BFA DW Warzone and Conversion
Jun. 2nd, 2024 11:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabeth5, Tegan, Nyssa and Marc. Two closely linked adventures, or adventure and consequences. And the Doctor goes further than he likes, by the end.
These were pretty good stories, rattling with emotional fallout from Adric, giving Nyssa chances to be smart and Tegan chances to be ... mostly stubborn and shouty but that's why we love her. Marc jumps in to adventure like it's a chance for glory, and everything goes horribly wrong for him because of it.
There's someone else in Warzone who reckons x can't happen because they're good people but the Doctor gives a speech about Adric and points out all the x can very much happen even to the best people.
Marc might seem reckless but he's only missing one piece of information, literally everyone else would have been safe doing what he tried, just the Doctor and his companions weren't. Bad things happen.
Warzone has humans putting themselves through a horribly dangerous race for upgrades.
But there's no cybermen in that story, strictly speaking. This is something humans are doing to themselves, for self improvement.
That's where I get a bit stuck on that story, there's nothing wrong with self improvement, lots of people need a bit of improvement if they're going to manage.
When Marc got taken for medical help and Tegan gave them permission to do 'anything' to save him, we the listeners already know enough to know she is going to regret that a lot. But the early stages are a miracle of healing. So it's a problem of going too far.
And, specifically, of the software that's infecting what they're doing to themselves.
So I can see that these people focusing their whole lives on racing and upgrades, pressuring and excluding people who don't, is the going too far bits.
I just felt a bit uncomfortable because cyberman stories can very easily end up anti medical technology, and a lot of people are using a lot of medical technology already.
Conversion framed the down sides clearly around the loss of autonomy.
Marc is converted, on the inside without a shell, and the problem with that is that he's losing control of himself.
It's a bit Cyberwoman but with the Doctor to swoop in in the end.
The Doctor hacks a specific version of the cyber operating system and Marc has unique upgrades, and what works to free Marc leaves every other cyberman screaming, so it's... clearly not intended as a generaliseable option.
But that leaves me asking why it's always like that.
You Will Become Like Us. Individuals erased, cyber army constructed. And the only way to fight back is, well, fight?
Unsatisfying. Doesn't address the problem. A lack of autonomy and diversity can't be fixed with a good being killed.
But this time it wasn't, just about. Instead fixed by actually saving someone.
Only the Doctor feels Really Bad about it, see also the screaming, so he's gone off without them.
And as Tegan notes, how is he going to get back to them? She knows very well he can't steer. So that's proper cliffhanger shaped.
Also Marc has noticed that everyone is having feelings about his horrible trauma without them being about him, so, he's not having a good time here either. Adric feelings messing up connection.
I liked when Tegan got the Doctor to talk about Adric and he kept trying to praise his good points but they ended up talking about how annoying he was. It's part of why they feel bad, so it's a good conversation to have. Not sure a cyberman planet is the place to have it, but that Doctor having emotional conversations does tend to take an emergency, so fair enough...
A lot of Conversion got me thinking about the few minutes of Cyberwoman where the expert turns up to work on Lisa. There's another expert, and everyone would have been better off if the Doctor had understood where they were coming from and their definitions of saving.
I'm not sure I liked the bit where people's misgivings were shrugged off with a they're probably being racist to non humans. It does something weird to the story to have someone be all oh I just don't have the right body language but then turn out to be actually creepy. It's plausible of course I just keep turning it around a bit and shaking it because the effects are... hmmmm.
The thing in both stories about what is 'better', what is upgrade, what is improved, that is good questions but the answer about the lack of autonomy is limited.
I mean cyberpunk stories where the problem is humanity being removed by the pound, those are just Problem, but ones where the problem is getting adequate repair support for things that are now survival critical but proprietary, tbat's got a point. Cyberman stories where everyone is going to think like a Cyberman because they've been plugged in to them are... limited in what they can tell. It's nice when it does the whole triumph of the human spirit bit, but, well, the ending with screaming.
Cybermen have been bothering me more the more medical technology is actually in use.
Like, what do we need to be afraid of?
Being encouraged to upgrade ourselves when we don't need to, doing upgrades to take risks but taking risks to do upgrades, was an interesting element in Warzone. Got an argument going.
The medical researcher who insisted on an objective definition of better and that they were going to make people better be that definition, another solid argument to make.
And cyberman loss of autonomy... is a step beyond either of those. Doesn't quite meet in the middle.
I can see why the story did it but I feel like the idea of being made more physically perfect needs a disability rights lens I don't see applied.
Still, engaging guest characters, vivid imagery for audio, good regular characters with chewy emotional stuff to do, solid connections to canon.
Good audios.
These were pretty good stories, rattling with emotional fallout from Adric, giving Nyssa chances to be smart and Tegan chances to be ... mostly stubborn and shouty but that's why we love her. Marc jumps in to adventure like it's a chance for glory, and everything goes horribly wrong for him because of it.
There's someone else in Warzone who reckons x can't happen because they're good people but the Doctor gives a speech about Adric and points out all the x can very much happen even to the best people.
Marc might seem reckless but he's only missing one piece of information, literally everyone else would have been safe doing what he tried, just the Doctor and his companions weren't. Bad things happen.
Warzone has humans putting themselves through a horribly dangerous race for upgrades.
But there's no cybermen in that story, strictly speaking. This is something humans are doing to themselves, for self improvement.
That's where I get a bit stuck on that story, there's nothing wrong with self improvement, lots of people need a bit of improvement if they're going to manage.
When Marc got taken for medical help and Tegan gave them permission to do 'anything' to save him, we the listeners already know enough to know she is going to regret that a lot. But the early stages are a miracle of healing. So it's a problem of going too far.
And, specifically, of the software that's infecting what they're doing to themselves.
So I can see that these people focusing their whole lives on racing and upgrades, pressuring and excluding people who don't, is the going too far bits.
I just felt a bit uncomfortable because cyberman stories can very easily end up anti medical technology, and a lot of people are using a lot of medical technology already.
Conversion framed the down sides clearly around the loss of autonomy.
Marc is converted, on the inside without a shell, and the problem with that is that he's losing control of himself.
It's a bit Cyberwoman but with the Doctor to swoop in in the end.
The Doctor hacks a specific version of the cyber operating system and Marc has unique upgrades, and what works to free Marc leaves every other cyberman screaming, so it's... clearly not intended as a generaliseable option.
But that leaves me asking why it's always like that.
You Will Become Like Us. Individuals erased, cyber army constructed. And the only way to fight back is, well, fight?
Unsatisfying. Doesn't address the problem. A lack of autonomy and diversity can't be fixed with a good being killed.
But this time it wasn't, just about. Instead fixed by actually saving someone.
Only the Doctor feels Really Bad about it, see also the screaming, so he's gone off without them.
And as Tegan notes, how is he going to get back to them? She knows very well he can't steer. So that's proper cliffhanger shaped.
Also Marc has noticed that everyone is having feelings about his horrible trauma without them being about him, so, he's not having a good time here either. Adric feelings messing up connection.
I liked when Tegan got the Doctor to talk about Adric and he kept trying to praise his good points but they ended up talking about how annoying he was. It's part of why they feel bad, so it's a good conversation to have. Not sure a cyberman planet is the place to have it, but that Doctor having emotional conversations does tend to take an emergency, so fair enough...
A lot of Conversion got me thinking about the few minutes of Cyberwoman where the expert turns up to work on Lisa. There's another expert, and everyone would have been better off if the Doctor had understood where they were coming from and their definitions of saving.
I'm not sure I liked the bit where people's misgivings were shrugged off with a they're probably being racist to non humans. It does something weird to the story to have someone be all oh I just don't have the right body language but then turn out to be actually creepy. It's plausible of course I just keep turning it around a bit and shaking it because the effects are... hmmmm.
The thing in both stories about what is 'better', what is upgrade, what is improved, that is good questions but the answer about the lack of autonomy is limited.
I mean cyberpunk stories where the problem is humanity being removed by the pound, those are just Problem, but ones where the problem is getting adequate repair support for things that are now survival critical but proprietary, tbat's got a point. Cyberman stories where everyone is going to think like a Cyberman because they've been plugged in to them are... limited in what they can tell. It's nice when it does the whole triumph of the human spirit bit, but, well, the ending with screaming.
Cybermen have been bothering me more the more medical technology is actually in use.
Like, what do we need to be afraid of?
Being encouraged to upgrade ourselves when we don't need to, doing upgrades to take risks but taking risks to do upgrades, was an interesting element in Warzone. Got an argument going.
The medical researcher who insisted on an objective definition of better and that they were going to make people better be that definition, another solid argument to make.
And cyberman loss of autonomy... is a step beyond either of those. Doesn't quite meet in the middle.
I can see why the story did it but I feel like the idea of being made more physically perfect needs a disability rights lens I don't see applied.
Still, engaging guest characters, vivid imagery for audio, good regular characters with chewy emotional stuff to do, solid connections to canon.
Good audios.