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miss_s_b at 11:02am on 08/05/2011
miss_s_b at 11:02am on 08/05/2011An excerpt from my review of last night's episode:
And I am genuinely interested in why some subjects are easy to suspend disbelief on and others aren't, at least in the minds of TV production crews and writers, and Who ones in particular.
Opinions?
Doctor Who is fantasy, and nothing else in it is realistic, so why the *naughtywords* does the sexism have to be? We can suspend disbelief long enough to believe that a guy can travel through time and space in a blue wooden box (which should be concrete anyway), and that every three years or so he completely changes size, shape, and personality but is still the same person, and that's fine, but a female pirate would be pushing it too far?Now, the writer of this week's show is particularly bad for this sort of stuff, I admit, but it is a problem with the show in general, and indeed, television in general.
And I am genuinely interested in why some subjects are easy to suspend disbelief on and others aren't, at least in the minds of TV production crews and writers, and Who ones in particular.
Opinions?
contemplative
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1) That the Doctor could not/would not heal Rory, even though he has always been presented as "a doctor of practically everything."
2) That the TARDIS could not/would not heal Rory, even though the TARDIS has a sickbay--in fact, all TARDISes since the Type 21 had sickbays. And since the TARDIS is a Type 40...well, you'd think it would be able to provide oxygen for a man that nearly drowned. Oxygen is standard medical equipment in Western hospitals; shouldn't the TARDIS--that miraculous alien tech--be able to manufacture oxygen if it doesn't have any on hand?
3) That Rory could talk Amy through the process of how to provide CPR. That's it. One conversation and she could do it well enough to save his life. WTF?
4) That a man from eighteenth-century England who had no scientific training could sail an alien spaceship to the stars.
I really did like Amy as the Pirate Queen, though. I just wish she'd been written as...well, the hero, and not the female sidekick. You know--brave AND capable.
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But it didn't surprise me.
I wish that it had been so rare, so out of place, so foreign to the show that it had surprised me.
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Whereas Rory nearly dying AGAIN just made me yawn, and by that point I was too busy doing Robert Picardo impressions and giggling to pay too much attention.
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Well, that and the fact that the only female guest character was not only presented for three-quarters of the story as a villain picking on the poor menz--why? because she's EVIL!--but literally couldn't speak for herself. Hell, Amy couldn't even figure out what she was supposed to do when the Siren held out her hands; a male character had to figure out what she meant and then tell Amy, just as a male character had to tell Amy how to save him.
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In reply to gheyi
1) and 2) I agree
3) No, it IS possible, I've been a CPR Instructor with the American Red Cross... it's easier to do/tell about CPR than it is to sword fight. What was unbelievable is that Amy DID give up - and the Doctor and TARDIS did NOTHING >:(
4) But he knew the stuff in the TARDIS, he named them. It wasn't completely believable, no, but there was at least the throw away line about "everything being the same from ship to ship" that he said.
I'm a bit tired of Amy being the savior of every episode - frankly I thought I was watching Doctor Who not "the Amy Pond Show".
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Someone else got really, really mad about the bad CPR and Amy giving up.
4) But he knew the stuff in the TARDIS, he named them. It wasn't completely believable, no, but there was at least the throw away line about "everything being the same from ship to ship" that he said.
The problem is, I've seen the Brigadier and Unit personnel and a doctor in the British navy all baffled by the TARDIS control room, and I'd expect 20th century military equipment to be a LOT closer to the TARDIS than an 18th-century pirate ship.
So I didn't really buy that throwaway line, either.
I think that the writers aren't really sure what to do with Rory and Amy. They treat her, alternately, like the traditional damsel who has to be rescued and as the savior. They don't seem to realize that the two roles don't mesh very well. And Rory--well, it's hard to put a man in a damsel condition, but they don't want to make him too awesome because then he's competing with the male lead, and of course no one is supposed to be as awesome as the Doctor. Since Rory can't be the savior and since Western society has a tough time conceiving of men as needing rescue--well, the writers probably hit on him dying serendipitously and have just repeated it ever since.
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3) I'm glad he went into such detail, because I just kind of was all... "There's so much wrong with this, I don't even know where to start, so I'll just brush it off as horrible TV CPR."
4) Being in the military doesn't mean you have knowledge of sailing though. And it all depends on perception. The difference is: Everyone else was so baffled by "bigger on the inside" and trying to sort that out in their heads, that they didn't really LOOK at the controls or what the Doctor was doing. Avery DID. He noticed what the Doctor was doing and in his head, was able to piece it together. I don't know... I was able to buy it - at least more than Amy sword fighting or the CPR bit. But it's my small gem in an episode that I enjoyed until I thought about it, so maybe I'm just not willing to go there :P
Didn't see the sexism ...
As I said in my own review/froth-at-the-mouth-rant of the episode, I thought Gillan pulled off the swash-buckling very well. Maybe not the second-coming of Eroll Flynn, but still ...
What ruined it for me in retrospect, as pointed out above, is that we have no previous knowledge that Amy has any training as a sword-fighter. As I have said, holding even five frightened pirates at bay for any period of time (as Amy most certainly did!) would take quite a lot of experience with a cutlass.
Re: Didn't see the sexism ...
Although it would be nice if there was a "where did you learn to do that?" joke, which would have explained things.
Re: Didn't see the sexism ...
Yes, it worked to watch. It doesn't work so well when you think about it. The thing is, Amy didn't just wave her cutless "in a menacing manner" — there was some genuine swordplay there, steel clashing against steel.
But yes, it is Doctor Who, so most of us don't insist on absolute verisimilitude; a "where did you learn to do that" joke would have helped quite a lot.
Re: Didn't see the sexism ...
Re: Didn't see the sexism ...
No promises, but if I don't like next week's episode, I'm going to try to just keep my mouth shut about it.
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(And really, given that they pulled off a request for same-sex marriage in 1969 last week, and that had historical precedent, I think they could have got away with a female pirate or six, and a bisexual mermaid, yes.)
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It's a gigantic failure of imagination - a failure to see that the future and the past are both fundamentally different from now, and a failure to imagine that a different worldview is even possible (or that such a thing as a worldview even exists, rather than a bunch of inchoate prejudices).
No-one's interested in the strange and different, after all - the great RTD said so - and unfortunately not being unthinkingly sexist is strange and different at the moment.