Straight Outta Gallifrey: The Star Beast

New Doctor Who?! And it's got Tine Lord material in it?! A.J. and Siskoid sink their teeth into The Star Beast, the first of the new specials starring David Tennant as the 14th Doctor, but telling you how it fits Straight Outta Gallifrey would be spoiling it!

That's all at Straight Outta Gallifrey, under #222 Straight Outta Gallifrey: The Star Beast

Thanks for listening!

Comments

daft said…
*Non-Broadcast comment* Your review duly unpacked my then as yet unresolved concerns about the Binary/Non-Binary inclusion. Despite valiant groundwork laid to represent the transsexual experience, it felt like the Doctor Who universe was actually imposing a non-binary status upon Rose. It seemingly would have worked for a gender fluid, multigender or genderqueer identifying individual, but Rose quite clearly identified as female - the easier tale to tell. What it felt like was a writer becoming rather too infatuated with their own linguistic contrivance, as a result, potentially confusing some audience members as to the actual intended takeaway from the tale. Alongside, milder concerns related to Ruth Madeley's new scientific adviser character established from the get go as the Doctor's formidable, equal academic expert before Bond-villainesque wheelchair accessories were unveiled when the industrial setting imposed by the iconic comic tale origins provided access issues, a story contrivance duly employed seemingly as a compensatory act as for the character to not 'lose face' upon screen, as it were, rather than to actually explore those lived experiences before resolving a singularly physical impasse by employing the character's hitherto established mental ingenuity. The character potentially going on to also employ her encyclopaedic knowledge of recovered alien tech to physically disable, albeit temporarily, the rocketry engine, before the Doctor/Doctor/Rose triumvirate finally succeed in their overall mission.

What I'm getting at here is that there's still a white, middle-age male gatekeeper making all of those plotting decisions. Yes, I imagine RTD employ's the same set of cultural consultants Chibnall used to help inform his own decision making process, but as in the improv scene, it's ultimately a 'yes and' game. It's not in their future employable interests to wholesale criticise choices made, merely massage then. It's a conversation that's taken place in literary circles in recent years, but it's failed to singularly permeate the TV industry despite Lenny Henry's exhaustive efforts to help promote diversity behind the cameras, as well. I will say for the record, Ruth Madeley affirmed that she liked the wheelchair accessories, I think we take it for granted fore-instance that the Doctor's waltzes about clutching a fantastic sonic screwdriver, but there's always other dramatic choice which can been made, wouldn't it be nice if it was made by someone with a stake in the intended real world outcome...
December 11, 2023 at 12:13 PM
Post a Comment