So, "Orphan 55" comments

[auroracloud]

Okay, I just watched the third episode of S12 of Doctor Who, Orphan 55.

I'm goddamn sick of dystopias. And some sort of hellscape Earth futures presented as a call to action. Why can't anyone ever show us a better way to do things, as something to strive towards? Why does even Doctor Who think that what we need is more horrible dystopias?

I am seriously worried about the environment and the Earth's future. Showing us some horrible hellish future is just going to increase my anxieties and depression so that it's hard to think about action. Like even at the moment my mental health is the main reason I can't be more active about climate and environment than I currently am (I do some stuff, but I'd like to do more, if I had the spoons). From what I can tell from observing many people I know, it's the same for a lot of people. And this makes me mad about so much of today's media. Many films, books and so on that are praised are just about things being totally terrible, because apparently that's so fucking smart. As if it isn't easy to imagine horrible futures and horrible people, and more challenging and satisfying to create realistic hope.

Also, the whole awfulness of it all just got so extreme that it would be ridiculous and laughable if I was capable of those emotions at the moment. I'm not because dystopias bypass that part of my brain and go straight into my mental bad stuff, so that's what's being engaged now. Not the ability to act. I hope most of you are able to just go to the laughing at how miserable it was. I'm rationally able to see that's a thing one could do because it was just over the top, but well, yeah, right now I can't.

Uh, things I liked: Yaz's outfit, and the fact that all the companions got to do a bunch.

Also, why are all the supposed fancy future places always so sterile-looking? Why is everyone convinced that for all of our future, the aesthetic will just be bland on bland? The spa reminded me of the place in Smile! (the Twelve & Bill adventure with the killer emojibots) and I hated that aesthetic, too, except that was more colourful. Okay, a part of it is probably that they blew their whole budget on Spyfall. So now they only could get like 45 minutes with some first year trainee student to do the visuals of the whole aesthetic.

Could we please try out a solarpunk Doctor Who next? The show's supposed to give me hope, not depress me and disgust me. The Doctor's speech in the end, despite Jodie's delivery, didn't help when the whole episode was just awful piled on awful.

I'd rather have seen the adventure with the deep space squids.

Okay, I'm going to try to do something to drive away the depression and anxiety demons that got woken up, thanks a bunch.

Comments

[nostalgia]

For a Doctor who goes on (and on.,.. and on) about hope, 13;s era is bloody depressing.

[thisbluespirit]

I was so bored I regretted actually watching it live and went for a very brief walk in the middle!

I'm so sorry it hit on such sensitive things for you, though. ♥ (Do you need more chocolate and fic? *hugs*)

It was about as subtle as a hammer and just as useful as one of those when applied to something that needs more delicate handling.

[auroracloud]

Yeah. And they already had to shove the goddamn Nazis at us in the last episode and have the Doctor cheerfully weaponise them against a person of colour (no matter how bad stuff he'd done, that's not the kind of thing the Doctor should do). I could have done without Extreme Dystopialand when we've just had Nazis.

Also, last season we were told Space Amazon is great and there's no reason to really criticize them, and now it's like unless you solve the climate change now then this is what your planet will be like.

I think someone should introduce Chibnall and the rest of them to hope, it doesn't look like they've met properly.

[nostalgia]

On the bright side we fuck up 54 other planets before we ruin Earth.

[auroracloud]

Bored sounds like a better alternative. A walk in the middle also sounds like a good alternative! I'm annoyed with myself for feeling this badly about it because it wasn't even a good episode, but ugh, I'm in the wrong part of my hormonal cycle for this shit. More fanfic and chocolate might be a good idea. *hugs*

It was about as subtle as a hammer and just as useful as one of those when applied to something that needs more delicate handling.

Very true! I don't think this'll convince anyone to do anything. More likely it'll fuel the idea that people worried about climate change are imagining stupid unlikely hellscapes.

[auroracloud]

Well that's nice at least. So there's still time.

[nostalgia]

Yep. Silver lining!

[shadowhive]

Dystopias are just so... depressing. The previews for this ep made me think that this would be.... well, not like that. Not only was it a dystopian world but virtually everyone was dead at the end

I think it would’ve worked better if it wasn’t Earth, that felt a bit much too. (Especially since other Who eps in the future have been more positive)

I agree on the anxiety, it feels like I’m not doing enough. But the annoying thing is that, even if we do all we can it’s nothing compared to what corporations do.

Yeah I think it’s weird so many future sets are stark and white. Why not add colour?

*hugs tight* I hope you feel better

[john_amend_all]

I think last week's was more depressing. This week: "If you work very hard all your life you might just save your planet." Last week: "Even if you work very hard all your life to save your planet, some crazy populist can still undo it all in a moment."

But it would be nice to see some of Nine's hope in the show:

You lot. You spend all your time thinking about dying. Like you’re going to get killed by eggs or beef or global warming or asteroids. But you never take the time to imagine the impossible. That maybe you survive.

[fucktheg0ds]

Yeah, I didn't love this one either. It just felt like it had been done before. The sterile and barren aesthetics didn't do the episode any favours either.

I'd rather have seen the adventure with the deep space squids.

Same.

[auroracloud]

I didn't watch any previews, so I didn't know much of what to expect. The odd thing was that I liked it at first - the action seemed to roll along pretty nicely in the start - but I ended up hating it, especially because of the way it made me feel, and the twist was just over the top.

I agree, it would have felt better if it wasn't the Earth. It would instead have been more interesting to learn about what it was like before it got so terrible, and learn that it was incredibly much like the Earth, and the characters would have realized that humans need to change things before Earth ends up like that, too. It would also make it seem more believable, because the dystopia was just so over the top - and not particularly close to the actual scenarios of Earth with global warming out of control that I've read in scientific books.

But the annoying thing is that, even if we do all we can it’s nothing compared to what corporations do.

Yeah, the biggest problem is that our whole economic system is the reason for this. We need huge systemic change, and of course invidiuals are a part of that, but no matter how carefully each of us sorts our trash and avoids food waste and so on, it's not enough without big change of the economic system. And the episode didn't address that kind of thing, so it leaves the message empty - there's nothing concrete about what we could do.

*hugs* Thank you. I had chocolate and fluffy fics and a good night's sleep, and feel better now.

[thisbluespirit]

That's a bit ironic when RTD also gave us Utopia!!

[auroracloud]

I guess it all varies by person what we find depressing. I didn't find Spyfall part 2 particularly depressing except for the Nazis. I guess it's because the show has done so many things with Gallifrey I was kind of like "ooooookay, this is Chibnall's Gallifrey story, we'll see what comes up next" rather than feeling it very deeply. Otherwise I was able to focus on enjoying it better than part 1 because in part 1 I was constantly distracted by the "does the spoiler I saw mean what I think it means?" train of thought going through my head. Objectively I know Part 1 was better, but I wasn't able to experience it like that, so I sort of dived into part 2 to make up for that.

I don't want to dismiss the threat of global warming either. I just want more constructive engagement with it instead. Something hopeful that suggests what could be the solution, how we could do differently, how we could topple the current harmful structures. Because that's what we need now, and dystopias don't help. For me the dystopic scenario was so depressing that the whole "this is just one possible timeline and you can still stop it" sentiment came too late, though I definitely appreciate the fact that it was the conclusion. Just didn't help enough at that point.

[auroracloud]

Ahem, yeah. How many different kinds of monsters have humans evolved into in the show's history?

[auroracloud]

Yeah, even if I'm glad the show tackles global warming in some way, doing it by rehashing several old storylines and tropes in an unimaginative and incredibly depressing way in barren aesthetics... is not the way to do it. I would have hoped the guy who gave us the frog universe and the Doctor's seven grannies last season would have been able to do something more engaging. Not everyone loved that stuff either, but at least it was imaginative and interesting and not bleak.

Well, let's hope next week's will be better. Looks like it's another celebrity historical, but I'm into science history.

[thisbluespirit]

Haemovores, Dregs, thingies from Utopia (I forget), and do we count all the individual people who have tragically mutated into alien creatures, because then that would be a very lot?

[shadowhive]

All I saw was the basic few second clip bbc 1 played which was basically ‘ohh a spa, something strange is going on’. Yeah I get what you mean, I felt similarly as I watched it

Yes exactly! I agree with all of that! It would have worked much better being like that. (And yeah, it doesn’t match what I’ve read either)

It seems to happen in a lot of things, a focus on what we can do and doing our bit, which honestly isn’t much. Instead the focus should be on stopping the higher ups which would be much more effective. (Which just made me think of one of the old Who eps The Green Death since I watched it last year)

That’s good, I’m glad!

[auroracloud]

And when you think of the whole S3 finale (I count all three eps as the finale story together), Utopia has the Futurekind (the ones with the weird teeth that chase Our Heroes) and then the Sound of Drums and the Last of the Time Lords have the Toclafane or whatever they really should be called, and both are really depressing!

[auroracloud]

Yeah, I honestly have found more hope in various rebellious space operas that have characters upending a corrupt system and finding new ways to do things, even if the story isn't directly about environment and resources. Stuff like Ann Leckie's Imperial Radch books or Yoon Ha Lee's Machineries of Empire books.

Hmm, I tried to watch The Green Death in the second Twitch marathon, since I'd heard a lot about it, but alas, I cannot stand Jo Grant for long enough to watch a six-part story with her. Even if she was somewhat more tolerable there than in her early stuff. Sorry if she's a favourite, she just rubs me the wrong way in every single thing and I get angry just watching her. I'm not a fan of Three either, to be honest, but I did like him a lot better in that story than in some others. I think I managed about 4 out of 6 episodes. I did appreciate Doctor Who engaging with environmental issues (without getting science entirely wrong the way it did in The Ice Warriors) but I would have preferred it with a different Doctor-Companion combo so I could have properly focused on watching it.

[john_amend_all]

Perhaps, ala Groucho Marx, those are RTD's / the Doctor's principles, and if you don't like them he's got other ones?

[ellieet]

I just watched it this afternoon and although I've never seen Planet of the Apes, it felt like the same sort of thing - 'It was Earth all along.' The thing with Doctor Who is, we know earth will be evacuated; 10, 11 and 12 all confirm it, but give a sense of hope with humanity carrying on and living and thriving and surviving elsewhere. I know humans can suck, but we're not all bad, are we? <3

[auroracloud]

This also reminds me of some of the Verity! podcast saying "if you don't like what the show is doing, wait a few years". Which is not the same thing but so true anyway.

[auroracloud]

Humanity's fate has been addressed on the show so many times that I wish this had been even a little bit in dialogue with that. Like, I liked the Doctor saying that this is just one possible timeline and you can still avoid it if you work out the current problems, but I wish she'd been shown arriving to that conclusion. Maybe she could have been like "...but I've seen humanity's future and it's not like this! Wait, timelines. Possible futures. Oh, I see it now. Somewhere in human history, could be exactly the time where you and your families and friends live, things are going so wrong that even this kind of future is now possible, and so we got thrown into this timeline. But it doesn't mean it's inevitable! It's what could happen, though, so you'd better start working out the problems in your time." That would have been a more interesting approach.

[ofmonstrouswords]

Yeah, I really disliked this episode.

I thought the writing was awful, for one; the Doctor came across as incompetent and idiotic for the first chunk of it. The writers seem to be relying on the idea that DW fans hate guns and so will naturally hate the character with a gun, so they don't have to do any work to make the character actually unlikable when compared to the Doctor; instead of juxtaposing Kane as the "bad" person we're not supposed to root for, they just succeeded in making her look *actually competent* in the face of danger.

The Doctor in NuWho for me has always done that sort of "fool blundering in" persona, but it's always come across as that he has a plan and he totally is faking being a fool to get people to reveal stuff to him. Even if you know he doesn't know what's going on, you still know he's not an idiot.

With 13...I don't get that she's faking it. I have no confidence that she knows what she's doing. I think it's because the direction of her has been to ignore previous doctors, so I consistently get the feeling that she doesn't know who the doctor is.

I like the actress. The writing and direction of 13, however, I think is awful, and I'm losing interest in the show and the character.

Most of the twists and turns I found utterly predictable and when they revealed that Orphan 55 was, indeed, Earth, I rolled my eyes and groaned out loud. This current trend of yelling about all the horrors of climate change in order to make people care...really just alienating the people who already care.

Stop telling me to panic. I panic enough. I want to hope.

And while Doctor Who has rarely been subtle in the messages it gives to the audience...it's been more subtle than this episode.

Idk. Really disappointed in this season so far. Wasn't too impressed with the last season, either.