Teevee, part I

[petronia]

Doctor Who: we're up to S3E9. Yeargh, I vaguely remember there being wank about this arc in the vast spaces of the internets, and now I see why. It sort of feels like the writers came up with [basic idea for two-parter plot and Doctor's emotional arc] which is very good, then picked [setting of ineffable Britishness] so the show can do its national character thing for [presumable planned air date of episode], which led to the logical treatment of Martha for said setting, where racism and classism happened to be at their near-worst. And yes, maybe they wanted to make their points** and/or felt it'd be disingenuous to always dodge that bullet while Martha remained in the picture, but 1) logical doesn't mean pleasant to watch by any means and 2) it's Watsonian-illogical, because if the Doctor had the choice of time-space locale for that gambit why wouldn't he pick one where Martha's ability to take action when required wouldn't be hampered by others not treating her like a real person. (Not to mention make her life easier, but that's semi-believable because dude can be that inconsiderate. XD;)


** One of which being that racism-as-we-know-it-now didn't always exist as such, even if something else existed in its place (the Shakespeare ep); and two - I think - that class can trump race in practice [nb expand on this]. I'm not British and can't parse the other side of this, i.e. what they thought they meant by making Rose go undercover as a maid in S2. I suppose one depressing but not completely dismissible possibility is that there was no thought put into it and we're just seeing the result of someone's French maid fetish. XD; What happens when you leave fanboys in charge.