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1/25 @Eddie_At_Skaro asked me to expand on how the 13th Doctor moved away from white savior tropes of previous eras. First:
1. I'll mostly focus on New Who as it's been ages since I watched classic regularly
2. I block for me, not bc of you
3. I swear I enjoy this show lmfao
1. I'll mostly focus on New Who as it's been ages since I watched classic regularly
2. I block for me, not bc of you
3. I swear I enjoy this show lmfao
2/ What I mean by "white savior:" DW doesn't have the best track record wrt race & stories about non-white people or cultures (even "for its time," ex. Talons of Weng-Chiang, Tomb of the Cybermen), and New Who often has just used allegories or metaphors.
3/ For instance, the s9 Zygon story was a hamfisted xenophobic exploration of immigration & refugees, using the Zygons as an inappropriate stand-in (here's a 7 part side-track on that): https://twitter.com/quietacct/status/1274451536987512832
4/ Most of the time though, DW doesn't tell stories of non-white culture or groups. Individual characters yes, esp. during RTD's era, but even RTD often chose to use metaphors with stories like Idiot's Lantern (immigrants, & kind of terrible about it) & the Ood episodes.
5/ The Ood, lovely though they are, were a silent worker race; I'm unsure if they were meant to be an allegory, but watching this show through the lens of someone whose relatively recent ancestors were quite colonized, it was odd
6/ (ood) that they required a privileged white man's intervention. Going back to classic, the Doctor as a character occasionally stood with workers' uprising, such as in "The Sun Makers," rather than taking the lead. Speaking only for myself, I had related characters like
7/ the workers in that story to indentured Indo-Caribbeans as a kid before I ever learned about labor issues in the UK. The series might have shied away from centering stories on non-white cultures but a) when it did, it was often awful (see: s9 Zygons, which featured a white man
8/ loudly & fiercely promoting assimilation as necessary for peace, or Talons, of which much has been written), and b) when it didn't, in the cases where the Doctor swoops in & saves the day rather than simply helping, there was always that background noise of the character being
9/ That Guy who is extremely familiar in stories of white people entering non-white spaces: they're either smarter, more skilled & more emotionally balanced than the BIPOC characters/metaphors, or they're given room to grow into that. Cameron's Avatar is a great example of
10/ a white savior story that doesn't explicitly include real-world racial history. I've viewed many of New Who's stories similarly bc I view the character as very British in a particular way. Traveling to other places is fanciful & a holiday, fighting
11/ battles to save others who are less-equipped is both burden AND an adventure (s8, which I loved, gets into this), & it's their right to even do things like sway elections. It was not uncommon for the west, incl. the UK, to interfere in colonial leadership:
13/ Of course, 10 faced consequences for his behavior, & Saxon would possibly never have come to power if Jones had remained PM, so there's acknowledgement that this is damaging behavior. Still, the character continued to show these flashes of being from a privileged background,
14/ & viewing other cultures or places as their lessers that need the Doctor's help. The idea of the earth being under the Doctor's protection (much as I loved 11th Hour, Flatline, etc) is the same savior fantasy that is common & fine in many superhero stories. Except because
15/ the Doctor had always been a white man, & the characters being saved have often enough been either non-white or clear metaphors (intentional or not), to me it often read as a white savior story.
Why I think s11 almost immediately moved away from all that:
Why I think s11 almost immediately moved away from all that:
16/ For the 1st time in a long while, DW returned to historicals about non-white cultures. Rosa & Demons both have their flaws but both center the episode on characters other than 13. 13 can't do anything to save anybody--the most she can (or should) do is let history play out.
17/ As much as she's alien, there is deliberate acknowledgement that she also presents as a white woman in times & places where that gave her great capital. Prem has a great line to her & Graham: "Maybe you're my enemy now, for the mess you've just made my country. Carving it up
18/ slapdash in six weeks." Both episodes make the Doctor explicitly white, & importantly point out that whiteness cannot save. In Rosa, Parks is terrorized bc 13 is still on the bus & Graham is standing. She's also never "inspired" by them, at any point. In Demons, 13 can't
19/ solve the problem of partition or prevent the oncoming bloodbath.
S12 does something else (tho I'd argue it began in s11). It introduces a Black Doctor, & then introduces a whole lot more. 1-13 are white; at least 1 other, plus some of the Timeless Children, are not, and
S12 does something else (tho I'd argue it began in s11). It introduces a Black Doctor, & then introduces a whole lot more. 1-13 are white; at least 1 other, plus some of the Timeless Children, are not, and
20/ all of a sudden DW includes a story of the colonized, not just the colonizer. The Doctor isn't just a rebel from a stuffy society (that is itself a bit of a joke about stuffy upper class British), but the erased foundation of that same society. Much like the UK built its
21/ wealth off the backs of human trafficking targets, the invaded, genocide victims, & the people/places they stole from wholesale, the Time Lords built their society off the back of this "foreign" individual who was nevertheless completely integrated into every aspect of who
22/ they were. And like how white history in the UK, US & Canada sometimes wipes from memory how they got so wealthy, the Time Lords did as well.
I do think it was a miss to make Dhawan!Master that angry in this context, & it's not the only miss w/him but overall I liked his
I do think it was a miss to make Dhawan!Master that angry in this context, & it's not the only miss w/him but overall I liked his
23/ arc. And I don't believe DW was a white savior story in every instance of its history; mostly it's been a story about a misfit trying to be kind, which is wonderful. But I do think that the revival had swerved into a weird white savior lane by consistently going back to that
24/ place of "white man above it all fixes everything" with the historical context of both the show & the UK itself, & ironically its refusal to really address that history in a series that could include Victoria, Churchill & Nixon. 13's era, by contrast,
25/25 has addressed that history head-on in a couple episodes & also done so indirectly (I didn't have a place to talk about Tesla, Ashad, or the Tzim Sha arc, but that's a part of it too). It's not been flawless, but imo the context has shifted tremendously within just 2 series.
Also I just think it's been a fun couple series. Graham keeps a cheese and onion sandwich inside his jacket at all times? That's so gross tbh, of course he travels with someone who eats dirt for fun
