So... in short... what's my problem?
I don't have a problem, yet for some inexplicable reason I don't have the attachment I had to the show I once had. I don't eagerly count down the seconds to the next episode, the show feels low priority to me somehow. Is it the lack of publicity? The lack of spoilers to fuel my imagination? The interchangeability of everything after the fourth episode? While these antics are almost certainly deliberate on Chibber's part to rehabilitate the show in the minds of the Great British public, and are definitely working, they've wormed the show free from my deeper affections. I might not have a bad word to say about it, but nor do I feel compelled to demand others watch the show.
Could it be that after four years of Capaldi's bleak, depressing and nihilistic pointlessness (which even the novelization of Twice Upon A Time couldn't redeem, noting that the Twelfth Doctor's character was a complete aberration and totally untenable to the format) where I spent a huge amount of headspace trying to work out
a) why Moffat was determined to make the show utterly unpleasant and horrible
b) why fans thought this was a good thing
c) why it was totally going over my head
there is now a show that requires no such post hoc rationalization and excuses. I am, to be blunt, out of an abusive relationship where I was trying to justify all that unacceptable behavior and now with a well-adjusted and normal companion, I'm just not used to it. Like Buffy, I've become so used to obsessed with an unstable bastardry of my love I'm unable to wrap my head around a good, wholesome replacement.
It's not helped by the fact that no one willing to discuss the show seems happy with it. Whovians, tellingly, is a show designed to cope with Moffat's story-arc riddled version of Who and this uncomplicated version leaves them with literally nothing to talk about or speculate. Instead they're left hyper and unsatisfied by what they watch, often missing huge plot points (they complained that locking up the giant spiders would be cruel because they'd suffocate, missing the fact they were going to suffocate anyway and locking them up would ensure they wouldn't kill anyone in the meantime, or in this episode they believe all the robots are blown up when that doesn't happen).
Online, Sandifer and her cronies flip-flop between hating the show for not rocking the boat while hailing it entirely on what minorities are involved. There's too much sci-fi in the historicals and not enough dark horror in the comedy episodes. Even spara's obsession with "political correctness" rings utterly hollow - even if you were the sort to believe murderous racism above criticism, you'd be stumped trying to find the "good old days" episode that praised it. Doctor Who has always been at its core a show that championed rejecting blind acceptance of the status quo, from the very beginning. Hell, the bigger-on-the-inside police box is that in a nutshell.
The vocal majority in the UK seem to despise the show for "politically-correct snowflake social justice issues" and yet, it always has been. They recoil from anti-racism and anti-capitalism, and crave the days when Tom Baker fought monsters instead of social ideals. Yet, none of that happened. No one - no one - can wave the DVD of this golden age, when the movie cut of Genesis of the Daleks has the Doctor fighting Nazis doing Nazi salutes with iron crosses on their uniforms while arguing about fascism, prejudice and racism. Jodie Doc's visits to Alabama and the Punjab are, if anything, more subtle since they don't need to establish "this is SPACE intolerance."
So, Kerblam! with its "SPACE Amazon store" with a criticism of both huge impersonal corporate industries and also unibomber student radicals is probably the closest to Classic Who as possible. Yet we're supposed to be outraged that the Doctor doesn't support the destruction of this society, because she doesn't approve of mass slaughter of innocent bystanders. When she lets Charlie the Psycho blow himself up out of sheer stubborn stupidity, audiences are disgusted she let the working class villain die rather than chucking the head honchoes to their doom like The Sunmakers. A pacifist hero is not bloodthirsty enough apparently, because no one seems willing to believe it's a satisfying Doctor Who story without sociopolitical figureheads up against the wall when the revolution comes.
In a world where the revolution has come and left us with Donald Trump, Brexit and the revolving conveyor belts of politicians achieving nothing before they stab each other in the back, it feels right that the Doctor is - to quote the apolitical and subtext-free Pertwee incarnation - not to mindlessly destroy everything but make the established system work. Trump would rather let his citizens suffer and die from the imperfect Obamacare system rather than, say, try and fix it. Instant gratification had lead to instant dissatisfaction, and no one seems patient anymore.
So it's entirely appropriate that online criticism is just like Charlie, refusing to accept anyone knows better than them and they have the right to demand total destruction of anything they don't like. As the Doctor notes, Charlie's plan to make mankind revolt against robots involves mankind killing itself. Not appealing to reason or showing sympathy or empathy, but just deciding the ends justifies the means. As Charlie is willing to kill millions of innocent bystanders to trick governments into doing what he wants, transgender campaigners and feminists demand any and all white men to be fired from their jobs. How dare a straight man write for the Paternoster Gang! Only lesbians should be allowed to write for lesbians! Never let Caucasians work for Big Finish! No cis males in the BBC! No wonder they're upset by an episode that dismisses diversity as tokenism, and that ensuring that minority groups get preferential treatment doesn't automatically fix everything.
Kerblam!'s murky grey morality is unwanted nowadays when everyone wants black and white. The galactic shipping company is not a particularly pleasant or stimulating workplace, and the dehumanizing automation is definitely undermining this particular civilization. Charlie's grievance with Kerblam! is legitimate, but if that gives him the right to slaughter all the customers for the greater good, doesn't that mean the company is equally entitled to kill its own workers to confront Charlie face-to-face with the murders he commits? Poor Charlie is desperate, convinced he's painted into a corner. So is the Kerblam! system. The most horrific part of the episode, as sweet little Kira unintentionally kills herself with a booby trap - who is more to blame? Charlie for starting this mess or Kerblam! for trying to end it?
It draws me back to Dario Fo's masterpiece The Accidental Death of an Anarchist, where an idealistic reporter is forced to choose between letting a group of corrupt, murderous policemen die (thus supporting vigilante extremism) or saving them and ensuring they escape all justice and continue their crimes (thus supporting a corrupt system with no desire to improve itself). "These things," grin the maniac narrator, "just can't be solved gradually."
So the play has two endings. The journalist lets the coppers die (with the Italian audience cheering the triumph of extremist philosophy) or she saves them and they immediately kill her because she knows too much (which the audience laugh at because it's black comedy at its darkest). The maniac is the first to say that he'd prefer an ending where no one died and the bad guys were punished, but that it's simply not an option.
To quote Jodie's predecessor, "Sometimes the only choices you have are bad ones, but you still have to choose."
Alas, it seems no one is willing to accept anything than their own personal vindication as an acceptable ending.
Right, Spara?
5/10. Better but still dodgy. Like a cross between McCoy era Doctor Who and the RTD era. Liked the satire on Amazon type companies but felt rather CBBC ish and very preachy about the dangers of radicalisation - like the government's Prevent programme turned into an episode. Could have been a good satire on Amazon type companies and how they exploit their staff however this was spoiled by the direction it took, portraying the young man as a murderous radical. How should our society deal with the fact that automation could indeed in the future destroy millions of jobs? Should we not move to a universal income system now in preparation and also move to a four day working week? Thankfully there were no black lesbians with disabilities in it this week, but it also lacked the UK's finest actor, Adam Rickett.
Sheesh.
(There's even a perfectly-judged gag reference to The Unicorn and the Wasp which, given the similarity between "Agatha Christie and the Giant Wasp" and "Amelia Earhardt and the Giant Spider" presumably comes across as a running gag to new viewers. No doubt the "Emily Pankhurst and the Giant Cricket" anecdote will be revealed before the series is over.)
The plot of a dodgy Space Amazon, despite its superficial similarity to The Warehouse goes off in a completely different and clever direction. The creepy delivery men manage to recapture the spooky uncertainty of the Ood and their unreliable loyalties, being both sympathetic and terrifying, likeable (as they diss Lee Mack's stand up comedy) and sickening ("Great conversation, guys, but let's pick up the pace!"). Speaking of Lee Mack, he acquits himself well for both scenes his in rather than his insult comic public persona, but his obviously-doomed character is killed off-screen. Kira, meanwhile, is impossibly sweet and the most likeable female guest star since Grace and if they hadn't killed her off, she would automatically qualify as TARDIS crew member. Despite their smaller amount of screen-time, both make more impression than the "good" and "nasty" senior management who generously give their workers two weeks paid leave, but send them off work for a month if not indefinitely.
Another bone of contention, as I mentioned earlier, is the belief the Doctor - having made a big thing about her best friends being robots - apparently destroying all the delivery droids. She doesn't. The poison-filled bubble wrap isn't designed to harm robots, because if it did the plan to incriminate the creepy mechanical men wouldn't work. True, we see them disappear in a huge shockwave of poisonous smoke, but they aren't shown to be destroyed and nor should they be. Like the "cruelty to giant spiders" this is just negative confirmation bias.
As Ryan himself says - "That's not how we roll."
A pity more can't follow his example.
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