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

[TinselAngel]

For fucks sake

Juno Dawson as a writer.

I do agree it is laziness not creating actual historical stories with black people - be they the rare black individuals in the UK in Tudor times or stories from around the world.

I do think there is a group of people who want to achieve this. I have occasionally seen materials from them, even stuff written for kids on the BBC and such, or in museums, that seems to want to tell us that the UK was "always" full of non-white people.

It's very strange and I don't think the majority would agree - in fact it's so strange that many people don't believe that there are people pushing this. But the ones who do believe seem to have been effective at getting themselves into key positions.

I suspect that they are trying, in a very wonky way and probably sub-consciously - to reconcile some ideas they have about the rights of indigenous populations, and their idea that the UK should be racially mixed.

Also, you can see it's a woke agenda because it will be whoever is the disadvantaged flavour of the month who gets the parts. It's currently black people and there was a huge spike in this related to black lives matter and in the wake of George Floyd. I don't begrudge whoever gets the part – but if it's not making much sense historically there's a whole lot of other people who could also have these roles. Maybe they do (I don't watch as much TV as I used to) but from what I've seen there are lots of black people, some south Asians but not the full range of ethnicities. Native Americans, SE Asians, Tartars, Quechua, Mongolians, Maoris - all of these could have come to the UK in historical drama periods, at least after 1500s/1600s, some before that. It's another example of people mistaking their scramble to virtue-signal and bandwagon-hop for actual diversity and inclusivity.

(Another way in which Star Trek did it better - and made it tie in with its constructed universe. There truly is an inclusive and fully open ethnic diversity in ST because any of humanity can be a space explorer - and that goes all the way back to the first series.)

I think a lot of it is how British creatives - and a lot of progressive minded Brits generally - download American racial politics as if things are the same here.

I'm part Romani. I'm not an expert by any means, but the Roma have been in England since the 1500s, and have a really rich history and folklore that hardly anyone knows about. TV and film have hardly ever touched that material. Much easier to do Tudor England and pretend it had the racial diversity of modern Lambeth.

To quote Uhura: “In our century, we’ve learned not to fear words”.

As a kid, this scene always had an inspiring effect on me. Seeing the original crew of the Enterprise, particularly with a Russian character during the Cold War, always made me feel hopeful about the future of humanity. I didn’t feel hopeful when I watched NuTrek so I stopped watching it.

Rings of power anyone?

I disliked the striking contrast between the progressive inclusivity and depiction of the naive, undeveloped folk as Oirish.

George Takei lived in an internment camp as a child because of his family's race. Star Trek's hopeful future meant something to him - also to both Shatner and Nimoy - both their families had escaped Europe just before anti-Semitism turned lethal, but they were both very aware of what had happened to fellow European Jews a few decades earlier - it's why that Nazi-esque society in one episode felt real. And why

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Edith Keeler had to die (and break Kirk's heart).

Doing black people in Tudor England does spare the writers from any danger of having to do real history and get into the Tudor genocides in Ireland.

I literally cannot watch the Trek episodes with Oirish characters - they’re so painfully full of bad stereotypes.

Buíochas le Dia for the highly intelligent Miles O’Brien to offset some of it.

I love/hate Up the Long Ladder with the Space Oirish, including your wan in the extra short bainín gansey trying to lure men into 'washing their feet' that then turns into a quite nuanced discussion of cloning and abortion. Or something.

In the real version that you get on DVDs there's a great moment with O'Brien saying 'there'll be trouble . . . ' that could be either a reference of how captain Picard will respond to them, or Colm Meaney thinking of the Irish audience reaction.

When they re-mastered it for streaming they cut it out.

I actually quite like her wee gansey, she has a grand figure for it 😂

But I do feel so much sympathy for Colm having to be anywhere near the filming of that episode 😭

I think she had a nice tweed skirt too. Confident sexy Irishwomen showcasing woolen textiles can't be all bad. And I liked all Fionnula Flanagan's characters.

And I loved Kevin Riley in the Naked Time singing I'll Take You Home Again Kathleen over and over again.

Very believable.

Some other stuff not so much.

“ONE MORE TIME!” Aaargh!!

Riley’s not too bad but by god am I fed up to the back teeth of that song by the end of that episode 😵‍💫

Fionnula does a good job of everything from unaware android to Vulcan diplomat, she’s always reliable.

I particularly detest Finnegan from “Shore Leave” and the entire population of Fair Haven need to have the memory segment storing their programs erased by Seven the next time she does maintenance on the Holodeck systems 😣

<Strokes ticket for NT Live screening tomorrow.>

https://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/productions/the-importance-of-being-earnest/

Pathetically excited …

Poor old O'Brien.
I generally dislike the 'Mirror Universe' stories, though I can see it must be fun for the actors to be baaad. Except that in whichever universe he's in, O'Brien remains a sensible decent bloke.

That should be fun... We got out of the NTL live habit and need to start again.

The last time I saw that play was some time ago, with Lady Bracknell being impersonated by David Suchet. On the way out I overheard people gushing "wasn't he marvellous?" ... well no, so many women would have done it so much better. waste of a good actor, waste of a good part.

If I ever had the money to make fillums, I'd love to adapt one or two of Bob Shaw's sci-fi novels. Nobody seems to have mined them yet.

Bob didn't have his future humans speaking Norn Iron, but I still read him with an accent.

Last time I saw TIOBE (also some time ago) Maggie Smith was Lady Bracknell and I guarantee she was better than David Suchet.

😊

I’ve always believed that James White’s Sector General stories would make a great scifi telly series with 2 built in slots for Irish actors in the O’Mara and Conway characters.

White was a lovely man, from here in N Ireland, and he wrote proper good space opera.

I don't know if you could ever adapt The Third Policeman, which is one of my all time favourite novels, but I've a long running argument with friends who think it's surrealist.

IMO it becomes a lot less surrealist when you know the author was from Tyrone.

I think cross sex roles are often really fun for the actors, so I can see the appeal. It's rarely convincing though.

Years ago I saw a student production of The Merchant of Venice where the roles were all played cross sex. There was some explanation for it but the real reason I believe was that they had more female students, and they wanted to give them a chance at some larger roles.

It was not badly done, but none were convincing. And as a viewer, you were always noticing the way in which they weren't convincing, be it the "men's" hands being too small, the brow ridges on he women, the voices being all wrong, the way they walked.

So altogether while it was probably a useful project for the students, it was only moderately successful as a production of the play from the audience's POV.

Can't sleep so I'm online - I'm watching this discussion about the recent Doctor Who news and what makes good scifi. I thought I'd post the link to the thread in case anyone else is interested:

I once saw an RSC production of Twelfth Night where Toby Belch and Andrew Aguecheek were played by women. It seemed off somehow, since the main plot concerns a young woman dressing as a man. Adding in cross sex casting just complicated things for no good reason.

Then again, a production at the National Theatre in which Malvolio was Malvolia, played by Tamsin Greig, did seem to work. I think it was because it wasn’t cross sex casting, just changing the sex of the character.