Can you Hear Me?

[louisedennis]

I've felt strangely reluctant to write about Can you Hear Me? not because I particularly disliked the episode but parts of its themes seem so big, and the reaction to them online so divided and largely beyond my experience, it feels like walking into a minefield and I don't want to get hurt or, more importantly, given mental health was so central

Comments

[daniel_saunders]

You know I have experience of mental health issues, and you may have seen elsewhere that my Mum has literally just been diagnosed with breast cancer ("very treatable" according to the doctor, but still scary). I'm not sure if that makes me more or less likely to respond well to this episode.

For what it's worth, I didn't have a problem with the Doctor's behaviour in that conversation. I'm pretty out of the loop from online fandom these days, so this is the first I've heard of how divisive it is. To be honest, a lot of people do react like that. You could say Doctor Who is reflecting that or you could say it should be showing how to respond better. I'm not sure that there necessarily is a "good" or "correct" way to respond to conversations like that - so much depends on the needs, histories and personalities of the people in the conversation. I'm not sure that I would necessarily give a perfect response if someone came to me with mental health issues or other anxieties

[louisedennis]

A problem with a lot of discourse about media - at least in social media - is a clear tension between depicting what does happen and what people would like to happen or feel ought to happen. Doctor Who is more idealistic (often) than many programs so you could argue that it is more reasonable to expect the Doctor to handle difficult conversations well (but that does ignore a huge amount of (particularly modern) Doctor Who).

I think I feel that it is definitely the sort of story Doctor Who should be attempting from time to time, but I'm not sure it was the most successful attempt.

[daniel_saunders]

Agreed about the "what I would like to happen" problem. It's very easy to slip into playing Fantasy Script Editors/Producers, plus a lot of fans have very specific ideas of how the Doctor should behave that aren't necessarily driven by anything on screen, but by how they want to see her behave.

[daniel_saunders]

I should probably add that if my mental health issues and my Mum's physical health make me empathise with Yaz and Graham, my autistic social interaction issues make me empathise just as much with the Doctor's social awkwardness, so perhaps it's all swings and roundabouts for me.

[louisedennis]

Indeed. I read the whole story as an attempt to deal with these issues from a range of angles. Contrast the Doctor and Graham, to Yaz and he sister and the policewoman, to Ryan and his friend - all depicting different kinds of conversations about mental health. I'm not sure the story was attempting to prescribe what should happen as explore what does without necessarily drawing conclusions and reflecting a number of different situations and perspectives.