ginger beer does not seem to have much of a shelf life

[vanitashaze]

Re: The Unicorn and the Wasp...

According to redscarlach, this is the first episode they filmed with Catherine Tate, and it really shows - not just the snappy dialogue typical to Doctor Who, but a lot of good physical comedy. I quite liked it, really, and LOL'd at the ginger beer commentI did have one bone of contention, though: the death of Roger, which

Comments

[futuresoon]

Well, there was that pair of old ladies in Gridlock. And...have there actually been any non-regular gay couples in the Whoniverse, besides them? Unless we're counting Tosh and Mary, I suppose, but Mary's inevitable demise was less "because she's gay" and more "because she's sleeping with a regular", which is honestly more the kiss of death than anything else. Perhaps literally.

For other shows--House once had a pair of lesbians on it, and they both survived, though the state of their relationship was a little up in the air.

*is now running through every New Who episode she can think of in her head, because she is bored and wants to prove some point or another* Lessee, Algy and Jack in The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances...and then, you know, I don't think there were any others. But! I also scanned for straight couples, and, whups, they don't seem to have a very high survival rate either: the married couple in Rose, and then there weren't any couples until Algy and Jack--except, wait, Pete and Jackie in Father's Day--and then the guy

[vanitashaze]

Revised thesis[ 1], then: couples don't have much of a shelf life in dramallama-shows.

...And have I ever told you how much I love that icon? Because, um, yeah. Reminds me of our production of B&tB.

[ 1] There is far too much social activism going around lately. It's like, let's hang Obama signs, flamethrow the Capital, criticize television shows! And so forth.

[futuresoon]

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a television show in possession of a couple must be in want of a death scene. *nods*

(I love that icon too, but I can never remember where I actually got it from...I suspect it is just One of Those Things.)

Representation and privilege, part 1

[ticketsonmyself]

I'd been thinking about that for a while, with respect to all the TV shows I've watched at least semi-regularly. I'm sure things are different for The L Word, Queer as Folk, or other dramas that focus on queer characters, but in my viewing experience the answer is no for weekly television dramas. (In one episode of Arrested Development, two police officers reveal to the main character that they're in a homosexual relationship. Camp acting and gay jokes abound, as per usual on AD. They walk off with their newborn baby and survive the credits, but then again, it's a comedy.) In the comedy-drama Wonderfalls, Sharon and Beth have a tumultuous on-and-off relationship, but Sharon's a main character. I can't recall whether their relationship is referenced after episode 9 (of 13 total episodes).

On DW, there's one lesbian couple in "Gridlock" who I think survive the credits. As for Torchwood: all the female same-sex encounters/relationships we've seen thus far fit the Evil/Dead Lesbian cliché pretty well. (I'm not counting Suzie kissing Gwen

Representation and privilege, part 2

[ticketsonmyself]

Given the show's negative history of favorable f/f on-screen representation and its very mixed history of favorable, non-doomed m/m on-screen representation, I think only Ianto/Jack qualifies for the category of positive, non-doomed representation thus far. (And Tosh-the only member of TW so far who's been in a same-sex relationship not involving Jack-is dead now, so that closes off that possible avenue. I'm not sure I'll be watching, but I hope the replacements get significant non-doomed same-sex action. Wouldn't bet on it, though.) Overall television representation for same-sex encounters/relationships is obviously far less common than that for heterosexual encounters/relationships, and each time a show chooses to portray same-sex relationships is weighted far more heavily because of it. So too are the characteristics of those representations, and how often those types occur

Representation and privilege, part 3

[ticketsonmyself]

It's not enough to write the black character "just like" all your white characters, because race is not invisible to most of us and it doesn't have no consequences. In order to challenge people's already racist assumptions about black characters, writers have to work that much harder, and they have to work not blind. They have to work with their eyes open and their brains engaged and with the awareness of subtle signals and context and connotation that anyone who writes for a living should damn well be conversant with. To do less than that is to write lazily, to write foolishly, to write contemptuously of one's characters and one's craft, and to do all that because you can't or won't go the extra mile to bring race into the ... stuff that factors into your writing does, in fact, have racist implications.

Make the appropriate substitutions with respect to sexual orientation instead of race, and there you have it. The visibility of same-sex relationships on TW is a start; now both TW and the New Whoverse in general need more that aren'

Re: Representation and privilege, part 3

[vanitashaze]

...Jack with men in "Something Borrowed... Eh? What is this? To my knowledge there were only wedding photos.

I think that with the famed Torchwood Lesbians, the thought behind that was further alienation between Jack and Torchwood. Like, these are the two creatures on the planet that Jack (supposedly) can't charm himself out of captivity with, but since we all know that all heterosexual women are completely gullible to this (never mind that they could just say, no), they therefore have to be Man-Hating Lesbian Minxes whose relationship seems not to exist for their own benefit, but for the sole purpose of taunting Jack. Which is, how you say - Also Not Cool