remindmeofthe | (no subject)

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See, the problem with being forced to acknowledge and get angry over how explicitly problematic Doctor Who is becoming this series is that now I can't stop.

On the other hand, at least the Shining icon is extra appropriate this week.

Oh, look, the amazingly awesome woman of color didn't survive her appearance on the show. What a surprise. I don't know if the writer thought he was being funny by telegraphing her death with the Doctor's offer of taking her on as a companion, but he wasn't. Just to be clear. Also, as

erinpuff pointed out, having the woman of Asian origin's worst fear being berated by her father over her grades? Also not funny.

Bonus grossness: She was a Muslim who died because of the depth and sincerity of her faith. Really? Nobody looked at that and said, "Hey, that's a little awkward, maybe we could not do that"? Of course they didn't. Why do I have expectations?

In other news, Amy has clearly been replaced by a ganger again, this one of decidedly less sophistication. Fuck if I know how else to explain where her personality went or why the sole purpose of her existence in the last three episodes is to prop up the Doctor and Rory.

Or, apparently, to physically abuse Rory, as explicitly referenced for the sake of a punchline (if you'll pardon the pun, sorry) not once, but twice. Spousal abuse is hilarious when it's the woman beating the man! Because women should be weak and men should be strong! HAHAHAHAHAHAHA FUCK THIS SHOW SO MUCH GODDAMMIT.

I feel nothing about the Doctor taking them home. I feel no excitement at all about the impending finale that should provide resolution for the mysteries Moffat has been building for so long. I realized yesterday while looking at my amazing poster that I no longer care why the TARDIS blew up. I've never had such a sense of disillusionment with a show I've loved for years build up so quickly, but here it is. Moffat clearly has no plans to stop being gross, probably doesn't even know that he's being gross, and I'm just frustrated and exhausted by it. I should be dreading the fact that there are only two episodes left, but instead I'm relieved. Any more than two episodes and there would be a genuine danger of having my love for this show broken permanently.

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I am with you on ALL of those tags. ALL of those arguments. I want to smack everyone who thought this could possibly be a good idea. (Also, Amy Williams. No. Just--NO. Amy has to be subsumed into SOME man, amirite? She doesn't even get to argue, doesn't even get to reply to her casual renaming--WHAT.)

Ugh, I did not notice the Amy Williams thing. I must have been busy fuming over something else and missed it. Whatever, I will defy it by using this icon, which I have keyworded "Mr and Mrs Pond." Because seriously. If anyone willingly changed their name in that marriage, it sure as shit wasn't Amy. And I could see Rory doing it because he believes so hard that a married couple should share a name, and okay I want to write that fic now.

WRITE IT! It'll be wonderful and fix-it-y and wonderful. :D

(haven't seen episode, am just...reading spoilers and reactions. Maybe the Amy Williams thing is a sign that the Doctor wasn't the true Doctor. Or something?)

(God, I hope so.)

I should write it. I should at least be able to maintain my love of Amy/Rory, because when they are being written properly, they are awesome.

I... am not quite sure how to feel about Rita's death, honestly. The one thing I can say unequivocally is that there is a wider pattern of characters of color getting fridged on Doctor Who (though IIRC Moffat's track record isn't nearly as bad as RTD's), and in that context Rita's death looks pretty gross. But if Who were generally better about representation I'm not sure I'd have a problem with it?

And the reason, I think, is that the episode was about faith in many ways, and they could've gone the one-dimensional "don't put blind faith in anything, kiddos, or you're monster food!" route but chose to go nuanced instead, and Rita was the one case where faith was shown as something 100% positive and to be respected. As something that, far from robbing her of thought or reason, allowed her to stay calm and cope with stressful situations rationally. And that made it far less offensive to me. In fact I think that if they'd chosen a Christian for that role I would've eyerolled hard, because wow guys the majority religion in your culture really needed to be propped up some more, way to select it as the default.

So basically I am pretty unhappy that she got killed (both because of representation issues and because goddammit, Rita was awesome), but the way it happened was about as well-executed as it could've been. She dies on her own terms as much as she can. Refuses to let the Doctor assume responsibility or appropriate her pain to feed his guilt complex or otherwise turn it into a fridging. And that scene gives us the critical element of nuance--that faith isn't right or wrong or a good or bad thing, it's what allows her to die with dignity, but it happens to be what this particular monster feeds on. Rita is fucked, not because she has faith but because she's trapped in the goddamn Hotel California with a creature who thinks her faith is a tasty meal.

Not sure how I feel about aforementioned fridging/appropriation/responsibility issues--on the one hand, she herself calls Eleven out on that shit and the plot supports her by making her death a refutation of that trope. On the other hand, she still gets killed off. And I am sick of that shit.

I like this comment.

But if Who were generally better about representation I'm not sure I'd have a problem with it?

Yeah. I was thinking this comment over after I read it, and I came to the conclusion that this is the key issue. First I tried to think of ways to fix the problems I have with Rita's fate, but the only ways I could think of involved having her be a member of fewer minority groups, which of course is inherently problematic in itself: Changing her race/gender/religion/any or all of the above is erasure and doesn't really make anything better. Why shouldn't Rita be a wonderful character who is a Muslim woman of color? Taking away those aspects of her identity might make her death read as less problematic, but it's also taking away aspects of her identity, which brings us to the representation issue. If DW had more characters overall who represented various minority groups, then Rita's death wouldn't stick out as uncomfortable and gross. I don't think it would be completely unproblematic because of the wider issue of representation and gross tropes in Western pop culture in general, but it would maybe be more likely to cause a mere eyeroll instead of anger.

And I agree with a lot of the other stuff you say here. I was surprised and pleased by the way Rita's relationship with her religion was presented as a positive thing, because I was all ready for it to go the other direction into Wacky Religious Type territory, especially since she wasn't Christian. I think that's part of what pissed me off so much when she died - they did so many of the right things in creating her, only to fuck it all up anyway.

I am frankly not prepared to credit this episode with much nuance, either. There were so many stereotypes and awkward bits of writing and gross, creepy jokes that by the time it arrived at Rita's death, I couldn't even think of seeing it as any more subtle or proportioned than anything else had been so far. I may be wrong about that - I don't disagree with your reading of that scene - but if there is nuance there, I suspect it was purely by accident. I may change my mind as my crankiness over the ep dissipates over time, but for now I just don't feel like giving it any more credit than I absolutely have to.

But, yes. Thanks for giving me more to think about and helping me to more finely pinpoint what made me so angry about Rita dying. It's definitely more complex than I was thinking about when I wrote this entry.

Yes to your whole first paragraph. Just--yes.

I am frankly not prepared to credit this episode with much nuance, either. There were so many stereotypes and awkward bits of writing and gross, creepy jokes that by the time it arrived at Rita's death, I couldn't even think of seeing it as any more subtle or proportioned than anything else had been so far.

There were quite a few things in this episode that made me raise an eyebrow, but for the most part they seemed like awkward/isolated gaffes and the general ethos of the ep was much more nuanced. The thing is, though, it did that by setting expectations and then defying them--oh look, here's an awkward nerdy guy who spouts conspiracy theories he cribbed off the internet, of course his room is filled with popular girls laughing at him. Except no, his social outcast status and his history with bullying are more complicated than that, and the author turns around to make him in some part the hero of his own story and make any audience members who laughed at him feel a bit shit. Similar with Rita--oh hey, here is a pretty South Asian medical student who is sharp as a tack, we wouldn't want to feed any stereotypes so of course we will ignore her race and religion, she is 100% rational and secular and fully assimilated British and--oh, wait, scratch the secular. Oh, wait, wow. And the thing I really like about this episode is that the demonstration that faith can be a source of courage and dignity and strength happens almost simultaneously with the realization that faith is what the monster's really after.

Basically I think what struck me is the refusal to victim-blame? Often when the characters who are, for whatever reason, most suceptible to the monster are the first to die, there is a sense that oh, no, they might not have deserved it but they did have it coming. And this episode almost sets that up with the gambler and the conspiracy theorist, neither of which is a particularly well-regarded form of faith. But then even as it reveals that faith is what's getting people killed, it refuses to imply that faith is a weakness or that you should keep yours in check unless you want to be monster bait: it is something that people have in varying forms and degrees, and the people who have more of it do get zapped up to the Space Hotel California and are more vulnerable to the minotaur, but that is due to the nature of the predator and not due to anything they should've done or changed.

So, bottom line--fridging minority characters is never, ever a good thing, and I almost punched the screen when I realized Rita was going to bite it, but it is one of many factors in the balance of an episode's quality. Everyone's got a different balance. It is anyone's right to never want to watch this episode again because they're just sick to the teeth of the disproportionate minority body count, but for me personally, I thought it came out rather well on lots of other factors that mitigated the disappointment somewhat.

I have to say, you were about eight hundred percent more patient with the episode than I was. I came to it really wary after the way the last episode had made me seriously confront how disgusting this season as a whole has been, so I was ready to check out if it too proved disgusting. Which it did. By the time it got to nerdy conspiracy guy's time in the spotlight, I was just throwing out everything that was upsetting me, including him because of his room. I didn't even see the room as a jab at him; to me it was just more gender fuckery (in this instance, I read it as resentment that his nerdiness precluded him from being "entitled" to female adoration).

So, yeah, I definitely stopped picking up on any positives or giving the episode any credit pretty early on in large part because of my growing anger over the direction this season has taken. I will freely admit to that. In the mindset I'm in right now, it simply isn't enough for it to do some stuff right. I need this show to stop fucking up before I can let it make me happy again, and right now I am invulnerable to the hotel because I have no faith that that will ever happen. Definitely not as long as Moffat is running things.

I didn't even see the room as a jab at him; to me it was just more gender fuckery (in this instance, I read it as resentment that his nerdiness precluded him from being "entitled" to female adoration).

I saw it as a combination of both, really, or rather--it's a stereotype presented up-front without comment, which means a bunch of offensive shit all tied up with a hot-pink ribbon. It's a stereotype that ultimately dehumanizes both nerdy guys and popular girls and reduces them to ugly caricatures, which is why I appreciated that it was eventually subverted or at least fleshed out.

But then I do have some faith in Moffat left, because I suspect the way this episode works is the same way the season works as a whole: set up a condition or relationship or character trait that is pretty disturbing when you look at it properly, start it out innocuous and let it fly under the radar, let it build and play it straight until the audience starts to notice and worry, then bring it crashing down in flames. He's already doing it explicitly with Eleven's hubris and namedropping tendencies, the gears are setting in motion for his tendency to handpick companions who need him and adore him and don't question him in the ways that hurt (and to be standoffish with companions who don't fit that mold), and I dearly hope that "Time can be rewritten" is next up on the chopping block. That, and some consequences for his lack of attention to the baby-Melody situation.

And the fact that these are all slightly-mutated holdovers from RTD era or plot gimmicks that could potentially cheapen the narrative make me hopeful that he is building them up so that he can put an end to them. A nice, satisfying, slap-banging sense of closure complete with fireworks show, the kind I expected after Waters of Mars and didn't get.

Yeah, I do like the direction Moffat is taking in a meta sense. He's a good storyteller, even if his stories don't always hold together under close examination, because he knows how to appeal to instinct and emotion and push the "FUCK YEAH" button.

I really wish I could believe that the overwhelming "woman as object" theme in this season was part of that, especially in regards to Amy. If it all did turn out to be a buildup to some kind of explosive subversion, I would fall in love with this show all over again. But the thing is, I'm a Moffat veteran. I knew him first as the creator of Coupling, which was one of my favorite shows for a long time. In retrospect, though, I'm realizing how much that show hangs on and revels in gender stereotypes, to the point where I don't think I should ever watch it again if I want to hold on to any of my love for it. Moffat sucks at gender issues and I am not at all convinced that he even realizes how creepy Amy's story arc this season has been, or how shatteringly depressing it is to reveal that an amazing woman like River Song (who has done so many things that are usually reserved for male characters) quite literally exists because of and predicates her entire life on the Doctor.

I think we'll see some good stuff from him on the themes you talked about, but I don't think he'll expand that to include the gender issues. If anything, I anticipate his making them worse.

Augh, Rita. She was so awesome! :( I hate that I'm so used to awesome guest characters dying in TV shows (especially if they are women and/or PoCs) that from her first scene, I was like "I like her so she is probably going to die." :-\

The bad-sitcom "lol my wife hits me" stuff was so weird that when I was watching the episode, I actually interpreted it as a hint that there was Something Wrong (e.g. one or both of them was possessed, replaced by an alien duplicate, etc.). But no, it was just another case of "writer does not know how to write a married couple without resorting to stereotypes."

And the "Amy Williams" thing, urgh. I guess I get what they're trying to do with that, but it did not please me. Mainly because she apparently does not get to decide what she wants to be called.

As a religious person, I'm still sorting through my thoughts/feelings about the role of faith in this episode. Really don't have it pinned down at all yet.

I'm still on the "yes" side of the "am I enjoying this or not" line, and I expect I'll stay there unless the finale is like super-epic levels of fuckery or something. That said, sometimes I think about how awesome a feminist-run Doctor Who would be. (And then I think about how it will never happen, and I get sad.)

:( I had been picking up the hints that the Ponds might be leaving this episode, so my money was 50% on Rita becoming the new companion, 25% on her telling the Doctor to fuck off because she wasn't going to become his new blankie for his issues, and 25% on her dying. Disappointed as all FUCK that the last one was what happened.

I was like "I like her so she is probably going to die." :-\

Ugh, right? I was hoping so hard that she would make it through the ep, since she was by far the most textured of the guest characters, but I was also like, "Yeah, she's a woman of color, she doesn't have a chance." But I hoped anyway, because occasionally DW manages not to fuck it up with minority characters. So when the episode was like, "lol no let us just destroy your hopes by having the Doctor offer to take her with him as a companion" I was sad and angry because I had not wanted to be right.

The bad-sitcom "lol my wife hits me" stuff was so weird that when I was watching the episode, I actually interpreted it as a hint that there was Something Wrong

Haha, that would have been nice. (I mean, for a given value of "nice.") I am with you on thinking that there is something seriously timey-wimey going on, and GOD I'd like to believe that it will explain wtf happened to Amy's personality and independence, but I am not holding my breath.

And I am uncomfortable with the way Amy treats Rory sometimes, which just adds to the level of YUK already inherent in the idea that Rory flinching in anticipation of a blow is HIGH-LARIOUS. I just. Ugh.

And the "Amy Williams" thing, urgh.

fffff, I did not even notice that. You can bet I would have brought it up in this entry if I had. When was it? It must have happened while I was busy seething over something else, because that is the only way I would have missed that.

As a religious person, I'm still sorting through my thoughts/feelings about the role of faith in this episode.

I will be interested to hear your thoughts. I am not religious, so I obviously can't address the issue from that perspective.

I'm still on the "yes" side of the "am I enjoying this or not" line, and I expect I'll stay there unless the finale is like super-epic levels of fuckery or something.

Yeah. Frustrated as I am right now, I love this show too much, and have for too long, to be willing to give it up any time soon. Shit, after I realized how fucked up Supernatural was, I still let it piss me off for a season and a half before I finally hit my breaking point, and I don't think I was ever so deeply invested in it as I am in Doctor Who. If I do decide to break away from DW, it will be a long and painful process, which I will not be ready to begin unless those super-epic levels of fuckery come into play in the finale.

Edited 2011-09-19 04:25 (UTC)

"The bad-sitcom "lol my wife hits me" stuff was so weird that when I was watching the episode, I actually interpreted it as a hint that there was Something Wrong (e.g. one or both of them was possessed, replaced by an alien duplicate, etc.). But no, it was just another case of "writer does not know how to write a married couple without resorting to stereotypes.""

Yes! I am new to Doctor Who and I kept on asking my girlfriend what the hell was going on and wondering if people were gangers and stuff because everything was just so weird!

Yeah I'm the same :/ I quite "liked" that she was a cool, smart, funny, patriotic Muslim because that isn't shown on tv very often - about Muslims, or British Asians, or religious people in general at the moment (not like "wah wah Christians have it so haaaaaaaard", we don't - but on tv we're generally deluded/oppressed/brainwashed) but apart from that....everything about that was just awful.

And I'm glad I'm not the only one who bristled at the domestic violence.

And the stories are just such a let down as well.

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