Dr Who - Too many black characters

I did not watch the latest, Christmas episode of Dr Who. I saw a few thirty second clips of it whilst doing something else. Only after being dragged into giving a rationale for a fairly flippant remark over on Tom Harris' blog, did I try and respond with something a bit more considered.

Having to be serious about Dr Who is like doing your Honours in Jedward, but he started it.

Apparently, Tom has difficulty with the idea that Dr Who is Politically Correct. You can read the thread and get the gist, but my first response was in support of another poster, "AnotherRichard" who said:

more politically correct than the NUT, over-produced, quite hilariously overacted, underscripted, gay imperialist (I can imagine the complaints if there was as much appreciation of the loveliness of teenage girls) and more in love with itself than a coven of right-wing bloggers.

Get the drift?

In reply, (goaded by Tom) I wrote:

RTD works on a sort of Gene Roddenberry principle, except that Gene Roddenberry was ten or twenty years ahead of his time and RTD is ten years behind. Roddenberry also allowed the plot to lead the stories, not his political prejudices. In many ways Star Trek was politically naive,and certainly the polemic was subordinate to the narrative. Star Trek asked questions about the status quo, Dr Who not only takes the status quo as read, but attempts to stuff it down our throats.
When Uhura kissed Kirk it was a spectacular statement about modernity and the future. The bi-racial element was intensely political and yet sublimely right in the context of a fictive world in which colour of skin was irrelevant. In effect, it was saying “we can hope for a better future”.
What RTD is doing is merely being a sop to current and very ephemeral ideas about race, for example, by showing ridiculously positive images of black people (and other minorities), in numbers that do not reflect the demographic. RTD is uncritically reflecting a very left-wing liberal bias – coincidentally the same kind that the BBC does – rather than attempting to ask a question about social attitudes that may prevail in the future.

Well, Tom's reply was terse and succinct:

I think what you meant to say, WW, was “Too many blacks.”

I don't deny this is part of the problem. But there is more to it than that.


I replied:

Yes, and it perpetuates a myth of a multi-cultural Britain that does not exist and never did exist. And it is clearly deliberately applied in Dr Who – in shovelfuls.
In ten or twenty years time it will be spoofed as being exactly what it is; outrageous indoctrination and propaganda.
What makes it so deeply unpleasant is that it perpetuates a very big lie – that we are all very jolly and have black people as our best mates.
Prejudice, real prejudice, cannot be tackled by anodyne appeals to the lumpenproletariat. This is Soma. It’s a soothing bowl of pap to make the stark reality of ethnic strife go away.

And that sort of sums up my involvement in the thread.

So yes, there were too many blacks in Dr Who. Moreover, they were grinning like idiots and ultimately shown to be credulous and stupid. Other black characters were just yer actual best mate. All of which goes to show how patronising the show has become, as if it needs to "educate" us in the ways of political correctness.

Bollocks. Dr Who is a waste of public money. You are better off reading this:

http://econtent.typepad.com/TheSentinel.pdf

or watching Star Trek. At least Roddenberry tackled the racial issues of the time head on instead of perpetuating a big fat lie.