Doctor Who books with 11 and Amy
Jul. 8th, 2010 11:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethI hear there are some new Doctor Who books out today. I do not have those.
But I have finished reading
Apollo 23, Night of the Humans, and The Forgotten Army
(I was saving them up for when there were no new episodes).
Apollo 23 was quite good, I liked it when I read it and I don't remember any grumbles. It seemed to me the writer was a fan of 3. I liked a lot of the images, like rain on the moon or walking out into the desert or the guy on the cover.
Night of the Humans... It had a whole adventure thing and a racism thing up on the textual level that was all 'that was racist wasn't it? racism bad.' Unfortunately I've spun it around in my head a few times now and I think it borked the subtext and managed to be of itself racist. Two ways, really.
One, the Humans of the title: they're devolved to primitive, superstitious, violent people, who worship cowboy movies. And they all have names that sound kind of the same. Are those names 'John Wayne' and the like? Are they dominant white American cultural group? No they are not. They all end in O. Like Django, Tuco, Manco and Sancho. The Tardis Wiki explains all the names are from spaghetti westerns, which makes sense in context. But, there's an unfortunate side effect: they've made the humans minority ethnic groups. The internet tells me Django is a Romany word, Sancho is a Spanish/Portugese name, Tuco is spanish/south american, and Manco is Native American. So what they've done is gather names that are from ethnic minorities, mostly light brown language minority people in southern America who get the short end of the reputation stick, and they've named a bunch of brutal ignorants that way. Getting the names from a particular set of texts doesn't really help. It read uncomfortable and a bit racist.
Two: The people the story hangs around with that aren't human. They take human names and use human tech and say rude things about humans and then go 'sorry, that's a bit racist' and stuff. Text level message: racism bad, let's stop doing it. Okay. But then there's the unhelpful thing where they explain how they never had music until the humans came and they didn't have technology because they didn't have fear because they didn't have predators (bzuh?) but the humans were so much more advanced, and then they 'grow' through the book by learning to feel fear, like humans. Which is a weird mixed message. It's like they're saying their nature left them not inventing things, not making music, not doing anything that the story feels the need to mention. But that nature improves by becoming more human.
It's a colonial story, the one where you meet the natives and they're less technological because they're just built lesser, and hey, have some shiny things, learn from your betters, be more like them.
It's ugly. I kept waiting for the punchline to be 'and actually we have our own culture that humans never bothered to ask about', or even 'and actually we only evolved last century and we're way ahead of humans relatively speaking'. But there's no twist, no punchline, there's just aliens who are being treated poorly and yet are the ones who go 'sorry, we're being racist'.
Bad.
So it's a right mess.
I keep trying to turn it around until it looks better. I maybe missed an angle?
There was also an ugly-acting human with shiny spaceship. Maybe it was trying to be equally mean to everyone? But he had a silly name, not one you'd recognise as Us, a story name you'd laugh at, Dirk Slipstream.
I don't know. The book had adventure and running around and things going boom, but it made me uncomfortable, yet wondering if I was just being double ignorant to think it.
The Forgotten Army just did not feel Proper. I have been trying to figure out why. I think it was too much mocking everyone involved. It mocked them for attempting to be heroic. When people in Doctor Who stories try and stand up and save people and do their duty then it can be inspiring or it can be tragic, but it's not supposed to be something the story mocks them for. Trying is never a slapstick joke. But in this one trying leads to being dressed in pink and drawn on. (A joke btw that requires alien invaders to understand the gender conventions and hangups of humans they only started looking at months ago at most. It's a joke that requires the idea that putting someone in pink sparklies is insulting. It is not a good joke.) Same like when Amy tries to prove herself, she ends up slipping in elephant poop. There's a lot of poop jokes in this one. It's stinky and feels like the wrong level of humor. The big problem though is again what she's getting compared to what she's trying. When she lands in stinky whale sick in The Beast Below it doesn't feel the same at all, it's an obstacle they have to get over while being heroic, it's not a way of saying they're not heroic. The story flat out questions her competence and keeps saying she's not as good as she thinks she is. And then, elephant poop. Plus Amy mocks the Doctor a lot. And the little alien invaders. There's a lot of actual mockery going on, as well as event mockery. It's just all wrong. That's not how interactions are supposed to happen in a Doctor Who story.
It also undermines any possibility of the threat feeling like a threat. The alien invaders are tiny men who can move faster than you can see (Yan! Tan! Tethra!) (No it never quotes its source text) But all they do with the power is dress police in miniskirts? How are we meant to worry about that?
Then there's the way the Doctor recruits 10 year olds to go run around the city at night with the power off and light fireworks as signals.
How many parts of that are dead wrong?
You don't give ten year olds fireworks! The Doctor is opposed to use of explosives, I don't see him giving hand sized amounts to kids likely to blow their hands off with them. Treating kids like grown ups is one thing, but he don't like it when grown ups have the boomstuff around.
And just on a writer level, what are they doing, giving kids fireworks, dressing them in superhero costumes, and sending them out after strange men in the dark? To wander around New York at night? When all the police have been captured and there's already been rioting/looting going on? It's not just the tiny aliens who are a threat!
And they are, rather implausibly, meant to break in to all the tallest buildings and climb up to the top and look for alien technology.
I'm sure ten year olds would believe in their own ability to carry out this plan, but WTF? Breaking in is not a kid job!
It's just 'hi kids, try this at home, the Doctor says so!'
And recruiting children *doesn't even make sense*. The Doctor needs people the aliens have rejected as slaves, but they rejected Amy and reckoned the Doctor was so skinny he's borderline. So he needs skinny people, or people with physical disabilities. NOT children.
I spent more time worrying about the mess children would get themselves into unsupervised with fireworks at night in New York than I ever did worrying about the alien invaders.
Fail, plot. Fail, tone. Fail at being Doctor Who.
Just not Proper.
So that's like 1/3 I quite liked.
:-(
Yet I will keep buying Doctor Who books, so maybe their plan works fine.
*sigh*
Oh, also? In the Forgotten Army book, there is a one line reference to events in Children of Earth. Only the bits every child on Earth was part of. But I had to stop reading while my stomach did flip flop rolls. The story was Bad and upsetting and I don't want it leaking into my Doctor Who. I realise it's supposed to be a shared 'verse but I just... really emphatically Do Not Want what they did to Jack and the ending and the tone and all. So that was anti fun.
Now I am tired and overheated and quite unlikely to sleep any time soon.
:eyeroll:
But I have finished reading
Apollo 23, Night of the Humans, and The Forgotten Army
(I was saving them up for when there were no new episodes).
Apollo 23 was quite good, I liked it when I read it and I don't remember any grumbles. It seemed to me the writer was a fan of 3. I liked a lot of the images, like rain on the moon or walking out into the desert or the guy on the cover.
Night of the Humans... It had a whole adventure thing and a racism thing up on the textual level that was all 'that was racist wasn't it? racism bad.' Unfortunately I've spun it around in my head a few times now and I think it borked the subtext and managed to be of itself racist. Two ways, really.
One, the Humans of the title: they're devolved to primitive, superstitious, violent people, who worship cowboy movies. And they all have names that sound kind of the same. Are those names 'John Wayne' and the like? Are they dominant white American cultural group? No they are not. They all end in O. Like Django, Tuco, Manco and Sancho. The Tardis Wiki explains all the names are from spaghetti westerns, which makes sense in context. But, there's an unfortunate side effect: they've made the humans minority ethnic groups. The internet tells me Django is a Romany word, Sancho is a Spanish/Portugese name, Tuco is spanish/south american, and Manco is Native American. So what they've done is gather names that are from ethnic minorities, mostly light brown language minority people in southern America who get the short end of the reputation stick, and they've named a bunch of brutal ignorants that way. Getting the names from a particular set of texts doesn't really help. It read uncomfortable and a bit racist.
Two: The people the story hangs around with that aren't human. They take human names and use human tech and say rude things about humans and then go 'sorry, that's a bit racist' and stuff. Text level message: racism bad, let's stop doing it. Okay. But then there's the unhelpful thing where they explain how they never had music until the humans came and they didn't have technology because they didn't have fear because they didn't have predators (bzuh?) but the humans were so much more advanced, and then they 'grow' through the book by learning to feel fear, like humans. Which is a weird mixed message. It's like they're saying their nature left them not inventing things, not making music, not doing anything that the story feels the need to mention. But that nature improves by becoming more human.
It's a colonial story, the one where you meet the natives and they're less technological because they're just built lesser, and hey, have some shiny things, learn from your betters, be more like them.
It's ugly. I kept waiting for the punchline to be 'and actually we have our own culture that humans never bothered to ask about', or even 'and actually we only evolved last century and we're way ahead of humans relatively speaking'. But there's no twist, no punchline, there's just aliens who are being treated poorly and yet are the ones who go 'sorry, we're being racist'.
Bad.
So it's a right mess.
I keep trying to turn it around until it looks better. I maybe missed an angle?
There was also an ugly-acting human with shiny spaceship. Maybe it was trying to be equally mean to everyone? But he had a silly name, not one you'd recognise as Us, a story name you'd laugh at, Dirk Slipstream.
I don't know. The book had adventure and running around and things going boom, but it made me uncomfortable, yet wondering if I was just being double ignorant to think it.
The Forgotten Army just did not feel Proper. I have been trying to figure out why. I think it was too much mocking everyone involved. It mocked them for attempting to be heroic. When people in Doctor Who stories try and stand up and save people and do their duty then it can be inspiring or it can be tragic, but it's not supposed to be something the story mocks them for. Trying is never a slapstick joke. But in this one trying leads to being dressed in pink and drawn on. (A joke btw that requires alien invaders to understand the gender conventions and hangups of humans they only started looking at months ago at most. It's a joke that requires the idea that putting someone in pink sparklies is insulting. It is not a good joke.) Same like when Amy tries to prove herself, she ends up slipping in elephant poop. There's a lot of poop jokes in this one. It's stinky and feels like the wrong level of humor. The big problem though is again what she's getting compared to what she's trying. When she lands in stinky whale sick in The Beast Below it doesn't feel the same at all, it's an obstacle they have to get over while being heroic, it's not a way of saying they're not heroic. The story flat out questions her competence and keeps saying she's not as good as she thinks she is. And then, elephant poop. Plus Amy mocks the Doctor a lot. And the little alien invaders. There's a lot of actual mockery going on, as well as event mockery. It's just all wrong. That's not how interactions are supposed to happen in a Doctor Who story.
It also undermines any possibility of the threat feeling like a threat. The alien invaders are tiny men who can move faster than you can see (Yan! Tan! Tethra!) (No it never quotes its source text) But all they do with the power is dress police in miniskirts? How are we meant to worry about that?
Then there's the way the Doctor recruits 10 year olds to go run around the city at night with the power off and light fireworks as signals.
How many parts of that are dead wrong?
You don't give ten year olds fireworks! The Doctor is opposed to use of explosives, I don't see him giving hand sized amounts to kids likely to blow their hands off with them. Treating kids like grown ups is one thing, but he don't like it when grown ups have the boomstuff around.
And just on a writer level, what are they doing, giving kids fireworks, dressing them in superhero costumes, and sending them out after strange men in the dark? To wander around New York at night? When all the police have been captured and there's already been rioting/looting going on? It's not just the tiny aliens who are a threat!
And they are, rather implausibly, meant to break in to all the tallest buildings and climb up to the top and look for alien technology.
I'm sure ten year olds would believe in their own ability to carry out this plan, but WTF? Breaking in is not a kid job!
It's just 'hi kids, try this at home, the Doctor says so!'
And recruiting children *doesn't even make sense*. The Doctor needs people the aliens have rejected as slaves, but they rejected Amy and reckoned the Doctor was so skinny he's borderline. So he needs skinny people, or people with physical disabilities. NOT children.
I spent more time worrying about the mess children would get themselves into unsupervised with fireworks at night in New York than I ever did worrying about the alien invaders.
Fail, plot. Fail, tone. Fail at being Doctor Who.
Just not Proper.
So that's like 1/3 I quite liked.
:-(
Yet I will keep buying Doctor Who books, so maybe their plan works fine.
*sigh*
Oh, also? In the Forgotten Army book, there is a one line reference to events in Children of Earth. Only the bits every child on Earth was part of. But I had to stop reading while my stomach did flip flop rolls. The story was Bad and upsetting and I don't want it leaking into my Doctor Who. I realise it's supposed to be a shared 'verse but I just... really emphatically Do Not Want what they did to Jack and the ending and the tone and all. So that was anti fun.
Now I am tired and overheated and quite unlikely to sleep any time soon.
:eyeroll:
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no subject
Date: 2010-07-08 11:26 pm (UTC)I felt like, with the going to the US to promote the new season, they're being all, hi USA, you can like us too!
except it felt like trying to dress like the cool kid you're trying to get in with and how it never looks quite cool when you're doing it.
I feel British stories should stick with being very British, on account of it's what we can do best that nowhere else can do best. Being USian is what USA stories do best.
Also also, I is grumbly.
no subject
Date: 2010-07-09 01:15 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-09 08:04 am (UTC)... oh, oops, that means everyone who feels like I do about CoE gets to feel it from that paragraph. cut tag tiem...
no subject
Date: 2010-07-08 11:53 pm (UTC)LOL
I wonder if they even did the US right or it was like Stephenie Meyer writing about Florida...
Anyway, I'm still in denial about CoE impacting the Eleven era...if she didn't remember Daleks, why does CoE still have to exist?
no subject
Date: 2010-07-09 08:31 am (UTC)The cracks and the reboot could change anything and everything.
It would be a bit of a cheap way to do it, but since the alternative is the rags and tatters of everything I actually liked about some things, I can live with that.