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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

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

549 replies

TinselAngel · 27/01/2025 14:02

For fucks sake Confused

Juno Dawson as a writer.

Doctor Who- this might be the last straw even for me.
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TheCatsTongue · 20/02/2025 15:42

Myalternate · 19/02/2025 23:59

https://www.radiotimes.com/tv/sci-fi/doctor-who-woke-point-comment/

I’m not a fan of Dr Who and I’ve probably only watched a couple of episodes but reading this opinion piece, I can honestly say that I’ll never watch it again.

By a writer who used to write for the Metro...

MarkWithaC · 20/02/2025 16:53

ThreeWordHarpy · 27/01/2025 17:12

In the Capaldi era I would have loved a late night episode where he channeled Malcolm Tucker with the “wow it is bigger on the inside” reaction to the TARDIS. A bad tempered “Come the fuck in or fuck the fuck off” Grin.

in fact Malcolm Tucker as the Doctor would have been glorious. Paging Armando Iannuci, because that’s a reboot I would watch.

I am ALL OVER that Grin

Tomatotater · 20/02/2025 17:12

I think the issue with the ' woke agenda' is that a good writer doesn't need to bang the viewer over the head constantly with 'issues' or politics, they are part and parcel of a good story. Sci fi has always dealt with social issues. Once they get preachy and obvious they take over the reason the story is told. Imo Steven Moffatt is a superior writer and can write nuance far better. RTD has got worse and seems to think he is doing something groundbreaking with his obvious ' issue based' stories, when Who has always dealt with political issues in a more effective and less obvious way.

SionnachRuadh · 20/02/2025 17:31

I sometimes think of Young Avengers, which has got a very bad reputation as the ground zero of woke comics. Part of the problem is that the breakout characters were the gay couple, Hulkling and Wiccan, who have the usual problems of gay characters in comics - they're not allowed to have any flaws or conflicts, which makes them really boring.

But the first run of YA was pretty good, and what I liked about it was Patriot as the team leader. He was given a backstory as the grandson of the original, black Captain America who was airbrushed from history. Despite that, brilliantly, he wasn't a likeable character. He was an egotistical bully whose bad decisions put the team in danger. He believed he was owed enormous respect by society, and was constantly enraged by not getting it. In short he was a bit of an asshole.

But through facing up to adversity, he had to grow and become the hero that he believed he was. And that's what made him compelling.

No surprise that the character has disappeared without trace. I don't believe Marvel today would dare to make a black character that interesting.

SionnachRuadh · 20/02/2025 17:57

I wish that one of these days Critical Drinker would get off the fence and tell us what he really thinks

TheCatsTongue · 20/02/2025 19:20

The usual articles blame the audience for the show's failings. It's a current trend of criticising the audience.

There have been countless articles and even from the main actor himself saying don't watch the programme if you don't agree with a certain ideology, consequently everyone turned off, and now it is those people who turned off are to blame.

You cater towards the "modern audience" but they don't turn up and then you've got a flop on your hands.

Chersfrozenface · 20/02/2025 19:28

There have been countless articles and even from the main actor himself saying don't watch the programme if you don't agree with a certain ideology, consequently everyone turned off, and now it is those people who turned off are to blame.

It's such teenage tantrum behaviour.

Programme people: "If you don't like XYZ, it's not for you, don't watch it".
Audience: "OK, then." ( Stops watching.)
Programme people: "You're such poop heads for not watching! You're horrible! I hate you!"

UtopiaPlanitia · 20/02/2025 19:49

SionnachRuadh · 20/02/2025 17:57

I wish that one of these days Critical Drinker would get off the fence and tell us what he really thinks

Everything he said was spot on!!

I thought his review of The Timeless Children episode was heartbreaking because he saw something he loved being ruined. And he made other videos about how much he loved Star Trek and Star Wars and hated seeing them destroyed in a similar way.

He’s passed through sadness into anger and I’m with him on that emotional progression.

inkymoose · 20/02/2025 21:28

SionnachRuadh · 20/02/2025 17:57

I wish that one of these days Critical Drinker would get off the fence and tell us what he really thinks

Absolutely brilliant and really funny. Thanks @SionnachRuadh

ChazsBrilliantAttitude · 20/02/2025 22:56

MarkWithaC · 20/02/2025 16:53

I am ALL OVER that Grin

This mash up was put together by someone when Capaldi was announced

ChazsBrilliantAttitude · 20/02/2025 23:05

I think my issue with the shoehorning of messaging into Dr Who is that RTD has forgotten that it’s supposed to be entertainment. Nobody watches Dr Who as an exercise in moral enlightenment, they watch it for enjoyment.
The Dr gives writers a huge opportunity to look at society from the point of view of an outsider who has outlived generations of humans and brings a perspective of someone who comprehends the vastness of space and time. RTD has wasted that by making the Dr the vehicle for his personal hobbyhorse. Instead of the audience being challenged and entertained they are being lectured and that appears to be a literal turn off.

TempestTost · 20/02/2025 23:45

I'm wondered if was the strong female charcters in Dune provoking the "woke" label but apparently it's a "white savior trope" and "cultural appropriation" - which makes no sense to me and ignores the plot entirely.

Cultural appropriation? How is it cultural appropriation?

TempestTost · 20/02/2025 23:59

Flipflopandflywomenarentxy · 20/02/2025 13:53

That's just a string of words. Can you explain what you mean?

You appear to think that "misogyny, racism, ageism and homophobia" are embedded in woke values.

I agree these are hallmarks of the genderist movement but my post specifically excludes this movement as not being aligned to Woke values.

I agree that there is a lot of Omnicause and censorship going on right now.

However, the insight that ones sex, race, class, religion, age, lack of gender confirmity, physical disability, or other difference to a standard young white man means one has higher challenges and therefore greater barriers to achieving safety, stability and success in life than the standard middle class white man who is portrayed as society's default, and the belief that these barriers should be acknowledged, challenged and eventually removed, is IMO a very fair one.

Right wing commentators have seized on the word "woke" as a kind of catch all term to allow them to conflate the overreach that we currently see and the underlying values and insight of structural unfairness and codemn them all together. IMO "anti-woke" is nothing more than the RW version of the Omnicause.

Edited

Because "woke" values map on to identity politics, which promote race essentialism.

The civil rights movement existed long before identity politics took hold. Id pol promotes ideas like:

"The only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist discrimination. The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination,

This is why in places like the US you find that it is entirely legal to hire or not hire people, or give them grants, etc, on the basis of race, just so long as it is the right race. (Although this has just been changed in the US, for the government in any case.)

It treats all identity characteristics this way, with a hierarchy of who can and cannot be treated differently due to their identity.

Paniconthedancefloor · 21/02/2025 08:33

It’s been ruined, so sad. Piss off with your Meep pronouns, try weaving a decent story instead. Oh that’s right, that’s no longer a priority. Dr Who is rightly heading for the bin as a result, hopefully rebooted in 10 years with a focus on plot rather than sermonising.

Paniconthedancefloor · 21/02/2025 08:35

Also a lot of the plot lines in recent times have been geared with a US audience in mind, to whose networks the bbc sells the series at profit.

Tomatotater · 21/02/2025 08:37

Chersfrozenface · 20/02/2025 19:28

There have been countless articles and even from the main actor himself saying don't watch the programme if you don't agree with a certain ideology, consequently everyone turned off, and now it is those people who turned off are to blame.

It's such teenage tantrum behaviour.

Programme people: "If you don't like XYZ, it's not for you, don't watch it".
Audience: "OK, then." ( Stops watching.)
Programme people: "You're such poop heads for not watching! You're horrible! I hate you!"

Its the Jo Swinson book of how to win friends and influence people!

Lettucelet · 21/02/2025 08:39

I hate the background music. It isn’t a theme park ride.

Tomatotater · 21/02/2025 08:43

TheCatsTongue · 20/02/2025 19:20

The usual articles blame the audience for the show's failings. It's a current trend of criticising the audience.

There have been countless articles and even from the main actor himself saying don't watch the programme if you don't agree with a certain ideology, consequently everyone turned off, and now it is those people who turned off are to blame.

You cater towards the "modern audience" but they don't turn up and then you've got a flop on your hands.

My DS1 has been a Doctor Who fan since he was tiny. He made friends at secondary school during the Induction during an icebreaker activity with 2 other Doctor Who fans and had a couple of best friends as a result. He was the last to stop watching it, because the stories weren't good enough. They like the tradition, they have all watched the back episodes and saw that first of all the Timeless Child nonsense basically shat on everything they knew about the programme. Not only does RTD have a poor understanding of traditional fans, he has a poor understanding of what young people want too. Without young, old or casual viewers, you just cant continue.

Littoralzone · 21/02/2025 08:43

The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination,

It is all so Orwellian isn’t it?

WhatterySquash · 21/02/2025 08:43

For me the bad thing about wokery is that it’s not actually about fairness, justice, equality of opportunity, defending people from persecution etc - at all. It’s about scrabbling to be on the moral high ground that you’ve simply been told is what’s right, and swallowing that instead of thinking it through, in your desperation to be seen as a good person - and the more privileged you are, the more that appeals, so you can try to shrug off the guilt of being white, western, middle class, a man etc. It’s an identity to cling to like all the rest. But of course as it’s a selfish, egotistical movement it retains at its heart all the prejudices that actually benefit those people and always have - racism, sexism, classism.

People don’t parrot indefensible nonsense like TWAW because they’ve thought it through and come to their own reasoned positions on the issues of the day. They do it because their number one concern is not helping trans people, but being “in the right”, as publicly as possible - and ideally being able to pull others up on their failings as well.

IMO it’s possible to have reasonable, nuanced, middle-ground or just rational views on issues like gender, abortion, Israel-Palestine, and many more. They might not match my views but I find it easier to respect people who have arrived at their position by actually pondering the issue. But wokery doesn’t want this - it requires that you take an extreme, black and white, “morally correct” view on everything for no actual reason, just because that’s the way the wind is blowing. That’s how they end up in ludicrous situations like supporting both Hamas and gay rights, or supporting the persecution and silencing of women about their rights because trans is sacred.

Tomatotater · 21/02/2025 08:50

For me the bad thing about wokery is that’s not actually about fairness, justice, equality of opportunity, defending people from persecution etc - at all. It’s about scrabbling to be on the moral high ground that you’ve simply been told is what’s right, and swallowing that instead of thinking it through, in your desperation to be seen as a good person - and the more privileged you are, the more that appeals, so you can try to shrug off the guilt of being white, western, middle class, a man etc. It’s an identity to cling to like all the rest. But of course as it’s a selfish, egotistical movement it retains at its heart all the prejudices that actually benefit those people and always have - racism, sexism, classism
This is absolutely spot on for me. Its flying the Pride flag and telling people to use pronouns because its easier than actually ensuring everyone in your organisation has equal access to promotions, training and development and are treated with respect day to day in the workplace. Its The Guardian virtue signalling while being taken to court for racial discrimination against an Asian journalist and while ostracising, bullying and eventually hounding women journalists out of they jobs. People gluing themselves to roads and throwing soup at paintings them going on skiing holidays with mummy and daddy because 'the plane was flying anyway'. Words not deeds.

TheCatsTongue · 21/02/2025 09:29

Sci-fi allows for certain issues to be raised without being explicit. I find it ridiculous that they were as subtle as a brick over trans issues.

I didn't watch it, but surely Dr Who's transition from male to female could've dealt with it a much more imaginative manner instead of having an explicitly trans character going about their transness.

Science fiction (and fantasy) in general has been pretty poor around the trans issue, it amazes me that hundreds of years in the future the transition process is exactly the same, or in magical fantasy period with magical spells people have "gender affirming surgery" hundreds of years before surgery was invented.

LittleMyLittle · 21/02/2025 09:30

But of course as it’s a selfish, egotistical movement

The concept of allyship is a perfect illustration of entitlement and self-centredness. Even if two people both have characteristics that increase their risk of discrimination, the one with the perceived extra "privilege" must always defer to and support the one without it. This leads to an uneven power dynamic where one person (usually a woman) is taking on the other's emotional labour and often receiving poor treatment in return - but she can't speak up about it.

I genuinely think the whole concept of woke, omnicause, progressive fanaticism, whatever you want to call it (because it's apparently socially unacceptable to define this with a name - I wonder where we've seen this before?) is horrendously damaging to young women. Young women should never be actively encouraged to:

  • See themselves as inferior to others based on immutable characteristics, especially when that characteristic is being biologically female;
  • Keep quiet about mistreatment and abuse because it comes from someone "lower" in the hierarchy, or even worse reframe it as a necessary sacrifice;
  • Conflate un-reciprocated emotional labour with being a good person;
  • Suppress independent thinking and say only what is "appropriate" for a young woman of her station to say.

Even removing trans activism from the picture, hierarchy-based progressivism is fundamentally anti-woman. You can tell because women who don't conform to it get more abuse and threats than men.

It's possible to be progressive in a way that doesn't belittle, suppress, or stop you having your own ideas. But this modern radicalism isn't it.

FlowchartRequired · 21/02/2025 09:40

I know that it has been said before, but we (society) need to stop automatically associating the word progress with the idea that this means better than what came before - it just means change. Change can be good, bad or somewhere between the two.

Viewing the world through the prism of privilage triangles and purity spirals is a change, it is called progressive, but it is not good and it is in no way, shape or form, better than judging people by the content of their character.

I agree with Little, it is also particularly damaging to female people.

TheCatsTongue · 21/02/2025 09:45

Generally find that good writers tend to lose it when they become activists. Alan Ball (who wrote American Beauty, Six Feet Under and True Blood) really lost it with Here and Now, which was a TV series more obsessed with moaning about Trump then about decent story and writing. I feel the same with RTD.

RTD was once an outsider with Queer as Folk, but he's now mainstream and these new LGBT+ issues are alien to him, so the activism takes place of any well researched, interesting story lines.

It's the subtle as a brick so-called "woke" issues that mean that they can be clipped into YouTube videos and everyone laugh at them.

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