pendell

Current Hyperfixation: Wizard of Oz

  • He/Him

I use outdated technology just for fun, listen to crappy music, and watch a lot of horror movies. Expect posts about These Things. I talk a lot.

Check tags like Star Trek Archive and Media Piracy to find things I share for others.



I subscribed to this guy like 5 years ago and forgot to unsubscribe when I Got Better and he started being really annoying.

He actually doesn't touch on The Star Beast much at all - making me wonder if he even watched the special. He only whines about one specific line where Rose, Donna's trans daughter, calls Fourteenant a "male-presenting Time Lord" which, just, like, yeah? And Fourteenant reacts with a kind of "o rly bitch?" face anyways so it's not like the show was seriously putting down the Doctor for "being a man (this time)" or anything.

Most of his whining is about that Children in Need special where Davros is a creepy old white dude. Now, he uses a very short, very possibly out-of-context clip of RTD saying some nonsense about redesigning Davros because he was in a wheelchair and they didn't want to imply that people in wheelchairs are evil? which, if that's actually why they did that, is pretty dumb, because yeah, I don't think a single person on the planet has ever seen Davros and thought that he was evil because he's in a wheelchair.

But I mean, this version of Davros was pretty obviously pre-Genesis anyways, by a probably large span of time. People are apparently angry that Davros hasn't looked like a mangled corpse since birth? If anything it adds more mystery to the character because you have to wonder what happened between that CiN special and Genesis of the Daleks to fuck him up that badly.

Anyways the notion of Doctor Who fans being angry at the show changing any element is really really funny because it's fucking DOCTOR WHO.


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in reply to @pendell's post:

I've seen valid criticisms leveled towards Missy (the same criticisms against 13, that the progressive choice of "now woman!" is undermined by saddling the character with very stereotypical and misogynistic traits they've NEVER had before) but honestly despite all that Michelle Gomez served so hard in the role it almost doesn't matter 😅

you are absolutely correct and the fact that 13 never kissed yasmin is absolutely homophobic but all of this is still a significant step in the right direction and given the number of times i've seen chosts about donna noble's transfem daughter (won't see the star beast until this weekend at least) i'm going to go ahead and bet we keep moving that direction for a while yet.

i feel like you actually can criticize the male presenting line (and really, alot of the lgbt themes) in the star beast but unfortunately actually interesting criticism of this stuff always gets drowned out by dumb losers seeing a thing and going reactionary mode

I personally perceive it as "Rose is a little full of herself (I wonder where she gets it from) and will just be smug towards the Doctor"

Like if Donna is allowed to crack her own slightly egotistical jokes and insults about the Doctor being a man ("you wanna MATE?!") I don't see why a trans character isn't permitted the same thing.

Which leads into a whole other discussion about how when media is too focused on "representation" it can feel like it's unable to give those minority rep characters actual... characters, which Rose falls into a little and I might just be inventing characterization for her. It's a whole complex thing that is so much more interesting than just "SHE SAID 'MALE-PRESENTING' AND THATS BAD. SHE MADE THE DOCTOR ASK ABOUT PRONOUNS THATS BAD"

sidenote the Meep's declaration that its pronouns are "the definite article" was cool as hell haha

it's not whether either donna or rose should be able to, it's more just that i don't think it fits with the episode? like, idk they've just come off the back of the doctor literally not being a man and they're saying stuff about a nonbinary metacrisis and (maybe I'm reaching) but it felt like going from there to gender essentialism (even as a joke) was a bit contradictory, but honestly the whole ending bit is weird so i might just be seeing it wrong there idk

like, im fine with rose and donna joking with the doctor about that sorta thing but at the end of the episode it felt it was played a little too straight and tied too heavily into the themes of the episode to quite work if that makes sense

That is something he said, though he talked a bit more in depth about how media has historically used “person has disabilities” as shorthand for person is evil. It’s a very tried and true trope (so much so it even has its own entry in the trope wiki). So I don’t think it’s a stretch to apply that to Davros. That being said, I think it was a concious choice here to do it because this was for CHILDREN in NEED. A charity who’s fundemental purpose it helping children with disabilities. So maybe that’s not as important of a trope to remove wholesale (though maybe don’t keep using it for new characters), but it’s probably not a trope to lean on here of all places specifically.