Voyage of the Damned

[seeingred]

spiralsheep's attack on the Doctor Who Christmas special, Voyage of the Damned is misleading and riddled with errors.

In it, she states:

"out of the pool of potential survivors, the fat, black, working class man is killed first"This is incorrect. Morvin is the second of the Doctor's group to die, after the white, upper-class steward who opens a door onto

Comments

[seeingred]

the Lakoffian "frame"

Ooh! What's that?

[seeingred]

That article's fascinating - thanks!

When you say "echo chambers", do you mean the same thing I mean when I describe online debate as "incestuously amplified" - that is, people who agree getting together and hyping each other up?

[jonquil]

I think it's stretching to call the steward one of the pool of possible survivors. Until the steward makes his mistake, most of the people on that deck are still alive. It's only after the steward's action that the survivors are reduced to the Poseidon Adventure team who will try to make it to the top deck.

[seeingred]

I've just rewatched that scene; the only person who dies when the door is opened is the steward himself.

[jonquil]

My mistake.

[seeingred]

*tips hat again*

The Hitler comment

[jonquil]

is no longer tabloid-only. It was mentioned in the Guardian blog on the day it happened. The Guardian's reputable, and you can certainly be sure the libel lawyers had a look at that one.

'Thirdly, when asked who, living or dead, Russell would like to see as the Doctor, he replied "Hitler". All the tabloid journalists in the room pricked up their ears while BBC publicists tightened their sphincters.'

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/tv/2007/12/doctor_who_christmas_special.html (scroll down)

Re: The Hitler comment

[seeingred]

*tips hat*

[gillyp]

I thought spiralsheep's rant was utter nonsense, but VotD was still pants - a dreadful disappointment.

[travlr1]

Technically, maybe the first "death" is the Captain. Furthermore, the deaths of the Steward and Morvin are accidents. Foon and Bannakaffalatta and Astrid commit acts of self-sacrifice. Frame, who somehow survives being shot, is brave and survives. Slade and Copper survive at the end, but only through being clever or cowardly. Minor characters and passengers are often killed by the Host, but none of the main characters in the episode are

[seeingred]

Because the aliens are so similar to humans, I think we can still talk about race, class, and gender when it comes to the Stoians (Stoites? Sto-ons? Sto-aways?)

*thinking hat on* For example, we can ask why Morvin gets bumped off so quickly, even though he's not the first to die. In old films they used to often kill off the minor Black character early on - suggesting he was worth less than the other characters, or of less interest to the audience. (In some recent films, too - although the cliche is so well-known now that it also gets made fun of, as in the movie Evolution.) So there is an (obviously unintentional) echo of that in Morvin's early demise.

[jblum]

First question which needs asking: was Morvin even written as black? Would Russell even have given the color of the casting of a minor supporting artist a second thought?

[seeingred]

Do you mean the casting director should get the blame instead? :-) Even if the script doesn't specify Morvin's race, surely RTD would have a say in the casting anyway.