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

[tysolna]

Hm.
There are, to me, two viewpoints to consider, in-show and out-show; one from the Doctor's perspective, as the main character, one from the writer's perspective.
From the Doctor's POV, there is no racism (he says something along the lines of not noticing colour in Shakespear Code if I'm not mistaken) and besides, they are all alien to him.
In VotD, he reacts pretty much the same to every death (ok, to Astrid's more, but then she was a potential love interest companion, and one more he failed to rescue). Nowhere in VotD is Morvin noted as a man of colour, and neither is his "mixed marriage"; in fact, he and his wife are only noted for being fat (weighteism?). They are probably representing the typical British middle-class, spludge on a journey on a cruise ship and stuff yourself with free food type travellers

[wolfy_writing]

I'm hesitant to consider something produced in 2007 as particularly racially progressive, or even free of racism, on the grounds that it's better than something produces in the mid-sixties.

[seeingred]

That's generally my POV too. I have a feeling that, generally speaking, Who has simply reflected its times when it comes to race and gender - it's likely that that's still true.

[aligoestonz]

Ignoring the discussion of the previous Christmas specials for the moment, and just concentrating on VotD, I think you're missing Spiralsheep's point about the deaths in this episode. No matter what the dialogue between the Doctor and Mr Copper implies about who they'd rather have survived, what actually happens to the characters concerned has to be considered as well. And that's where it all starts getting a bit unpleasant

[seeingred]

If spiralsheep had managed to raise these issues as clearly and truthfully as you have here, I wouldn't have had any problem with her posting!

In particular IMHO it's worth thinking about whether the "who lives and who dies" theme of the story is enough to balance who does live and who does die, and how they die. I need to watch it a few more times and think about how successful that was. (And yeah - Foon's "I can't live without him" suicide is pretty unpleasant.)

[vindaloo_vixen]

I don't think RTD is deliberately racist or anything, more that some of the non-racially-motivated choices have unfortunate results in the perception of the final program. (Especially viewers who are determined to see racism in everything regardless.) I can't say that he's always getting it right, but I don't think he's trying to get it wrong.

As for Mickey, exactly - he voluntarily left his home Earth, willingly stayed on Cybus-Earth, and didn't seem horribly put out by the idea about having to stay there once travel back and forth was off the table. And he was hardly forced out - Rose initially asked him not to leave (though I can see that what she did or didn't really want is, as, Mickey points out, another question).

Though on a related note, it did feel to me as though the Doctor declined to take Mr Copper along at the end because he's not a peppy young thing. On the other hand, a million pounds might just have eased the poor man's suffering a bit...

[pbristow]

Just one nit-pick:
"To say he is "repatriated" is, frankly, bizarre."

Yes, which is the point she's obliquely making. The quote is:
"[Mickey] was "repatriated", in the BNP sense of the word"

Note the quotes around the "r" word, and the reference to the BNP (British National Party). She's referring to the line of argument that people of "ethnic origin" (my paraphrase) should be "repatriated" to their "land of origin" (again, my paraphrase) - despite the fact that they were actually born over here.

Disclaimer: I have no idea if the BNP have ever actually expressed this line of argument as a policy; however, it's consistent with the general popular impression of what they stand for.

[seeingred]

Thanks - that does make her remark make a little more sense, even if it still has nothing to do with what was actually broadcast!

[ashamel]

I'm jumping out of the journal, just because I tend to scan all this debate before I see the actual episodes in question, which is somewhat distracting, alas.

[Further comments nixed on the grounds I'm not trying to be antagonistic. Modern DW is not really for me, as I have noted before.]

[seeingred]

Sorry about the SPOILER problem. I'd value your insights as a horror movie expert!

[ashamel]

I can't make any claims to expertise these days, though the debate about representation in horror is undoubtedly on-going.

Anything in which a large proportion of the cast dies, more or less by definition, probably magnifies such things :-)

As for the journal, I'm sure it would be better if I could watch the episodes in good time, or I had other sources for a wider ranging debate. I'm not sure either is likely to happen.

Meanwhile, I've just been reading about the original Voyage of the Damned, which had race as its central theme. I'm not sure this has any bearing on the modern version -- maybe 'Titanic' was already taken.