Doctor Who and Sexual Orientation
Both some of the comments (not my own, obviously) on this site and elsewhere seem to suggest that the problem that a lot of people have with the new Doctor Who is not the increasingly dense plotting and the iconoclastic moments like the Doctor being gunned down but rather the moments that reference homosexuality. Therefore, in this peculiar mindset, the problem with The Impossible Astronaut/Day of the Moon is not the numerous plot strands left open when the end credits roll, but the fact that Canton Delaware III wants to marry a black man. Likewise, the thin/fat gay Anglican marines and the hint at a sexual relationship between Vastra and Jenny in A Good Man Goes To War are apparently further evidence of the show advancing a gay agenda.
This idea is, of course, bollocks. If by mentioning homosexuality it is advancing an agenda, then the main agenda the show is unashamedly and blatantly is a heterosexual one. Seriously. Think about the last broadcast episode. It was about a married, heterosexual attempting to rescue their baby -the product of their heterosexual shenanigans in the TARDIS on their wedding night. Likewise, much of the recent humour of the show has been about the heterosexual flirtation between the largely asexual Doctor and the far from asexual River Song/Melody Pond. If there is an agenda, then it is a heterosexual one.
But there isn't an agenda - the show is trying to tell entertaining stories and that works better if there are emotional ties between the characters. And this then leads to hints - and it really is no more than hints - of a physical connection between some of those characters. It gives the story a certain depth that was often missing from the original series.
Of course, the prudes and the prejudiced out there could argue that these sort of hints are not suitable for a children's show. They miss the obvious point that this is not just a children's show, it is a family show. As such, it needs to entertain the parents as well as the children. And that is what the sexual innuendo's do - they entertain (well some at least) of the adults who watch the show. I would have more sympathy for the "won'tsomeonethinkofthechildren" position if the adult moments were anything more than hints, but they are really not. It's not like we get full access to the wedding night of the Ponds, or get to see Vastra's tongue in action in a very different way to the one depicted in the show. Instead we get a blink and you miss it reference to the latter, and a wonderfully humourous moment when the largely asexual eleventh Doctor tries to work out when Amy and Rory might have been intimate in the TARDIS.
In short, there's no sexual agenda to Doctor Who - homosexual or otherwise. And those who insist on seeing what isn't there, well, I do rather think that it reveals more about them and their prudish mindsets than it does anything about the makers of the modern Doctor Who.
Labels: Cult TV, Doctor Who, Homophobia
posted by The Nameless Libertarian @ 12:27 pm
12 Comments
12 Comments:
Yes, that's a fair summary of what never struck me as a very important part of Doctor Who.
He was deeply in love with the TARDIS when it was briefly a woman, and I don't remember the pruderati saying that the series had an agenda of encouraging impressionable young cheeldren to mate with robots.
Yes, I’d largely agree with that. I don’t detect any sexual agenda – as you say, I don’t think that the show has one – unless, perhaps, it proceeds on the basis of a rather inclusive, pan-sexual stance: if so, then that’s all to the good. The only criticism I’d make is that the references to sexuality are occasionally a bit clunking. There are two ways of doing this – one far better than the other – and I’d say that ‘A Good Man Goes To War’ shows both the good and the bad in action.
The Vastra/Jenny relationship is left assumed, does not receive (or require) comment, and works well as an aspect of their character dynamic (and yes, the tongue joke is both extremely funny and a perfect example of how to write for kids and adults at the same time). Great.
Contrast that with the thin/fat gay Anglican marines, who annoyed me for two reasons. One is that they are a sheer waste of screen-time – they appear, we meet them, they noisily declare their sexuality, then one gets his head cut off… and we never see them again. It beats me why they were included at all. My second annoyance stems from the fact that for some obscure reason they do feel the need to noisily declare their sexuality, which, to my mind at least, is a clunking bit of writing. In the 51st Century, when it seems that Anglican marines are allowed same-sex marriages (a nice enough concept in itself) would it really require any comment? That bit of dialogue struck me as being much more late-20th Century rather than early-51st – reminiscent of the mid eighties, when right-on people went out of their way to say right-on things about homosexuality to prove that they were right-on about it. I’d rather hoped we’d moved on from that.
The other thing about this is that it’s grist to the mill of the Daily Mail readers who are looking for a gay agenda in Doctor Who. And to be fair, the characters were so utterly pointless that the main thing that I remember about the thin/fat pair actually is the ‘hey, we’re gay’ declaration. I can easily see Outraged of Tunbridge Wells concluding that they were only included in order to deliver that line: QED, and time to write another letter to the BBC.
Except that it's not a homosexual agenda, it's an egalitarian agenda that insists on rubbing this sort of nonsense in the viewers faces. At least the fat/thin gay couple were more realistic than the, Oh, btw, I'm marrying a black guy, tacked-on bullshit.
Crying out loud, call a spade a spade, it's stuff that's dubbed in to satisfy the cultishly liberal BBC editorial staff
Except that, as my post is keen to suggest, is just paranoid rubbish. There is no agenda in Doctor Who (egalitarian, sexual or otherwise), and as I say at the end of the post those who see one tend to be revealing more about their own mindsets than that of those who make the show.
Also, I'm always intrigued by what evidence exists for the supposed liberal (and I assume you mean statist rather than genuinely liberal here) leanings of the BBC's editorial staff. Allegations of BBC bias remain just that - allegations.
TNL
Umm, I haven't watched Doctor Who since RTD managed to run through this list pretty damn quickly.
So I haven't seen the EP in question, but it wouldn't surprise me in the slightest if this sort of thing had appeared in a "clunky" way.
Allegations?
Jane Garvey: So, I had to get a bit of sleep, and I do remember I walked back into, we were broadcasting then from Broadcasting House in the centre of London, all very upmarket in those days, and the corridors of, er, Broadcasting House were strewn with empty champagne bottles.
Peter Allen: (chuckles heartily)
Jane Garvey: I’ll always remember that, er, not that the BBC were celebrating…
Peter Allen: (still chuckling throughout) No, no. No. Not at all!
RTD - for all of his flaws - didn't ruin Doctor Who. In fact, he made it the most successful it has been since the mid-70s and added an element of emotion to it that was missing from the classic series. Whatever your would-be intellectual article from a fansite might say.
As for your anecdote... might work better with a bit of context, no?
One word:Corsair.
As one person so smugly spat me:"Since we know that time Lords can change sex when they regenerate, then 'labels' like 'straight', 'gay' and 'bisexual' are meaningless."
Sorry, but no Time Lord ever changed gender during regeneration before the 2005 relaunch(except in a SPOOF written by none other than Moffat). Gender exists. I have nothing against homosexuals. However, I have no interest in seeing homosexual kissing(or more) on Doctor Who. And, no I have no desire to see heterosexual sex scenes in Doctor Who either. I realise that "sex sells" , but if you're throwing everything except the name of the show and the Police Box out the window, why call it "Doctor Who" at all? You know why RTD got all those awards? because he had taken something that was established as one thing, and turned it into something totally different, something that suits the PC agenda. Promiscuous bisexual Captain Jack is a "hero"! And look, how original, we have strong courageous Rose, and her dopey cowardly boyfriend Mickey! I see enough of this s%%t on every other show that it would be nice if something like "Doctor Who" which had its own identity hadn't got sucked into this mess. It's not a question of "if" RTD/Moffat Doctor Who is pushing the Gay Agenda. It is obvious that it is. But then I suppose the show never would have been revived in 2005 if it wasn't full of not just the Gay Agenda, but also the strong intelligent female/weak moronic male Agenda, and all the rest.
Sorry, Anonymong, but that is just homophobic bullshit. The work of RTD and the Moff is a great adaptation of a classic series. Companions have always been heroic - Rose was not the first - and the fact that Captain Jack was bisexual reflects nothing more than the fact that he comes from the future, when hopefully rigid identification of one's sexual orientation is something from the past.
This is still the same great show it has always been; it is just far more open about the society that surrounds it that perhaps it was in the less tolerant past. Get over your prejuidice and enjoy it for what it is; great TV, not the pursuit of some sort of agenda.
Anonymong? Is that a hate speech slur, or just a typo? I wonder.
As far as Captain Jack goes, it IS an agenda. A person who has indiscriminate(and probably unprotected) sex with both genders is portrayed as "cool". That's just pathetic. Here's an idea...have a gay man who has a steady relationship with a long-term boyfriend.... Nah, that's not "MTV" enough. And the point wasn't about "homophobia". It was about the destruction of clearly defined genders. A gay man is just as much a man as a straight man. However, the whole "Corsair" thing distorts that.
Likewise, like it or not, the attack wasn't on "heroic companions". It was the point that from the word go Rose(the female) is the heroic one, whereas Mickey(the male) is cowardly and slow-witted. There is very clearly AN agenda here. Strong, intelligent women...weak dimwitted men....promiscuity as a virtue...Time Lords switching genders during regeneration.
Sorry, but this isn't a "Great adaptation of a classic series". It's something designed to appeal to the same kind of people who follow Kim Kardashian's Tweets.
Lastly, "Libertarian" huh? That speaks volumes.
No, Anonymong is neither a typo or hate speech. It is a clear insult aimed at you because as far as I can see, your talking utter gibberish.
Your points about Captain Jack - he is a modern example of a trope that has been popular for decades. He's Doctor Who's version of James Bond, who happens to be bisexual. And you're comment about his having unprotected sex says more about your mentality that anything else. And there have been gay couples in stable relationships; you just seemed to have missed them.
As for heroic Rose and cowardly Mickey... have you even watched the fucking show you are dismissing in a paranoid funk about a non-existent agenda? Mickey becomes a hero who saves the world, and the Doctor. Likewise, Rory (who is in a stable hetereosexual marriage with his wife) also becomes a hero. As for Time Lords changing genders... it is clearly stated in the classic series that Time Lords can take on non-human physiques - so why not change gender? But again you wouldn't know this because you don't ever seem to have watched the show.
And yes, it is a great adaptation of the series. If you could get beyond your prejudices and actually watched it, you might find that out.
Finally, yes, I'm a libertarian. Well read. Guess you're prejudiced against them as well?
When someone resorts to making hate speech, and using vulgarity, it is a clear sign they have lost the argument.
I will just state that many gay people despise RTD and NuWho. The reason is that gay people are generally(ie. mostly but not only) portrayed as being predatory, promiscuous, and obsessed with sex, The idea of gay people with a steady, faithful relationship, and who have other interests besides sex clearly doesn't exist in RTD's fat head.
Meanwhile, off-topic yes but it should be said, the one-dimensional Eastenders rejects who are supposed to be the "straight" people are equally pathetic.
Lastly, the Doctor himself is(choose one, or two if you prefer):
a)an enigmatic 700+-year-old alien genius, who, while generally heroic, does have faults such as arrogance, and a short temper
b)some gormless git in a joompah and leather jacket who says "Fantastic!" whatever the situation
c)a smug, metrosexual berk, who has to keep telling the one-dimensional Earthlings how great they are
c)
I'm being accused of hate speech by an ignorant homophobe. Brilliant stuff; damn near beyond satire.
But I'll bite anyway. Firstly, evidence your claim that gay people despise the new Doctor Who. I'd put money on you not being able to. And once again you clearly haven't watched the show, or Torchwood, which have both depicted stable relationships, both heterosexual and homosexual. The fact that you haven't actually watched this show really does limit the credibility of your arguments. Which is why you have no idea of the calibre of some of the actors who have been in the show. As for who should depict the Doctor - it's been varied throughout the show's whole history, but again, your limited viewing of it hinders your argument.
And I don't really have time for arguing any further with a Daily Mail reading, homophonic lackwit. So please do bugger off somewhere else.
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