial corps is extremely preoccupied with the internal life of the soldier and the cop and spends much less time considering the lives of the people who suffer at their hands. The Brigadier was introduced as a fairly antagonistic figure with multiple serious character flaws into which the Doctor came into conflict. But the charm of Nicholas Courtney as an actor on set chemistry and the predispositions of writers for the series, especially later on once the Brig had become a legacy character and held in reverence, softened the brigadier into an uncontroversial ally representing only the positive qualities of militarism. Culture is preoccupied with the internal life of the soldier. Sydney Bottocks posted:Matthew Modine said that originally, his character was supposed to die at the end of Full Metal Jacket; but he managed to convince Kubrick to let him live, because to Modine that was the true horror of war. Surviving a war, and having to live with the knowledge of the things you did to survive. When did I accuse Moffat of saying "tough luck"? He created a story where a soldier could have a tragic backstory where he murders an innocent non-character, and then demonstrates that same soldier's virtue by reversing the bargain and dying for his victim. This is a manifestation of the same preoccupation. DoctorWhat fucked around with this message at 19:30 on Jan 1, 2024 |
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Jan 1, 2024 19:27
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Sydney Bottocks posted:Matthew Modine said that originally, his character was supposed to die at the end of Full Metal Jacket; but he managed to convince Kubrick to let him live, because to Modine that was the true horror of war. Surviving a war, and having to live with the knowledge of the things you did to survive. And neither did it try to say it was only the fault of his commanders - because actually soldiers do have moral responsibility and if they kill a civilian then that's not alright, that they were following orders isn't a defense, and indeed I think soldiers are trained to question orders that might be illegal. (In this case it seems it was some kind of accident or misjudgement, but while that might change the legal situation I would assume it doesn't change the guilt).
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Jan 1, 2024 19:29
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lines posted:And neither did it try to say it was only the fault of his commanders - because actually soldiers do have moral responsibility and if they kill a civilian then that's not alright, that they were following orders isn't a defense, and indeed I think soldiers are trained to question orders that might be illegal. (In this case it seems it was some kind of accident or misjudgement, but while that might change the legal situation I would assume it doesn't change the guilt). That is correct, when I was in the service we were told during basic training (and at other points during my time in the military) that it was not just a responsibility, but a duty to refuse to obey an unlawful order. As one of our trainers put it, "The Nazis didn't get away with 'I was just following orders', and neither will you." E: and I'm still going to do a Pertwee rewatch, though it's not like I really need an excuse to do one 
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Jan 1, 2024 19:58
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Who really decides what orders are lawful. Come on.
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Jan 1, 2024 19:59
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Sydney Bottocks posted:In all seriousness, while the Doctor (at least, the Third Doctor) decried what he saw as the military mindset, he did so without having to dehumanize or reduce his friends in UNIT to being just mindless drones in his eyes. He even chewed Jo out over it, when she was poo poo-talking the Brig one time, telling her he was doing his best under very difficult circumstances. The Doctor knew that just as there are idiots and incompetents and blood-thirsty maniacs in the military, so too are there essentially decent people who are just trying to do the right thing, which is what he saw in the Brig, Benton, etc. In other words, just like the real-life actual military. Three also has a sizable number of stories where his allies are military and the villains are also military. I can see how someone might not like that because the show is definitely showing militarism in a positive light (government bureaucrats come off worse than UNIT pretty consistently), but it's also frequently nuanced and concerns itself with people. Contrasting some of One's and especially Two's stories where all X are bad (Ice Warriors, say), Three's run of stories sometimes insists that we as an audience treat "monsters" as people, with differing motivations and distinct personalities. It doesn't always hold to that. We get the Silurians and the "Ambassadors" and the Ice Warriors (in Curse of Peladon) on the one hand, but we get the Primoids and the Ogrons, too. And the Sontarans, where the initial joke is "they are actually all exactly the same, but we only ever see one." Three's a bit inconsistent himself, as he can be very acerbic but has a streak of arrogance that seems to include pride at knowing members of the upper class (not to mention Chairman Mao). His attitude toward the Master is also a bit uncomfortable as it implies he's fine with the deaths of lots of Daleks and Autons but a little chummy with a man who casually kills humans and invites those "still unified monsters" to the planet all the time.
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Jan 1, 2024 20:13
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Narsham posted:Three also has a sizable number of stories where his allies are military and the villains are also military. I can see how someone might not like that because the show is definitely showing militarism in a positive light (government bureaucrats come off worse than UNIT pretty consistently), but it's also frequently nuanced and concerns itself with people. Contrasting some of One's and especially Two's stories where all X are bad (Ice Warriors, say), Three's run of stories sometimes insists that we as an audience treat "monsters" as people, with differing motivations and distinct personalities. It doesn't always hold to that. We get the Silurians and the "Ambassadors" and the Ice Warriors (in Curse of Peladon) on the one hand, but we get the Primoids and the Ogrons, too. And the Sontarans, where the initial joke is "they are actually all exactly the same, but we only ever see one." I think it's because the producer of the Pertwee era, Barry Letts, was both a practicing Buddhist and a Royal Navy veteran, who likely felt a duty to show the duality of things. The idea of UNIT as a largely peacekeeping force vs. UNIT (and other military agencies, both fictional and real) being used strictly as instruments of force. The Doctor both rebelling against authority and authoritarian structures, while cozying up to it when it suits him. That sort of thing. That's also evidenced in several stories where the villains aren't presented as just having a black-and-white worldview (though there are certainly more than a few of those during Pertwee's run).
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Jan 1, 2024 20:23
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y'all know what's a good "Doctor Who?" Carnival of Monsters 
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Jan 1, 2024 20:31
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egon_beeblebrox posted:y'all know what's a good "Doctor Who?" Fun fact, I read the novelisation of Frontier in Space long before I saw any Pertwee stories and for a good long while the idea of what a Drashig was and why it terrified Jo so much would really mess with my head. Imagine my glee at finally seeing one.
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Jan 1, 2024 20:41
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https://www.mirror.co.uk/tv/tv-news/doctor-who-spin-start-filming-31522208quote:The first of the new Doctor Who spin-offs will feature the Sea Devils and is due to start filming this spring.
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Jan 1, 2024 20:49
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Fil5000 posted:Fun fact, I read the novelisation of Frontier in Space long before I saw any Pertwee stories and for a good long while the idea of what a Drashig was and why it terrified Jo so much would really mess with my head. Imagine my glee at finally seeing one. Same here, I think I chuckled more at the costumes the humans and aliens were wearing than I did at the Drashig, though.
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Jan 1, 2024 20:49
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Edward Mass posted:This derail reminds me of when Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS aired and uninformed Americans believed the character of Albert Steptoe was Black. ...wait, what?
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Jan 1, 2024 22:28
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Steptoe And Son was a British sitcom about junk merchants that was remade in America as Sanford and Son, which kept the premise but made the main characters black. The main characters in Journey To The Centre Of The Tardis are three black junk merchants who inherited the business from their father. Those seem to be the pieces, though I don't know how they fit together to lead to that outcome
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Jan 1, 2024 23:02
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2house2fly posted:Steptoe And Son was a British sitcom about junk merchants that was remade in America as Sanford and Son, which kept the premise but made the main characters black. The main characters in Journey To The Centre Of The Tardis are three black junk merchants who inherited the business from their father. Those seem to be the pieces, though I don't know how they fit together to lead to that outcome Did they at least have them come out to the strains of Quincy Jones' "The Streetbeater", or have one of them say "You big dummy"?
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Jan 1, 2024 23:05
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Bum bum bwada! Edit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QlkZY-S3LiA
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Jan 1, 2024 23:10
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| # ? Apr 28, 2024 08:15 |
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Sydney Bottocks posted:2. I see someone never watched the Pertwee years.
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Jan 1, 2024 23:27
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