remindmeofthe | (no subject)

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In other news, Amy has clearly been replaced by a ganger again, this one of decidedly less sophistication.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.

Threaded | Flat

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.)

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.

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.)

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.