Doctor Who: Only Human
Mar. 5th, 2024 06:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethI read this and it seemed okay but the longer since I put the book down the less I like it. And I dont know if it's just that I'm in a bad mood or if the book is mean.
Okay, so, you know when you read something and the words on the page seem like a perfectly reasonable adventure, but you get a slimy feeling that juuuuuust underneath that there is Discourse you want no part of?
I just dont feel nice about this book.
Something about the way it describes Neanderthals who dont grok lying and eat all the food all the time in case it goes away, or future people who control their emotions with drugs and so are just victims, feels like *at best* it's skirting the edge of some puddles of ablism and something poisonous about psych meds.
Also, at the end of the book, the Doctor stops the scary hunter by just telling it not to kill humans, because it's only days old and it needed better education. But he only does that after arranging for the rest of its kind to be killed? So that's, you know, weirdly mean?
Like sure it's a plausible sequence of events but since someone decided that sequence I can decide I dont like it.
The story doesnt seem kind. And I know a lot of people die in DW stories, but that isnt the bit I mean.
Jack was in the story but he got left on Earth in Rose's time to help a Neanderthal adapt. So his part of the story is (a) running around naked to cause a distraction and (b) writing up his thoughts on the neanderthal and his choice of wife. I just can't believe in a Jack Harkness who shags around the universe but is rudely dismissive about ugly fat women. That's a little narrow for a guy that appreciates insectoids and tentacles.
I can mostly believe the two paragraphs about how he's never been confined to a single planet so long (a month) and "Peacetime is a bit freaky." But he's mean rude about literal everyone while expressing it. Like I can imagine him having dashed from disaster to disaster for so long he doesnt know what to do with himself, but I'm not buying that he'd be so dismissive of other people's problems, or their contentment.
The more I think about this book the less I like it basically.
So I shall stop thinking about it.
Okay, so, you know when you read something and the words on the page seem like a perfectly reasonable adventure, but you get a slimy feeling that juuuuuust underneath that there is Discourse you want no part of?
I just dont feel nice about this book.
Something about the way it describes Neanderthals who dont grok lying and eat all the food all the time in case it goes away, or future people who control their emotions with drugs and so are just victims, feels like *at best* it's skirting the edge of some puddles of ablism and something poisonous about psych meds.
Also, at the end of the book, the Doctor stops the scary hunter by just telling it not to kill humans, because it's only days old and it needed better education. But he only does that after arranging for the rest of its kind to be killed? So that's, you know, weirdly mean?
Like sure it's a plausible sequence of events but since someone decided that sequence I can decide I dont like it.
The story doesnt seem kind. And I know a lot of people die in DW stories, but that isnt the bit I mean.
Jack was in the story but he got left on Earth in Rose's time to help a Neanderthal adapt. So his part of the story is (a) running around naked to cause a distraction and (b) writing up his thoughts on the neanderthal and his choice of wife. I just can't believe in a Jack Harkness who shags around the universe but is rudely dismissive about ugly fat women. That's a little narrow for a guy that appreciates insectoids and tentacles.
I can mostly believe the two paragraphs about how he's never been confined to a single planet so long (a month) and "Peacetime is a bit freaky." But he's mean rude about literal everyone while expressing it. Like I can imagine him having dashed from disaster to disaster for so long he doesnt know what to do with himself, but I'm not buying that he'd be so dismissive of other people's problems, or their contentment.
The more I think about this book the less I like it basically.
So I shall stop thinking about it.