@misterf55 @dogboythecat

I’m circling you. Thinking better of it. Then not. I am well educated like a lot of people. I spent many months investigating speeches by people stronger, smarter, braver than me (some like 14 year old Emmett Till): MLK; Medgar Evers; Rosa Parks; Laura Nelson; Ida B. Wells-Barnett; Fannie Lou Hamer (“actresses,” some). As…[Read more]

@misterf55
The show has done little but give voice to injustices across the world. It’s almost its mission statement and has been making politically charged stories right from 1963.

If you fail to grasp that, I have to wonder what show you’ve been watching or indeed what attracts you to a site like this, beyond a desire to provoke.

@misterf55 on the chance you’re not deliberately trolling (though the insistence on ‘actress’ was a red flag): Doctor Who has always been used as a platform for voicing injustices. As has a lot of science fiction. It’s a very political genre. Now often writers do this by, say, examining colonial issues through people arriving at alien planets, or…[Read more]

@misterf55 don’t you dare try and make basic human rights sound like a political agenda. Everyone deserves to be treated equal, and if you want to try and deny that then there’s the door.

@misterf55 JW is a good actress (not actor)

Why not “actor”? “Actress” is in that mob of needlessly gender-specific terms we are burdened with. “Actor” refers to a person who acts, which perfectly describes Jodie Whittaker (along with all the other actors who have played the Doctor).

@thane16 Sadly I don’t think The Civil Rights Movement can e…

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@misterf55

I know right. How could any parent possibly predict that this episode would have racism in it? And then to face questions from one’s own child about racial segregation and the civil rights movement?! As a parent myself, I can tell you that is absolutely not my job. I’ve written a very strongly-worded email to the BBC, don’t you worry.…[Read more]

@misterf55

I can imagine there were a few difficult parent/child conversations around the country after Rosa. Is that what Doctor Who should be about ?

Like what exactly? ‘Mummy, Daddy, is racism always wrong?’ Can’t see there’s any room for controversy or ambiguity in anything that Rosa raised last night.

So what next –  are we going back in ti…

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@misterf55 Well, scifi and fantasy have always dealt with reality, obliquely and through analogy.  That’s kind of what they’re for, at least the more intelligent and thoughtful examples of the genres.   And as numerous contributors have pointed out, Who has always found ways of talking about reality, including racism, sexism, etc etc, throughout i…[Read more]

@misterf55

Five, four, three, two….