Torchwood
jaimie2i raises some worthwhile issues over at torch_wood, some of which are, happily, already being addressed by the much-improved second series, notably the tragic underuse of Tosh.
One thing in particular I want to address:
There's also - as I've seen other people mention - the issue of Lisa and Beth. That makes two black women who were pumped full of bullets inside the Hub. Others have said it could be casting, but this is a pattern I'm uncomfortable with. Regardless of intent, patterns send messages.
In some ways, Sleeper can be seen as Cyberwoman done right. Both stories centre around a Black woman who, through no fault of her own, is torn between her humanity and an emerging, hostile alien side; in both stories, the women die. That's about where the similarities end, though. Beth battles her alien side to help our heroes and save the world, where Lisa was purely hostile. Lisa must be killed; Beth gives her life. The embarrassing hypersexualisation of Lisa is mercifully absent with Beth, who is as ordinary as chips.
Some fans have complained that by casting a Black actress as Beth, the show is presenting Black women as the Other; but IMHO that's the exact opposite of what the story does: it features a Black woman as "everyman", as standing for humanity and the human race, as the very definition of human.
I'd be more concerned about this if the other sleeper agents were also women or men of colour, and if there weren't also more positive representations of Black women in the show (Detective Swanson, Martha Jones).
One thing I would like to see in Torchwood would be more South Asian characters. Doctor Who has a much larger percentage of Black characters than there are Britons of African and Carribean descent, so that's great, but there's actually a larger percentage of Desis in the UK. (There was Suzie Costello, of course, although she does tend to be shot an awful lot.) The shows' makers may possibly have fallen into the assumption that "race" equals "Black", if you see what I mean; or perhaps they've got a US audience in mind. (It would also be nice to see some couples in which neither partner was White. :-)
One thing in particular I want to address:
There's also - as I've seen other people mention - the issue of Lisa and Beth. That makes two black women who were pumped full of bullets inside the Hub. Others have said it could be casting, but this is a pattern I'm uncomfortable with. Regardless of intent, patterns send messages.
In some ways, Sleeper can be seen as Cyberwoman done right. Both stories centre around a Black woman who, through no fault of her own, is torn between her humanity and an emerging, hostile alien side; in both stories, the women die. That's about where the similarities end, though. Beth battles her alien side to help our heroes and save the world, where Lisa was purely hostile. Lisa must be killed; Beth gives her life. The embarrassing hypersexualisation of Lisa is mercifully absent with Beth, who is as ordinary as chips.
Some fans have complained that by casting a Black actress as Beth, the show is presenting Black women as the Other; but IMHO that's the exact opposite of what the story does: it features a Black woman as "everyman", as standing for humanity and the human race, as the very definition of human.
I'd be more concerned about this if the other sleeper agents were also women or men of colour, and if there weren't also more positive representations of Black women in the show (Detective Swanson, Martha Jones).
One thing I would like to see in Torchwood would be more South Asian characters. Doctor Who has a much larger percentage of Black characters than there are Britons of African and Carribean descent, so that's great, but there's actually a larger percentage of Desis in the UK. (There was Suzie Costello, of course, although she does tend to be shot an awful lot.) The shows' makers may possibly have fallen into the assumption that "race" equals "Black", if you see what I mean; or perhaps they've got a US audience in mind. (It would also be nice to see some couples in which neither partner was White. :-)