Doctor Who Series 37 Episode 1 - "The Woman Who Fell To Earth" Spoilers

[The Romulan Republic]

I don't really recall it either, but...

Something fans should keep in mind (and this is something that cannot be repeated enough, for all fandoms): Don't blame the creative people for the stuff the marketing people do. Usually, directors have little or no control over what goes into trailers and such, and the scriptwriters have less. Marketers can and will lie based on what they think will get the biggest audience, and then the writers, directors, and actors get blamed for the marketing peoples' bullshit.

Note: I love that they're giving women a more central role in a lot of franchises, but I find the idea of the Force being either male or female ridiculous. Its a universal energy field created by and connecting all living things. It stands to reason that it is both male and female, and also asexual, and ultimately none of the above.

Edit: Though The Clone Wars kind of already went there, with giving different avatars of the Force avatars. IIRC, the Light Side was female, and the Dark Side and Centre/Balance were male, which manages to be simultaneously patriarchal and anti-male in its implications. But that arc was so weird I'm not sure how much weight you can give it in terms of how the Force actually works.

[ray245]

I don't really recall it either, but...

Something fans should keep in mind (and this is something that cannot be repeated enough, for all fandoms): Don't blame the creative people for the stuff the marketing people do. Usually, directors have little or no control over what goes into trailers and such, and the scriptwriters have less. Marketers can and will lie based on what they think will get the biggest audience, and then the writers, directors, and actors get blamed for the marketing peoples' bullshit.

Note: I love that they're giving women a more central role in a lot of franchises, but I find the idea of the Force being either male or female ridiculous. Its a universal energy field created by and connecting all living things. It stands to reason that it is both male and female, and also asexual, and ultimately none of the above.

Edit: Though The Clone Wars kind of already went there, with giving different avatars of the Force avatars. IIRC, the Light Side was female, and the Dark Side and Centre/Balance were male, which manages to be simultaneously patriarchal and anti-male in its implications. But that arc was so weird I'm not sure how much weight you can give it in terms of how the Force actually works.

Apparently it's an marketing campaign by Nike, which didn't have anything to do with Star Wars...until Kennedy took a picture of her wearing a shirt of that.


https://bentcorner.com/the-force-is-female/

Kennedy has every right to wear that shirt and the message it entails in Nike's marketing, but as the boss of Lucasfilm, it's quite easy to interpret that as Kennedy herself is saying the force in SW is female. It's stupid to take offense at Kennedy for wearing that shirt, but we live in a world where that alone is enough to send fans into a rage.

[The Romulan Republic]

Sigh...

Yeah. Its just a shirt. I'm sure if she'd worn a shirt that offended "SJWs", a lot of the same people would have just said "Just stop being so sensitive" (only not that politely).

My general rule of thumb is that shit creators say behind the scenes isn't canon. Its a good rule to live by. Otherwise, things tend to get messy and contradictory fast.

[ray245]

Sigh...

Yeah. Its just a shirt. I'm sure if she'd worn a shirt that offended "SJWs", a lot of the same people would have just said "Just stop being so sensitive" (only not that politely).

We live in an age where everyone is eager to post their outrage online, be it for legitimate or illegitimate reasons. The issue is such false outrage are used to gain followers to their cause. Take away the context of the Nike marketing, and it's easy to misled people into thinking Kennedy was advancing some sort of agenda against male SW fans.

My general rule of thumb is that shit creators say behind the scenes isn't canon. Its a good rule to live by. Otherwise, things tend to get messy and contradictory fast.

I think the issue is less about what's canon, but whether there's some sort of perceived hidden agendas. The more they convince someone ( usually male, bonus points if they are young men) that there's some sort of hidden agenda against them, the more easy it is to push more radical ideas across. It's to find things that can be perceived as confrontational and make it so.

With Doctor Who, it's much harder to do so because has treated the idea of a sex change in timelords as something normative and the marketing simply treat this as if there's no major change to the franchise. It's much harder to sell the idea to Who fans that there's now a secret agenda against male fans.

[The Romulan Republic]

Well, as noted, change is pretty much woven into the fabric of Who. This isn't really any more outlandish a change than others that have happened before. So I think with long-time Who fans, they at least know to expect changes to the status quo.

Which also means that its harder to disguise complaints against women as just being anti-change/"respecting tradition". Because Who has always changed, that's why its still here after fifty five years, and this particular change was in the making for a long time.

[madd0ct0r]

I dunno what marketing you've seen for nu-Who, but the UK has had a LOT of it in our usual snark based adverts. The posters up at the bus stop are Jodie's face and "It's about time". The trailer released has her shattering a literal glass ceiling und so weiter.
I'm not convinced the claim that the marketing is less confrontational then SW stands up. I think there's less fans looking for a confrontation, and explcitly less mil-wank fans offended by cocktail dresses in the chain of command.

----

new episode. Writing was clunky compared to some of the previous episodes*, I hope that improves when they don't have as much to introduce in terms of character and setting and theme. The 'building a sonic' irritated me (i was muttering about gas blown sulfer impurities into that steel), but I agree with earlier poster it was very Girl Genius style, and stepping back I enjoyed it.

Tim Shaw the world's worst tooth fairy was nice and horrific (and has seemingly only killed humans? I wonder how typical he is of his species). They left Rahul's sister is stasis on his planet's trophy rack? Checkov's speciman jar?

Nice to see an 'invisible' disability showcased for a change. Supporting cast acting was good. That "Is that Yazminder Khan?; Hello Ryan's Nan " was just perfect capture of voices.


*it was also better then some previous episodes, titanic ggrr.

[ray245]

I dunno what marketing you've seen for nu-Who, but the UK has had a LOT of it in our usual snark based adverts. The posters up at the bus stop are Jodie's face and "It's about time". The trailer released has her shattering a literal glass ceiling und so weiter.
I'm not convinced the claim that the marketing is less confrontational then SW stands up. I think there's less fans looking for a confrontation, and explcitly less mil-wank fans offended by cocktail dresses in the chain of command.

I've seen those ads. But those are more subtext than requires people to think about what they meant. They're not overly simplisitic "ha in your face" kind of ads that can be seen as confrontational. They're more clever than that.

[Tsyroc]

I've pretty much avoided the marketing for this season of Doctor Who so I could avoid the "propaganda" and then the bitching about it. I wanted to wait and just watch the first episode more or less on it's own. I just watched the first three episodes tonight and I like the show. I like Jodie Whittaker as the Doctor, I like the new companions and the new villain species seems pretty good.