The sad thing is that the character of the Doctor used to represent a distinctively British kind of amateur anti-authoritarianism. He took on the might of the Daleks with the equivalent of a screwdriver and a well-worn scarf. Now he surrenders to the pronoun police without so much as a quibble.
|
|||||
|
We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people. Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house] Authors
Arts, Tech & CultureCivil LibertiesCommentary
EconomicsSamizdatistas |
Samizdata quote of the day – from anti-authoritarian to bootlickerPerry de Havilland (Wiltshire) · Arts & Entertainment · Culture Wars · Science Fiction & Fantasy · Slogans & Quotations · UK affairs November 30th, 2023 |
 23 comments to Samizdata quote of the day – from anti-authoritarian to bootlicker |
Who Are We?The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling. We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe. CategoriesArchivesFeed This PageLink Icons   |
|||
All content on this website (including text, photographs, audio files, and any other original works), unless otherwise noted, is licensed under a Creative Commons License. |
|||||
Just another show to be avoided in the Great Drawdown of British TV Viewing for me.
I’ve been letting go of police procedurals (these were once big favourites) because they are increasingly overstuffed with diversity stereotypes. Is it me or are the Scottish ones the worst for this? I might buy such varied demographic representation in a show based in London. But Kirkcaldy? Come off it.
And now even period dramas (once a proud mainstay; no other country makes them quite as well as the UK) must have an anachronistic multicultural cast.
Just another show to be avoided…
– Fact – and the good news is that the pendulum has started to swing back from its present hard-left position, but it’s being bl00dy slow about it. What made TV “interesting” in the first place was “new worlds, new worldviews”; but now unless you tick all the right boxes of the global elites who decide who gets to present their worldview on TV, you won’t ever see the flashing red light on the TV camera anyways. I think the only things I’ve watched on TV for years now are DVD’s (and those were “Nightmare Before Christmas” and “Polar Express”), and the occasional weather channel peek when I’m going out somewhere.
Veteran of the Troughton-Pertwee-Baker era here. As I think I may have observed here before, time was I would hurry straight home from school so as to be absolutely-sure not to miss a second of Dr. Who. Now I wouldn’t turn around to watch it if it was on.
llater,
llamas
My wife and I have been buying a few classic discs against the chance that they will be suppressed or edited into ideological conformity. We even considered buying Gone with the Wind, but decided that we didn’t actually need to watch it again.
It struck me that Daleks zooming around shouting “Exterminate! Exterminate!” with the slightest of provocation are very like today’s activists. Nothing except world domination is acceptable.
So perhaps the Doctor, once a ‘distinctively British kind of amateur anti-authoritarian’, is now at odds with the Narrative. Will he buckle under? The signs are not good – scriptwriters *have* to follow the Narrative to keep their jobs.
Perhaps us modern non-conformists should start carrying sonic screwdrivers around?
Asking the alien its pronouns was not the worst bit .
The worst bit was the line: “We can do something male-presenting Doctor could never do.”
Implying all of this:
* What you can do depends on your sex
* What you can do depends on the sex you present
* All of the above is true despite that sex is a social construct
“The Timeless Children” destroyed the back story of Dr Who – so (unless that is removed – “retcon the retcon”) it is impossible to take this programme back from the Critical Theory “Woke” Marxists.
I think that Irish media critic Dave Cullen (whatever his other politics may be – this is NOT a general endorsement) is correct on the broader matter – these shows and films do not belong to us, they belong to corporations which are either government owned (like the BBC) or the shares are controlled by corporate entities such as Credit Bubble banks (which create “money” from nothing – and are backed by governments) or corporate entities such as BlackRock, State Street and Vanguard.
When my father was born, 1913, no one cared about the radio, television and films being controlled by the left – because radio and television did not exist, and films were of very minor importance.
We have to go back to making our own music, and telling our own stories – my father’s generation did not really care about the corporate entertainment media (it was not that big even in the 1920s – although radio and silent films existed), and neither should we.
“But I am no good at making music or telling stories” – you do not have to be, get involved in your local community, you will find that other people are good at making music and telling stories.
Elon Musk just publicly told the head of Disney corporation to “go fuck yourself” over the Corporate effort to censor X (formally X) – but one does not have to be rich to tell these corporate leftists (this bizarre alliance of corporate “Capitalists” with Marxism) to fuck themselves.
Just do not pay to watch their films and their entertainment shows.
“But Paul – the BBC Tax”.
Yes, the failure to get rid of the “License Fee” can not be honestly defended – no more than the failure to get rid of the far left “Ofcom” (which censors the truth and winks at lies) and the rest of the “Administrative State” can not be honestly defended.
“In Office, but not in power”.
The Corporate head of Disney did not create Disney – Walt Disney did, and the Corporate types would not allow a man like Walt into their HQ now – other than as a security guard or a cleaner.
And the modern “Woke” Marxists did not create Dr Who – Terry Nation did.
The people who control all these things now are university “educated” parasites – they control what they did not create, indeed what they secretly HATE-AND-DESPISE.
But there we are – which is why we must go back to making our own music and telling our own stories, in our own communities.
For me, Dr Who was never as good after Tom Baker.
The BBC decided to make the Doctor a woman, and ratings tanked. The BBC then decided to show the public who was boss by casting a black gay actor as the Doctor. That will show the haters. Because of the unique way the BBC is funded. By force.
I watch a fair bit of You Tube content now that I can watch it on telly. Citizen’s television I like to call it. I like stuff about classic cars and motorbikes and videos about how they build pianos. You can also see old Top of the Pops reruns that don’t even have the dodgy DJs edited out.
Daleks zooming around shouting “Exterminate! Exterminate!”. They now are gainfully employed in ‘Human Resources’ in a large business no longer near you.
The amount of destruction these left-wing idiots have managed to wreak on everything that they touch ought to be something that causes them to rethink their positions and ideas.
It won’t, though. The headline I saw the other day really gave me some pause, as cynical as I am: 5.2 trillion dollars worth of lost value due to ESG “initiatives”.
How the hell is that even remotely sustainable? These people are ‘effing nuts, and they’re dragging the rest of the world into the abyss with them, while all the rational people stand by and wring their hands, afraid to say or do anything against it, lest they be termed “racist”, “sexist”, or just plain “hateful”.
Idiots, all.
For all the talk of abolishing the license fee does anyone seriously doubt that, once streaming service users reach critical mass, it will be replaced by direct governmental funding of c£5bn p.a.
After all just for once it appears to be true that “women are most affected” by being prosecuted for non-payment so who amongst the bien pensant could possibly object to the gravy train being put on a former footing. Viewers? Who needs them anyway.
If a conservative government with an 80 seat majority never seriously tried to rein in the bbc it’s never going to happen.
Returning to Doctor Who the amusing aspect for me is the serial clusterfuck that is todays Disney Corporation has “joined forces” with the bbc to shepherd this once loved franchise along the same road to gender-obsessed oblivion already trodden by Star Wars, Indiana Jones, the MCU etc etc.
In the good old 1970s, Dr Who villains were utterly murderous, like in the Terror of the Autons, where an extra-terrestrial beast animated shop window dummies who went on a killing spree. That is a scene that was considered fine for the children’s TV slot.
But there were also pointers to moral questions, such as the Doctor’s dilemma over killing an entire species.
As with any writing, the narcissic obsession with fads of the time of writing destroys the piece and makes it stuck in the time it was written. Most of Classic Who is watchable outside the era it was written in, anybody in the future watching today’s Who will be thinking “WTF????”.
You can write fiction anchored in an era without making the anchor the be all and end all of it. Robinson Crusoe, Black Beauty, HG Wells, Oscar Wilde, Merchant Ivory. All are written set in the time of their content but don’t result in the reading thinking “huh? what the hell are they obsessing about this for?”
If you want to write an author tract, there are well-worked methods to do it without destroying the story. Starship Troopers, All Quiet in the Western Front, for example. A lot of recent Who is hectoring lecturing, not narrative.
Are Daleks male or female? They have the long stick like protrusions which surely make them male, but the bumps all over them always made my childish mind think they were covered in boobies.
Of course… evidently they are intersex. How ahead of the game were they all those years ago.
Of course to suggest that the Doctor is narrow minded and assumes his narrow experience fits for everyone is hardly a surprise to watchers of the show. With the TARDIS he has access to anywhere and any time in the Universe but somehow seems to spend nearly all his time in 20th Century London. I think he needs to press a few different buttons on the control panel.
I always assumed that Daleks were some kind of clones. Was there a moral lesson in the way that Davros created them and then acted surprised when they overthrew him and took charge of their own affairs?
I have never understood the fuss about Dr. Who. After all, it’s just a poorly-written low-budget low-production-values kids’ sorta SF series from more than half a century ago. How on earth did it become some sort of cult?
But then most popular “culture” passes me by anyway…
Johnathan Peace – yes Tom Baker was the peak,
Peter MacFarlane – yes it is “poorly written” now, but it did not use to be poorly written. That is the point.
It was once very well written, from the start 60 years ago. The Frankfurt School Marxist “Woke” left can not make good things of their own, they go only take over good things and ruin them – as they have done with Disney and so much else.
“And now even period dramas (once a proud mainstay; no other country makes them quite as well as the UK) must have an anachronistic multicultural cast.”
Consider the example of random diversity casting in the BBC TV movie “Troy: Fall of a City.” Black actors portraying both Achilles and Zeus. However, the genuine (if post-Homeric) black hero in Greek Mythology is Memnon King of Ethiopia. A powerful king allied with Troy, described as a powerful king and a great personal fighter. He nearly beats Achilles in personal combat, and was only defeated due to an intervention of the gods. Anyway, if these “progressive” casting directors were actually concerned about black actors and people, why was this hero not included in the script? He was a genuine black mythological hero, as opposed to the fake black mythological hero Achilles. Achilles has been white (and blonde) since somewhere toward the end of the Bronze age.
So, what are these casting directors trying to accomplish? I think they are just setting up an opportunity to virtue signal by screaming “Racist” at anyone who questions their view of inclusion. If they were genuinely trying to include black people, why not put Memnon in their production? Why not make movies about the rich, varied, and interesting genuine black figures in history, as Africa contains multiple, actual historical figures. The 25th Dynasty of Egypt comes to mind, and Mansa Musa, and Shaka Zulu. Those are facinating figures and would make excellent subjects of film, with the added virtue of being actual black people.
Seems obvious to me that these “progressive” types have convinced themselves that the only way for a black actor to succeed is by mimicking a white character, real or mythical. And that really is racist.
@DiscoveredJoys,
If Leftists are indeed like the Daleks does that mean the Left will now “be at the mercy of anyone with enough sense to run up a flight of stairs!”? Asking for a friend! ^_~
Fraser Orr, the Doctor (I think it was one of Tennant’s lines) explained that a Tardis was meant to have 6 people operating it, thus the control area was six-sided. He probably hasn’t got the time to fly it as well as a full crew could. (A Time Lord not having enough time? How ironic!)
Dear Towering Barbarian- Daleks DO have anti-gravity, so they can hover and fly, but they would only do so if it were more efficient. Fear not! Daleks claim to be completely rational, even though they never know how The Doctor keeps defeating them- Leftoids are emotional, always emoting for the right victims.