Doctor Who- this might be the last straw even for me.

[TinselAngel]

For fucks sake

Juno Dawson as a writer.

I understood exactly what that poster was saying. I don't think you need to mark posts as if you are an English teacher and they are your student. I still think it was unfair of you to only post part of the post in your original response. [Edited to say that the post that this was in response to has now been withdrawn].

I also think you are misrepresenting the facts when you say that all Tennant did was speak out for Trans rights. We know that this is an area where there are huge issues. For example, 'puberty blockers' are considered a trans right, but there are huge issues with stopping puberty at Tanner stage 2 in a child. The more you look at the 'rights' being demanded, the more you see that they are not just a simple list of things that every good person should support. Many of them are hugely damaging and are frankly a medical scandal playing out before our eyes.

Funny. When I google I see him speaking out in support of the destruction of women’s rights and in favour of the sterilisation and mutilation of children.

DT publically stated that he looks forward to when a woman no longer exists. Her crime was standing up for women's rights. Funny how the TRAs call us the genocidal ones when they are the only ones wishing people dead.

Isn't it funny how 'be kind' also means 'do as I say, don't do as I do.'

David Tennant admonishing women to be kind?

No, fuck off David, you be kind.

My own personal view is that modern telly/film is made by people who can’t handle or don’t understand nuance. To them characters are either good or bad and there’s no grey area or possibility of characters behaving in both bad and good ways depending on circumstances. They also don’t seem to understand philosophies or world views other than their own and so they make no effort to properly explain or develop characters who differ from what they think is moral or virtuous.

The best writers can show you elements of characters that you empathise with and that help you to understand people who are very different from you. I don’t think something like The Wire or even older Doctor Who could be written today because subtlety and nuance doesn’t seem to be part of modern screenwriters’ toolbox for mainstream media.

I mean, Tom Baker’s Doctor pitied and understood the mindset of the Daleks even though they were dangerous/homicidal and he knew he had to stop them, but he also felt guilty about what he had to do to stop them and he knew it would be a negative cost to his own morals. He didn’t just designate them as baddies and think that all action to stop them was therefore morally virtuous because he was the Doctor and therefore a good person.

The Doctor used to actually understand and explore the grey areas between good and evil rather than just go around saying he understands them.

My own personal view is that modern telly/film is made by people who can’t handle or don’t understand nuance. To them characters are either good or bad and there’s no grey area or possibility of characters behaving in both bad and good ways depending on circumstances. They also don’t seem to understand philosophies or world views other than their own and so they make no effort to properly explain or develop characters who differ from what they think is moral or virtuous.

I agree. I think there are also issue round understanding and explaining relationships in general both romantic and purely friendship based.

I've heard many thinks blame nepotism, lack of life experience, writing room constraints from higher ups, even time given - I do wonder though if it's just the assumption that the audience is thick.

I've heard many thinks blame nepotism, lack of life experience, writing room constraints from higher ups, even time given - I do wonder though if it's just the assumption that the audience is thick.

Critical Drinker points to lack of life experience, and I think he's onto something. Like one of the things about 1970s Hollywood, though the pool of writers may have been more male and white than today, lots of them had experience working blue collar jobs, or as military veterans, or just doing things outside the creative industries. And that showed in the stories they wrote.

These days it's mostly nepo babies and/or people who've been through the necessary degrees at elite colleges.

I feel the best of old Who comes from writers like Robert Holmes or Malcolm Hulke who had experience in the real world, and that comes through in how they wrote characters. There are lots of writers now who have done all the courses and know all the tropes but don't have that real life background. It shows.

My own personal view is that modern telly/film is made by people who can’t handle or don’t understand nuance. To them characters are either good or bad and there’s no grey area or possibility of characters behaving in both bad and good ways depending on circumstances. They also don’t seem to understand philosophies or world views other than their own and so they make no effort to properly explain or develop characters who differ from what they think is moral or virtuous.

this is key. In the past Sci-fi has been used really really well to examine many different viewpoints, and point out that there isn't always black or white, but shades of grey. There was a brilliant Stargate SG-1 story where one lot of aliens needed a new planet, had found one close to what they needed and were terraforming it - in the meantime SG-1 were trying to rehome another lot of homeless aliens there. The discussions of who got priority, and the divisions and disagreements among everyone was a stunning piece of work. Truly amazing.

We get nothing like that these days.

They look at all the boxes that it ticks and they are all ticked. If it ticks all the boxes how can it not be good.

I think this is so true not just of lots of writing today, but culture and life in general. It's not just that the box-ticking is shallow and superficial, and possibly even little-understood by those who do it - it also actively gives people permission to stop being thoughtful, open-minded, meritocratic or actually caring about equality or fairness. They've ticked the boxes, they can relax in the knowledge that they are on the moral high ground and couldn't possibly be accused of bigotry or being right-wing or old-fashioned. So they can stop thinking at all.

Re the discussion about Lost and the mystery box. I remember watching Lost and getting increasingly frustrated as what seemed to be a really interesting premise just turned into an endless stream weird, inconsistent teasers and unresolved loose ends. I remember realising that it was being written as they went along and there was no overarching concept or destination. No matter how compelling you think your "mystery box" is, it's useless without resolution, catharsis or some kind of satisfaction that makes sense of everything. Storytellers have known this forever obviously.

Unlike say, Breaking Bad which was concept-driven and had a huge, powerful arc held up by a network of well-crafted tensions and characters. I don't think all writing has lost this, it's just that it's become much more acceptable to do this ongoing "writer's room"/designed by committee, no one really knows what the point is type of approach.

This report in Variety about what he said at the British LGBT Awards was the last straw for me. It would be understandable that he supports "trans rights" given his child, but his vitriol towards those who dare to disagree with him is nasty.

In his acceptance speech, Tennant said that he was “a little depressed” over getting an award for simply saying obvious facts like “everyone has the right to be who they want to be and live their life how they want to live it as long as they’re not hurting anyone.”

“It’s human decency,” Tennant added. “We shouldn’t live in a world where that is worth remarking on. However until we wake up and Kemi Badenoch doesn’t exist anymore — I don’t wish ill of her, I just wish her to shut up — whilst we do live in this world I am honored to receive this."

In a separate red carpet interview on the awards ceremony, Tennant was asked to respond to critics of the transgender community. He responded: “[They’re] a tiny bunch of little whinging fuckers who are on the wrong side of history, and they’ll all go away soon.”

He clearly doesn't understand that some of what trans activists are doing and demanding is hurting other people. We little whinging fuckers are simply trying to point this out.

https://variety.com/2024/film/news/jk-rowling-david-tennant-trans-critics-attack-1236056497/

As evidence for the case that modern scfi writers/producers don't know what they're doing with longstanding, beloved fictional characters and universes that they don't understand, I present two excellent reviews of Section 31which point out problems common to a lot of things that are being produced at the moment:

Spoilers in the videos by the way!!

That episode of SG-1 is one of my favourites - it's very good and very deep, lots of concepts and ways of looking at sentience and rights explored.

Another great episode of SG-1 is when Daniel Jackson believes he has been given advanced knowledge he can use to save the galaxy from the Goa'uld but he ends up becoming a tyrant who is more or less just as bad - it really explores what happens when one person has absolute power

And, it's like 'The Measure of a Man' in Star Trek: The Next Generation. Picard saves Data from being taken apart to be studied by a researcher by proving legally that Data is sentient and has rights, while Data's friend Riker is forced to try to prove that Data is property and a machine without rights. It's one of the best episodes of television I've ever watched and every time I rewatch it, I enjoy it just as much.

I seriously don't believe the current crop of screenwriters on telly or film could write plots and characters this compelling and thoughtful. It's why I don't watch much modern scifi and why I've given up on NuTrek, NuWho, and NuStar Wars because they're overwhelmingly shallow and the writers/producers seem to despise people who don't believe what they do. They even make a point of having their characters belittle groups of people that the writers disagree with or dislike. There's no nuance.

It's utter dog shit now. I stopped watching ages ago

I think there are new series and films that do have nuance, morally ambiguous characters etc, its probably a problem much more likely to afflict Nu-whatever bastardisations of old favourites.

Any examples, @ErrolTheDragon -i'm up for trying new things

Recently we've been watching Silo and Severance (not started on S2 of that yet, we save and binge).

Those aren't 'sci-fi' as such, dystopias I guess.

I also mostly enjoyed Foundation, its rather loosely based on the books (decades since I read them) - liked the variations in character of the different iterations of Cleon though that might just be because I'd watch Lee Pace in anything.

I suppose it's a good thing Babylon 5 has never been properly revived or that would have been ruined too.

Star Trek has always been well-written and looked at big questions with nuance. My favourite series is Voyager where the attempts of the Borg to assimilate everything are fought, but it also confronts the fact that we also want to assimilate and control ways of living that we don’t like or decide are wrong.

I love Deep Space 9 best of all, but all those old Trek series are brilliant. Voyager scores very well on the Bechtel test and has the most beautiful haunting opening sequence.

Captain Janeway and Seven of Nine are among my fave characters in all fiction. But what I especially liked was it wasn't pushed as progressive in a "Look! women can do things too!" kind of way. They just were who they were, warts and all, happening to be female as if it was obvious that that wasn't remarkable.

Yes... whereas in Discovery, it really was very funny how Stamets and Culber had to say 'they' with that special twinkly emphasis ... I mean surely to goodness by then they must have encountered aliens who were sexless or had more than 2 sexes and would have got over the excitement of special pronouns?