Doctor Who & My (Not-So) Pending Divorce
On the rare night my hubby and I have time together at home, we often watch TV. Thing is, there are only a few shows we like watching together.
Blockbuster films with “popcorn munching” plots are easier for us to agree upon than keeping with TV series. He’s more into a hard-assed-grumpy-detective-with-a-heart-of-gold than a rouge-mage-with-an-attitude-and-a-heart-of-gold.
Sometimes I start a series, and he catches on. That happened with “Face Off” after the first season. But it’s been cancelled. We started “Vikings” together, but when we lost our PVR, we lost the motivation to watch it together. Then there’s “Grimm,” a show we discovered on vacay in Vancouver (filmed in Portland). We took in every episode together. The only time that show caused a problem between us was when it took days after a recording for us to watch it at the same time.
Phase One: The Jody Wound
Bruce (hubby) was one of the dudes who wasn’t sure about scripting The Doctor as a woman. I pointed out that it was ridiculous that he should be okay with a two-hearted-regenerating-time-hopping-alien who is only male gendered. He even liked Missy as The Doctor’s time-lord/lady enemy.
But mess with the original?
No matter how many times I see the video for the Doctor Who Helpline, it still cracks me up.
Needless to say, as a liberal feminist, I hammered at my diamond-in-the-rough husband until he came around. He threatened to withhold his applause, but I knew he’d come to understand that all things change. After all, Peter Capaldi got fan-flack for being “too old” even though the first Doctor was an old man.
Those young sexy Doctors had a lot to answer for, apparently.
Phase Two: The Jody Salve
After months of agonizing, my tentatively reformed hubby sat down with his teddy bear ready to take in Jody Whittaker’s performance.
Episode one ended and Bruce didn’t explode into a torrent of British expletives. In fact, he seemed to enjoy Whittaker’s take on this icon of Bruce’s youth.
The more he watched the show, the more he willingly accepted the latest gender-altering regeneration of one of Britain’s most fantasy characters.
Phase Three: Monster Deprivation
At the end of Whittaker’s first season, Doctor Who lost a viewer in Bruce. And it wasn’t Whittaker’s fault.
He yearned for the presence of a monster, any monster, from The Doctor’s previous incarnations. Cybermen have been his fave since he was a wee lad hiding under his covers from the robot-men on TV.
I’ll admit, the tooth-guy was affa-weird. But hey, creativity is often “out there” and the more monsters writers create, the more interesting (?) they have to be to stand out. I mean, you’re not going to forget tooth-head for a while, will you?
As for me, I didn’t mind the new monsters and threats. I certainly didn’t have enough longing for what came before to let their absence stop me from watching the upcoming season.
Phase Four: The Lecture Migraine
My heart cheered gladly when Bruce said, “Jody’s Doctor is fine but they’re not even giving her a chance.”
But he wasn’t talking about the fans. He was talking about the writers.
And here’s where he and I come to odds.
Bruce wants to see Doctor Who episodes that don’t have heavy-handed messages or emotionally drippy plots. Don’t worry, he also moaned about Rose and The Doctor falling in love. Remember: hard-assed-detectives are his zen.
It’s not that his fave space fantasy show lacked political and moral messages before. Certainly, it did. But Bruce is happier with a character yelling, “You bastards!” at major landmarks destroyed in a post-apocalyptic landscape than what he’s getting with the current Doctor Who. When he saw that climate change was the theme of episode three, he didn’t watch it.
I can’t say that I wholly disagree with Bruce about the show’s delivery of its messages either. I like some of the plot conflicts, like when the team encountered racism in “Rosa.” In this particular episode, The Doctor and her companions sat in the same bus as Rosa Parks on the day she refused to move to the back because she wasn’t a white woman. If they had interfered–because how Rosa was treated FEELS wrong–then the civil rights movement would have lost a pillar of its foundation.
From a creative writing prospective, I loved that scene and the way it made viewers comprehend the deeper message of humanity and equality. Sadly, racism isn’t an “in the past” thing.
And maybe that’s why I don’t mind the show’s evolution into heavy-handed messages. Bruce is a decent man, and he’s by no means a racist, misogynist, anti-environmentalist, or capitalist. But he feels like he every episode lectures him “like a schoolboy” when all he wants is happy-go-lucky space fantasy with a side of morality.
I’m more forgiving of these scripts. Words have power and pointing out the flaws of humanity and the cultures we create has always had a home in speculative fiction.
In truth, we’re not getting divorced over Doctor Who. Who reads blogs unless they have click-baity titles, right? Although, we might get divorced over the temperature of the house this winter.
Phase Bruce: What He Has To Say
I get a quick paragraph in here to respond to what actually is a topic of conversation in our household.
Yes I am a Dr Who fan, and have been since a child (born in 1975…remember watching it as far back as the late 70s). Although the “tone” of my objection to the new Dr Who had the edge of “intolerance” to it, I consider myself more of an even individual…I don’t particularly care about that stuff IF the story/writing is good.
I have never been the type of Whovian who pretends that the old stuff is all classic, or that the New stuff was the second coming (some of Tennant’s episodes were BORING!!!). I feel that the writers of Jody Whittaker have missed the boat in focussing ENTIRELY on a “moral” message each show, rather than just a decent sci-fy fantasy script.
I keep hearing the rebuttal about “Dr Who was always educational!”. I must have missed that part with episodes like “Pyramids of Mars”, “EarthShock” and “Blink”….just decent writing and decent stories. For me they have done Whittaker a disservice in giving her a pile of crap to work with…which has not helped her in the current “online hardcore intolerant” fan world, but has also not helped when I get dragged into that argument just because I don’t like what has happened to Dr Who.
Oh well…..get the Weeping Angels back, gimme a decent Cybermen episode with no messing around, and maybe…..maybe….I’ll come back….for now…the show has lost me (along with quite a few others….ratings are DOWN!!!)
Phase You: What Do You Think?
Do you think I’m being too hard on him, telling him he’s being too hard on Doctor Who? What do you think of the new series?