Doctor Who: Is The Master a racist?

[RosemaryWoodhouse]

Did anyone else find it tasteless how he turned the black family into his personal slaves? He didn't treat his white wife like that. He had Captain jack chained up. He made The Doctor live in a tent. And he made the black cast members serve him his morning coffee. Is this the sort of message that we want sending out in children's programmes?

Everyones a racist these days love, think of what you did to your dogs, you made them slaves too!

troll

They weren't just the black family, they were Martha's family.
That's the point.

It didn't even occur to me. They are people and The Master did awful things to lots of people in that episode. I didn't think it was relevant that they (or Martha) were black, any more than it is relevant in any other episode in the series.

And since when was Dr Who a children's programme?

Wouldn't you like to go and bug people on some other internet forum now?

What does your sweetheart think, Rosemary?

martha is black and saved them so she is a hero if they were racist they would not show a black hero(producers)

He turned the family of the doctor's sidekick into his slaves. Talk about missing the point.

And you watched that and all you saw was that the family was black. I'd rethink who the racist is, darlin'.

The Master is a racist in that he thinks the Timelords are superior to every other race in the universe.

He turned Martha's family into slaves because they were Martha's family. They had a priviledged existence compared to the rest of the world who were also treated like slaves and worked to death in much worse conditions.

He treated the dr like a dog becuase he was his sworn enemy.

ooh x-posted.

Agree very much with MTPW.

I'm not asking if The Producers are racist - if they were they wouldn't have cast Martha - although it took The Doctor long enough to take up with a black woman so maybe it's a Galifreyan trait. My Sweetheart was appalled by the evil genocidal megalomaniac racist.

he didn't senslessly slaughter the black family though so perhaps he's a positive action guy after all.

because it would be awful to have a racist murderous maniac wouldn't it?

(as opposed to an ordinary murderous maniac)

TBH I don't think you were supposed to think 'oh the MAster's great I'm going to copy everything he does'.

HE was supposed to be evil and everything he did was supposed to be bad.

so you are not having really noisy sex with your sweetheart right now, and he hasnt left you becuase you havent been able to conceive his and how is your twin brother who is often mistaken for your lover

How can you say he didn't 'treat his white wife like that'? She was the one with the bruised face and looked petrified when she rushed to pick up his jacket for him. If anyone was getting abused it was her.

LOL at racist murderous maniac

Rosemary you are providing a lot of entertainment on this forum. I think you should be Mumsnet's official troll.

Please post some pictures of your sweetheart, your brother, your children and the man next door who gets the radio porn.

i missed the radio porn one was that part of noisy sex

I think this is a very reasonable and interesting question.

Dr Who IS piss poor at including characters who are not white. unless you count mickey, martha is the first black companion. she is also a very weak character. torchwood has toshiko, that is IT unless you count iantos dead girlfriend.

rosemary is also correct that the family were depicted as slaves, while jack was tied up a la prometheus. fine that theres a backstory there but the fact is that they were explicitly shown to be not just slaves but triumphant over the "Master". If you layer this onto black american slave society, esp with the use of the word Master and the doctor as messiah blah blah then I think, yes, you find parallels.

I think in context of the whole world being enslaved-no he prob isn't racist. but i do think it possible that the writers were drawing, consciously or not, on the culture generated by slavery (eg the word of mouth stories, the power of speech, the redemption of a single person who then redemed the rest etc). this isn't racist, of course. its not racist to honour a culture.

i find it rather disturbing that this has just turned into a troll rant. If you feel uncomfortable with the question-why, exactly?

no discomfort with the question just the questioner, refuse to respond to the question because it it only being posed to wind people up.

how do you know this?

is rosemary a known troll?

Well Rosemary is as out as it is possible to be without actually saying "I am a lonely 17 year old boy with bad acne". Or "I am a lonely 55 year old man with no hair living with my parents".

She/He should be adopted as Mumsnet's official troll. Less of a troll and more of a goblin really. She is harmless and just starts ludicrous threads rather than nasty/upsetting ones. She/he has a neat sense of the absurd. I like that.

filly, from what little I've seen, apparently so, yes.

But you're right, it's still an interesting topic.

I'd say yes, of course The Master is racist. He's a wife-beater, and murderer too. He's a bad guy.

The more subtle interesting question is - is the Doctor racist? He was full of rage and vengeance upon the Family of Blood, but when it comes to his own kind, he offers forgiveness freely.