profiterole_reads (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
profiterole_reads) wrote2023-11-26 01:46 pm
profiterole_reads) wrote2023-11-26 01:46 pm
First Doctor Who 60th Anniversary Special
The First Doctor Who 60th Anniversary Special was awesome!
First, I must say that I'm very cautious about RTD's return, because I saw him do the Bury Your Gays trope in various shows, to the point that I've been avoiding his work for a long time. I'm ready to give him a chance because I don't want to give up on Doctor Who, but he'd better not do that again.
Now, he did a great job with this special. Of course, I especially loved that Donna has a trans daughter, played by trans actress Yasmin Finney (Elle in Heartstopper). Also, UNIT's wheelchair-using Scientific Adviser Shirley Anne Bingham is played by wheelchair-using actress Ruth Madeley. And damn, she has so much positive energy! :D
Plotwise, it was also very good. His episodes tended to be too kitsch for my taste, but not this special.
First, I must say that I'm very cautious about RTD's return, because I saw him do the Bury Your Gays trope in various shows, to the point that I've been avoiding his work for a long time. I'm ready to give him a chance because I don't want to give up on Doctor Who, but he'd better not do that again.
Now, he did a great job with this special. Of course, I especially loved that Donna has a trans daughter, played by trans actress Yasmin Finney (Elle in Heartstopper). Also, UNIT's wheelchair-using Scientific Adviser Shirley Anne Bingham is played by wheelchair-using actress Ruth Madeley. And damn, she has so much positive energy! :D
Plotwise, it was also very good. His episodes tended to be too kitsch for my taste, but not this special.
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I, sadly, was unaware of his track record until Torchwood: Children of Earth, and will never entirely forgive him for that, but am not ready to give up on Doctor Who.
I'm ready to give him a chance because I don't want to give up on Doctor Who, but he'd better not do that again.
Exactly.
Also, UNIT's wheelchair-using Scientific Adviser Shirley Anne Bingham is played by wheelchair-using actress Ruth Madeley. And damn, she has so much positive energy! :D
It's great to hear the actress is a wheelchair-using actress! Her character was my favorite new character in the special!! (I recognized Yasmin Finney from Heartstopper.)
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I've not always liked RTD's stuff ... but this was good.
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Does he, though? The „Bury Your Gays“ trope as I understand it refers to killing off gay characters in stories where a) the straight characters stay alive, b) in service of the story of the straight characters, and c) to the point that there are no more gay characters in the story. And I can‘t think of an example of these criteria fit. The original Queer as Folk has a minor character who dies - in an ensemble where everyone is gay, so I don‘t see how this fits the trope. It’s a Sin is a miniseries explicitly dealing with AIDS in the 1980s, that’s what it’s about, so it’s a given not everyone survives, since the survivor grief and the way people deal and don’t deal with it in the gay community, and how are very much part of the story. Again, most of the characters in the story are gay, including the survivors. (And btw, RTD being a gay man who grew up in the midst of the AIDS crisis when he’d see older friends die left right and center while straight society for a long time refuses to admit this is happening, and ostracizes the sick a lot about RTD.) An English Scandal (based on a real life event in the 1970s) has its gay characters all survive.
Moving to the Whoverse, I can‘t remember a gay character dying in DW. (Or Sarah Jane Adventures, but the later is protected by the explicitly meant for children format.) Torchwood kills off Suzie, Owen and Tosh before it kills off Ianto, and while all Tosh and Owen are seen with a member of the same sex at least once during the show, I‘d still say they come across as primarily heterosexually inclined. (Suzie dies in the pilot and never gets screentime to explore her sexuality during her post mortem comeback.) And Ianto isn‘t the last one to die, either - in Children of Earth itself, Jack‘s grandson, and in Miracle Day, it‘s a straight character who bites the dust. (And even in the flashbacks where an m/m relationship of Jack‘s. Is referenced, that guy does not die.
What I‘m trying to get at: if it‘s an RTD show, and it‘s not exclusively aimed at kids or focused on a real life event (which isn‘t AIDS), chances are at least one character will die, true enough. But independent from sexual orientation. The man is just deeply interested in exploring how one lives with death, I think, and again, if you are gay and figured out you‘re gay at a time when AIDS still is a death sentence more often than not, I am not surprised.
Not to say his writing shouldn‘t be critisized! Or that he doesn‘t reuse some tropes a lot. But not, imo, this one.
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To me, Owen and Toshiko were bisexual, and I actually cared more about them than about Ianto. In Doctor Who, the Face of Boe dies, and we later learn that it's Jack, so another multisexual character.
I have not seen his show about AIDS, and I would not include it in my complaint if I had. (I have seen the French movie 120 Battements par minute, aka BPM (Beats per Minute), and do not criticise it for killing a gay character.)
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This is SO important! The industry should use people with disabilities in roles much more often. ♥
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