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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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A Pond becomes a River....but.....a River....can become....a Flood... Do it RTD you coward, do it
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Dec 30, 2023 20:33
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| # ¿ May 11, 2024 14:55 |
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DoctorWhat posted:Becoming a police officer is an extremely effective method of upward economic and social mobility as long as you are willing to brutalize people. In the UK at least, being a police officer is not a well paying job that enables an extremely effective method of upward economic and social mobility. It barely falls into the bracket of being an average paying job. I have no idea where you're getting this idea from, but it's not founded in any sort of actual reality. Like any institution, it attracts a wide range of people, many of whom generally want to do good, some who start wanting to good but end up with the sort of deep rooted cynicism that constant contact with the general public will give you, and some who are arseholes who get off on being in one of the few institutions sanctioned to use violence. Again, UK, can't speak to other countries. But since Who is the UK show, I'm assuming that's what your meaning, and the idea that a primary motivation for becoming a police officer here is financial of all things is batshit.
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Jan 1, 2024 14:22
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Sydney Bottocks posted:When I got to the UK in the early 1990s, while I didn't actually watch much TV during my time there (mainly because I was a young American who was more interested in exploring Britain and meeting British people, instead of just watching them on television like I'd done when watching stuff on PBS), there did seem to be a lot less casual racism on most shows at the time. Not saying there wasn't any, but I get the impression that things had started to slowly change during the 1980s and into the 1990s and beyond. A lot of it is that a big percentage of the British Black and Asian community was just a lot newer than, say, Afro-Americans are to the US. A lot of immigration to the UK, particularly the big cities, happened in the immediate post war period with families like the Windrush generation coming over. In the 1960s, this was still all fairly new and a lot of empire-era stereotypes were still kicking around in common culture, but by the 1980s you had a second generation of Black and Brown Brits who'd grown up in the UK, and who were a lot less willing to put up with that poo poo than their parents were. And also, white kids who had grown up with them and could see those supposed traits didn't remotely match reality in any way. There's also the remnants of the British Empire. While the history books would probably mark the end of it at around 1918, there's still fuckers around today who think and act like it's still a thing. And a lot of the horrors of the British Empire was justified at the time by ideas of bringing 'civilisation' to 'more primitive societies', hence turning those societies into racist caricatures. In the 60s, a lot Britain was only really starting to get the memo that it wasn't really a global power anymore, the Suez crisis was only a few years before after all, and TV tended to reflect that. I mean, the background of The Doctor itself is rather unfortunate in a lot of ways - until recently, it was a posh white guy with the title of Lord running around telling 'less advanced' people how to behave. It's all very White Man's Burden.
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Jan 22, 2024 08:56
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RTD at best is a man historically more interested in characters and emotional arcs than tight plot points. I think, in his take on storytelling, having the 14th Doctor Bigenerate and retire was his way of wrapping up all the Timeless Child/Flux stuff. And, hell, he wrote more stuff to show how devastated 14 was than Chibnall ever did for 13. She seemed to care more about her own hidden past than half the universe blowing up, but even then she was giving speeches about how she didn't really give much of a poo poo in the end, which...uh, thanks Chris. Sure glad I sat through 2 seasons of that now!
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Jan 24, 2024 23:45
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That Ncuti fella is just an insanely charismatic fellow, ain't he. The next few years could be utter dreck from a writing standpoint and I suspect he can salvage it with the force of sheer enthusiasm alone.SiKboy posted:I figure one of 3 things; Most likely, quick one off joke as you say. Either the doctor fixes it immediately, or it fixes itself after a minute and the doctor says "Time is largely self correcting, little changes tend to sort themselves out" or similar. Less likely but still not entirely possible it ties into the episodes plot (this time traveling scientist has invented a time machine that damages the very fabric of space and time and exaggerates the butterfly effect until the doctor fixes it). Or, wild swing here, its tied into a plot arc for the season along with "mavity". Doubt she'll be looking like that for longer than an episode (and probably less than 2 minutes) in any case, for budgetary reasons if nothing else. That might not be as wild of a swing as you think. 14 regretted 'invoking a superstition' about salt on the edge of the universe, there's Mavity, Kate burying the Toymakers box in salt because myth is suddenly now true, bigeneration also being a timelord myth that is also now suddenly true, there was a bunch of blink-and-miss-them lines when they were on the goblin ship about 15 trying to understand a whole new set of rules of the universe afterwards and how fate and belief and myth and legend are now a things that really exist in the world, and now a butterfly effect joke and the trailer is literally set to David Bowie's Changes. I think that's evidence to count as a full on theme. The universe is somehow fundamentally different to the universe before 14 did the salt thing and let the Toymaker in.  This SFX shot of London is really annoying me in the most goony pedantic dorky way. Maybe it's because I live about 10 minutes walk away from where she's standing and walk past that point just about every day, but the Thames is not remotely that shape. You can't see either St Pauls or Tower Bridge from there, the river bends almost 90 degrees long before it gets to St Pauls. They'd both be way out of shot to the right from there. And there's about 7 bridges missing between there and Tower Bridge. They just removed the whole of Southwark from existing. Which wouldn't necessarily be the worst thing to happen to Southwark, but still. Maybe that's another 'change'? But I suspect they just wanted to shove famous London stuff into the shot, and in reality she'd be staring at a bunch of big, but relatively forgettable Victorian office blocks housing various government departments from there so whatever. Also, there's a whole bunch of landmarks missing - no London eye, no City skyscrapers, no Isle of Dogs, but given what she's wearing that might not be present day London. What's there would all fit with an alternative 60s-mid90s London - another bit one for a theme of time being constantly rewritten? This post might be the dorkiest 6 paragraphs I've ever written, I'm very proud.
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Mar 23, 2024 22:16
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Jerusalem posted:
Maybe, and there is credit due there for casting the first female Doctor, but writing her as largely passive and constantly doubting herself, combined with the paper-thin characterisation of Yaz and the fact that the only two fairly well realised characters in the whole show are Graham and Dan, is....uh....it's not great! I hate to call it stunt casting, partly because that argument has been used at best disingenuously by the worst kind of shitheads and because it's Jodie loving Whittaker, who is absolutely an accomplished actor who has done some great stuff. But consciously or unconsciously, it does feel a little like she was cast, Chibnall patted himself on the back for it, and then did absolutely zero additional effort to think about and write around his own biases. So you end up with The Doctor being sidelined and the middle aged guys being the one's that get most of the character development. All it needed was for the Doctor to have a boyfriend that she constantly talked about and Chibnall would have completed the badly written woman trifecta. And it's a real shame. Occasionally other writers would sneak in the odd scene where she was the Doctor and we got a glimpse of what could have been.
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Mar 30, 2024 08:43
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Khanstant posted:The Rosa episode bowls over so many important elements even before they decided the plot would involve the fam discriminating against Rosa Parks even elementary school books covered the topic with more depth in a couple paragraphs. I think it's ok for writers from one place and culture to write stories about something that happened in another place and culture. The entire point of fiction is to try and put yourself in someone else's shoes, after all. Although when your dealing with something that is as charged as slavery, racism, the civil rights movement and the impacts that are continued to be felt today, at a minimum, you best be prepared to do your homework and treat the topic with the care it deserves. And particularly in this case, it's not like the American Civil Rights movement only affected Americans, it had significant ramifications for black people and the civil rights movement in Britain too. The writer, Mary Blackman, is a black Londoner who grew up in the shadow of those events. I'm quite uneasy about the idea that a black writer is in the wrong to celebrate a civil rights icon just because they grew up in London instead of Alabama. I think I'm a bit more charitable to her writing than most of this thread. Mary Blackman is mainly known as a kids and YA writer. I suspect she very much had a younger audience in mind when she was writing it. If you try to view it through the lens of her trying to tell kids why Rosa Parks is her hero, a lot of it makes more sense. The barely one dimensional villain, the massive oversimplification of the events, having the white characters basically look direct into camera and go 'This is a bad thing happening. We should feel bad' to make it real clear to white kids about how they should feel about racism. It's all to keep the focus on where the writer wants it to be, which is who Rosa Parks is, and why she is considered a hero. Historically accurate? Not remotely. Most writing about history aimed at kids tends to gloss over a lot of it. But that's not remotely the point of what the writer was trying to achieve. And does it make the Doctor look good? If the question you come out of that show is 'Yeah but how does the blond white lady come out looking' then, uh, I worry you may have somewhat missed the point.
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Apr 8, 2024 21:26
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| # ¿ May 11, 2024 14:55 |
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Lottery of Babylon posted:I mean, I think I broadly agree that it's perfectly adequate as an edutainment after school special from the 90s for kindergarteners. I just would rather Chibnall aimed for a slightly higher standard. (I'd especially have liked it if Rosa's protest was explicitly something she planned; the show has her meeting with MLK but doesn't indicate that the bus protest specifically was part of a strategy.) Chibnall didn't write it though. Chibnall was pitched a story from a beloved black children's author who wanted to celebrate a legendary civil rights figure and said 'yes, absolutely, go for it'. Could there have been space for a more complex portrayal of Rosa Parks? Sure. I think either is a valid choice, and if that's what you're looking for Rosa absolutely a failure. But it is, after all, still a British TV show (or at least it was then), and the US Civil Rights movement is covered in nowhere near as much depth in our schools as I suspect it is in the US. Of course it's going to read as oversimplified to anyone more educated on those events. But laying that choice at the feet of the white dude and therefore taking any perceived agency away from the very accomplished and beloved-to-the-point-of-knighthood black writer is, frankly, not a great look. Nor do I think depicting her wanting to raise awareness of Rosa Parks and the US Civil Rights movement amongst a new generations as 'an after school special from the 90s for kindergarteners' fair. She had a platform, and she used that platform to celebrate her heroes. That feels like something that shouldn't be diminished, and her name certainly shouldn't just be erased from the conversation just to get a few kicks in to the white dude, no matter your opinions of how she executed. There's plenty to kick Chibnall about, and the whole weaponising The Master's brown skin sure was a choice. But as well as Rosa he also got Demons of Punjab made, and the whole topic of Britain's behaviour as the empire collapsed is something we don't ever seem to bring up, ever. It wasn't remotely mentioned in school history. This is a show that leans in hard to myths around Britains past rather than the often very uncomfortable truths about our behaviour especially during the colonial period, suddenly dealing with that out of nowhere is....well, it's not what prime time family shows in the UK do.
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Apr 9, 2024 08:05
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