Which one is that? YouTube is more like Poo Tube right now.
“This is Gallifrey” has traditionally been my favorite of his stuff, though there are several options.
I think you meant to link to
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Oh, it’s working now. Yes; not too big on Dudley Simpson, but that’s him at his most memorable.
I tend to think of this, vis a vis 20th century Who.
Bloody hell, that episode.
They pulled it off.
(I also like how they basically no-platformed the Proud Boy villain. No, you don’t get to tell us your story. Go away.)
that was generally fine in a 1980s afterschool special/episode of quantum leap kind of way. it could have gone way wronger i suppose. i kind of wish they had stuck closer to the actual history of the bus boycott and rosa parks not giving up her seat as a planned activist activity to create a more favorable version of the claudette colvin story and everything. this makes it feel like she just had a good idea on a whim, (which to be fair is the mythology the montgomery activists created but i mean it’s 2018). i guess all of this wouldn’t have felt like such a big deal to me if the whole episode didn’t hinge on the false concept of “it had to be this one moment in history” she literally would have just done it the next day or whatever
feels like they are taking some of the agency away from people
the banksy and elvis stuff was cute though
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Oh. Did we cover that there’s an actual mpreg episode in a couple weeks?
It’ll probably be in mkv by the time I download, though.
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They seemed to kind of edge toward acknowledging that side of it, with her meet-ups that Ryan stumbled into. Like, why have MLK there otherwise? There’s no way Blackman didn’t know the history. It is a little curious how the story worms around the issue, without outright contradicting the planning involved. Helps that we see so little from Parks’ perspective, and so much from the slightly-baffled out-of-timers’.
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Having the grandfather guy forced to deal with being the reason she got asked to stand was an interesting choice. Not sure if I was over reading or if they were slipping a bit of white privilege discourse in there.
Oh, it’s all over the episode. That particular moment is… I mean. It’s got a lot going on. I absolutely see what’s happening there, but…
I think I may be alone in finding this season actually much more demanding of me as a viewer than previous years, and not exactly in a rewarding way
I feel like they’re operating under a very peculiarly circumscribed version of what a broadly accessible science fiction show on a public broadcaster ought to be and unlike Davies’ Londoners or even Moffat’s weird sub-Whedon alien lesbians the whole thing is stuck together all too intentionally
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like no that wasn’t bad but it makes me really doubt their judgment
at some point every episode has to stop feeling like the christmas special minus christmas
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It’s Quantum Leap UK. The NBC version of a sci-fi show. There are pros and cons here…
Well, Quantum Leap crossed with Heroes.
- Philip Segal era: Doctor Who on Fox (ha ha)
- Russell T Davies era: Doctor Who on the WB
- Moffat/Smith era: Doctor Who on the CW
- Moffat/Capaldi era: Doctor Who on Starz (?)
- Chris Chibnall era: Doctor Who on NBC
The idea seems to be to sneak the show back into the mainstream by making it “respectable” enough that people can’t as easily shrug it off, while also trying to do interesting and/or valuable things with the space it carves. Unfortunately Chibnall has the nuance of a carp and writes dialogue like his entire frame of reference is other TV shows. But, he seems sincere. Which helps.
FWIW, I’ve so far seen only positive responses from actual POC (mostly WOC). But this may just reflect the circles in which I gyrate.
Sometimes it’s the little things that matter, you know.
There are so many details that matter, in this. Things that define the lives of so many, that tend not to get addressed in polite (i.e., white) company.
CW: What they did to Emmit Till
Like, it’s a TV show produced by a big entity for a mainstream audience. A family audience, with lots of kids watching. You’re going in with a certain set of expectations. And every little acknowledgment of reality, that you practically never see in a context like this can seem a little bit amazing, a little bit gratifying.
That discussion behind the dumpster is so simple in script terms and easy to write off, except compare it to anything said in the last 55 years on this show. Compare it to that bullshit in the Shakespeare episode.
In which the nuances of race relations are explained to us by people like this.
It’s… you know. It’s easy to lean back and stroke your chin and say, well, that black lady who makes a living writing speculative fiction about racial justice didn’t quite get her history about the black experience right.
Or whatever. It’s another to say, oh my God, this is the first time I’ve seen myself validated in this way, in this kind of a place. Even if I might have structured a few things differently.
It’s in all those little things, that add up, that I think makes the episode so remarkable. But, I mean. I guess I’m no one to speak either. Since, you know.
There’s another of these in a few weeks, dealing with the partition of India. Written by this fella.
The second writer of color in Doctor Who history, incidentally, after Malorie Blackman.
Maybe next year they’ll get to write about other, more subtle aspects of their experience. But, it’s a start.
One of the things that most strikes me about the episode is how it’s blocked and shot and paced, so that we’re always lingering, watching the edges of the frame, waiting for something to happen.
In an early scene, the fender of a police car quietly pulls into the foreground, and it’s one of the most terrifying things ever seen in Doctor Who. You just don’t know where the danger is going to come from in this episode – just like everyday life, for many people who don’t look like me.
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So, Chibnall keeps saying that the Montgomery bus boycott and partition of India were the first things that came to him when he agreed to take over the show. If that’s true, I guess it explains everything else about the show’s shape and cast?
That would, presumably, be why Graham is a retired (white) bus driver. That would presumably be why we’ve got one young black and one young south Asian companion, specifically. Presumably to give Graham motivation and hook him in more closely, that dictates that he should have some close connection with Ryan. Which sets up Grace, and in turn Grace’s absence. It’s like dominoes. Put those two scripts into place, and everything else just tumbles in line.
I’m guessing also the main cast’s experiences in Alabama and the Punjab helps to thematically set up whatever the larger story payoff is going to be with the toothy faced guys and their genocidal ways, muttered about in hushed terms on the desert planet from episode two. So that whatever sci-fi scenario the show gets into will have been grounded in familiar and human terms, illustrating that this stuff isn’t unique or a relic, and it’s a thing we’ll always have to fight against, whatever form it comes in. As a metaphor for current politics.
Which… is all pretty simple, but I guess awful times can call for easy parables. This may be the right kind of storytelling for 2018. I dunno.
We’ll see! Presumably.
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I think I would still rather learn about racism from anyone other than British TV writers
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Well, I mean, she was the children’s laureate for a few years.
Hopefully nobody is seeing that in a “he’s the real victim here” way.
There are distinct elements of that, but I’ve yet to see the sentiment come all out and wave its dick around as such.
This here is the closest I’ve seen or heard to my own take on the episode.
Is it cheap to make a caricature of Donald Trump a likely arc villain for Doctor Who? Probably.
Did I eat it up and enjoy him getting owned by the Doctor and Spiders anyway? Definitely.
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I enjoyed that episode way more than the parts would suggest. I think it’s easily Chibnall’s strongest script yet, and it just felt like everything finally clicked here.
Continuing to enjoy the procedural group problem-solving in every episode. All the Ian Chesterton stuff here about teatree and peppermint oil, vinegar, and so on. The blunt yet necessary environmental/anti-capitalist message. All very Barry Letts, this week. Still trying to Do Good, Responsible Things with the show, which I am going to stubbornly respect no matter how awkwardly it’s handled.
I like the choice of Noth as the Trump expy, for a few reasons. One, he just pulls it off well. Two, as a pretty high-profile US TV actor who is clearly out-of-place in Doctor Who, he lends a tangible level to the “You’re that bloke!” factor. Three, Bradley Walsh played the Jerry Orbach role in Chibnall’s Law & Order UK. So there’s… yeah.
People complaining about the slight plot, that once again fizzles out. But, I’ve gone on the record many times to declare, fuck plot. It’s a means, not an end. And I like what the story structure allkws for.
Once again the antagonist just wanders away or vanishes, like this is The X-Files. This has to be going somewhere, right? It can’t be a coincidence at this point, narratively.
Four episodes in, and still no BEMs. Unless you count Tim Shaw, but he’s basically a humanoid antagonist.
I like this version of the show. I like the points it’s making about how the show can be put together.
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