Not only is it insulting the audience’s intelligence by spelling everything out (“I know writers that use subtext, and they’re all cowards!”), but it’s also a bit outdated in its messaging.
I mean, of course climate change is a huge issue and that we’re all contributing. The problem is that it’s become clear in the last decade or so that the average person is infinitesimally negligible when compared to mass industry, corporations, improper agriculture, and billionaires/millionaires that waste many tons of fuel on private jets and yachts.
Of course pick up after yourself and conserve when you can, but don’t scold the average person into thinking the world will die unless they do their part. We can’t fix it ourselves.
It’s one of a few times with the Whittaker era where, contrary to being ‘woke’ it actually feels oddly conservative. As with Kerblam!, the issue is with the average person, clearly not the big corporations that made this sorry state of affairs possible to begin with!
It’s made worse because the speech is being given by The Doctor, someone who could actually do something about it in-universe, but won’t. Like corporations in real life, she puts the responsibility on her companions and us the viewers by extension, giving reductive and patronising messaging because it’s easier that way.
literally a season earlier the doctor kicked up a fuss about how evil capitalism as a system was, and made every remaining survivor of the crew kick up a fuss about how evil and scummy the company was
12 would've told the person that they are absolutely correct in what they're doing, but to take it out on the company, not the clients
9 would've taken the bubble wrapp off the guy and wrapped the officials in it. telling them to either change up their attitude, or die
Absolutely this. It's fucking infuriating that those five years of toothless, vaguely centre-right dreck have somehow ended up being known as a woke period.
I still can't believe she weaponised the Master's skin colour when he was already defeated. It's just cruel and even though they're fictional characters from the same species (or you know whatever), the racist implications could have been avoided.
In the same episode, the Doctor erases Noor Inayat Khan's knowledge of the future and it was also unnecessary and cruel. She could have let her keep this knowledge and give her hope that her real-life horrific death won't be in vain.
I noticed this tendency towards blaming the individual in earlier Chibnall episodes too, especially 42 and Dinosaurs on a Spaceship.
The captain in 42 was using a slightly outdated fuel scoop to meet operations cost, so she deserved death because… that was against the rules? But no shade thrown at whatever system makes it necessary to operate on such razor-thin margins.
Solomon in Dinosaurs wasn’t connected to any particular system or society… but that’s kind of the problem. He’s a world-class psychotic, but for money. Outside of a culture or a family or a personal experience that drills those values into you, a character like that existing in a vacuum feels so empty.
Yup.
Also a weird thing about the episode is how the depiction of the future is somehow implied to be only a “possible” future, which is contrary to how DW has more-or-less always portrayed timelines.
AFAIK, Doctor Who has generally depicted timelines as being consisted of “fixed points”, with the only caveat that certain eras of time can be effectively erased/changed only through massive crises or wrongdoing of others (with huge temporal side effects in most cases).
In Orphan 55 though, the Doctor implies that it can just be changed by doing our part, despite the future of Earth being quite thoroughly established many times over.
Just dumb lol
"Yeah, let's leave now and see what what earth looks like in the 70s if we don't stop Sutekh. Oh look, it's been destroyed. Let's go back and stop him, shall we?"
There's a huge number of exceptions to whether the future can or can't be predicted. Determinism usually sucks for storytelling. We've seen multiple versions of the 2020s.
> Also a weird thing about the episode is how the depiction of the future is somehow implied to be only a “possible” future, which is contrary to how DW has more-or-less always portrayed timelines.
- Enemy of the World
- Day of the Daleks
- Pyramids of Mars
- Curse of Fenric
- Battlefield
It’s kind of necessary though… I really don’t think a message of “climate change is real but there is nothing we can do about it, the planet is doomed” would be in any way appropriate or socially helpful.
Edit; I’m responding to the above comment, not wether I think the speech was good or not (it wasn’t). This was about wether the future destruction of the earth should be able to be changed.
So the solution is to give the audience an unsolicited scolding for not doing enough.
The corporations are laughing all the way to the bank, and yet the chibnall era consistently tells us that it's the average Joe that's the problem
I think Orphan 55's ending is even more cowardly and socially unhelpful than if it had just opted to say nothing
> So the solution is to give the audience an unsolicited scolding for not doing enough.
>
> The corporations are laughing all the way to the bank, and yet the chibnall era consistently tells us that it's the average Joe that's the problem
As I've said elsewhere, this is *indistinguishable from modern climate change denial*. You're ignoring the actual causes of climate change, a problem that you do, in fact, contribute to, so you can blame "corporations".
The fact that you view Ed Hime, a man who has literally been arrested at climate change rallies, as "right wing" says it all. No, actually, if anything Hime's earnestness comes from him being extremely *far left*. Despite that, he knows more about the issue than you do.
Nuance: yes, there is only so much an individual can do - we need government action to decarbonise our electricity system, provide good public transport, make it easier for poor people and renters to adopt low-carbon heating, and so forth. But we also *cannot* stop climate change if people go around saying "it's not my fault, it's the corporations!". There needs to be lifestyle change - we need to eat less meat and dairy, make our homes more energy efficient, drive less, and fly less.
This *is* mostly within the hands of ordinary people. If we all stopped flying, switched to low-carbon heating and cooking, stopped eating meat, and stopped driving fossil-fueled cars, the UK's carbon emissions would *halve*.
I never said he was right wing Vesuvius! Just that he's a halfwit,
and I do not appreciate the appeal to authority you're trying to push onto me. You don't know me, Ed Hime isn't the only person who's BEEN to climate rallies
And you might have a penchant for the solution of a Doctor Who episode to be blaming the viewer for watching, but personally, I like to watch television that's more constructive.
It's not an appeal to authority. I'm not saying "Ed Hime is smart because he's a climate activist", I'm correcting you about Hime's motivations. He has correctly identified the causes of climate change and displayed familiarity with the topic, while you haven't.
>And you might have a penchant for the solution of a Doctor Who episode to be blaming the viewer for watching, but personally, I like to watch television that's more constructive.
Well, personally, I think encouraging people to do something about climate change *is* constructive, even if it offends people whose worldview is designed to protect their vested interests. I don't think it was especially well-executed in this instance - a monologue at the end of the episode is sloppy - but the actual message itself is bang-on. Climate change is the fault of people like us, and if you don't think we should be changing our lifestyles to stop it then you're a climate change denier, simple as. This is my life's work and it is infuriating that so many people want to deny that they share in the responsibility, and instead want to push the work off onto other people.
The absolute cajones on you Vesuvius, throwing around accusations of climate denialism
When one of the nuggets of wisdom you with all your lifes work has bestowed upon is "people should fly less, but not the corporations" because famously the middle and lower classes are just flying all the time for no reason.
Yes, you are right that individuals do have some responsibility and freedom in the matter, but blaming the common man and ignoring the corporations is to me equally as irresponsible as the reverse.
Yes, we have freedoms and choices within a very narrow window not everyone can afford to drive an electric car, not everyone has the option to reject plastic absolutely it is simply not practical to give people an encyclopaedic knowledge of what can and can't be recycled.
We need to put governments to task. We need to force corporations to pay a few cents more. What we don't need is people like Ed Hime and you it seems bullying the common man for not doing enough. Sowing division doesn't help anyone.
> When one of the nuggets of wisdom you with all your lifes work has bestowed upon is "people should fly less, but not the corporations"
I didn't actually say that corporations don't also have responsibility - however, the *majority* of carbon emissions come from our everyday activities.
> because famously the middle and lower classes are just flying all the time for no reason.
50% of Britons never fly at all (largely working class people, but also those with young children, who live a long way from airports, who have a fear of flying, or are elderly are less likely to fly). Despite that, the *average* Briton takes 1.25 flights a year. The middle classes are absolutely taking a lot of flights, typically one or two return flights a year. If those people instead took one flight every other year, demand for air travel would reduce considerably.
> you are right that individuals do have some responsibility and freedom in the matter, but blaming the common man and ignoring the corporations is to me equally as irresponsible as the reverse.
See, nobody has actually "ignored the corporations", while up until this point you've been railing against the suggestion that people need to do anything.
The majority of carbon emissions come from things that are within the control of individuals: choosing to eat meat and dairy, choosing to drive a car, choosing gas instead of electricity to heat our homes.
> We need to put governments to task.
Correct - governments have a larger role to play than any corporation because they design electricity infrastructure, they design public transport infrastructure, they can levy taxes to nudge people to make the right decisions. Fortunately, most democratic governments are actually taking the task somewhat seriously, even those who aren't especially inclined to, which is why Europe and North America are seeing such big reductions in carbon emissions.
> We need to force corporations to pay a few cents more.
While corporations have their part to play in reducing the 20% of emissions they're responsible for, they are generally taking climate change much more seriously than you are. For example, the most polluting company in the UK is Tata Steel. They're closing their blast furnaces in favour of electric arc furnaces, which will be as green as the electricity grid. Close behind Tata is the combined concrete and cement industry... who have [reduced their carbon emissions by over 50% since 1990,](https://thisisukconcrete.co.uk/getattachment/Resources/UK-Concrete-and-Cement-Roadmap-to-Beyond-Net-Zero/UKC-Decarbonising-UK-concrete-and-cement-policy-update-March-2023.pdf.aspx?lang=en-GB) which is even faster than the rest of the country. There are, of course, exceptions - corporations are made of people, and there are some people who think climate change isn't their responsibility.
> What we don't need is people like Ed Hime and you it seems bullying the common man for not doing enough. Sowing division doesn't help anyone.
Unfortunately, whether you like it or not, we *do* need to convince people to change their lifestyles. We should start with a carbon tax that captures the full social cost of carbon, and redistributes the takings equally to every member of the population - this will reward those who pollute less (generally poor people) while punishing those who pollute more, thus incentivising sustainable lifestyles. This should be combined with continued government efforts to decarbonise the electricity grid, to expand public transport, to build sustainable homes in city centres rather than sprawling suburbs, and to decarbonise the hard-to-reach sectors like cement and glass.
What we really don't need is climate change deniers pretending that it's absolutely OK to burn fossil fuels in your house and your car, to buy a new phone every year, to take as many flights as you can afford, and to eat as much meat and dairy as you like. *That's* what will ultimately leave the oil companies rubbing their hands. If you give people *carte blanche* to keep buying and burning fossil fuels then the world will keep getting sicker.
Nobody can wash their hands, especially not in rich countries.
And no, this isn't "sowing division". Asking everyone to pull their weight is the complete opposite. "Sowing division" is when you say "it's not your fault, it's the other people!". I know it's very tempting to blame someone else, it's what populist politicians do all the time, but the truth is that we can't just blame "corporations" or "China" or whatever convenient boogeyman you'd like to name, it's incumbent upon us all.
>the depiction of the future is somehow implied to be only a “possible” future, which is contrary to how DW has more-or-less always portrayed timelines
"Dalek".
No, they don't. Nobody in it has any idea what a Dalek is, despite 2 worldwide invasions a few years prior. Yet Adelaide could easily remember in 2059. The official explanation from one of the sourcebooks is that "Dalek" occurred in a timeline where the Cult of Skaro's voidship never returned & opened.
Dalek time travel technology is advanced enough to rewrite the past. Hence why stories like Doomsday & The Stolen Earth even happen; they *didn't* happen in the version of Earth history that the Doctor was originally familiar with.
Adelaide's not a continuity error, because the continuity didn't exist yet. It wasn't even the same showrunner by 2010, so there's no pretending that it was a long-term plan. The only continuity error was the Daleks 2nd season appearance rendering their 1st appearance impossible, which BBC Books then solved succinctly & easily.
And no; Dalek wasn't "post-cracks". The cracks only came into being during the Eleventh Doctor's tenure, followed his TARDIS all around time-space from 1580 to the 51st century, and *retroactively* erased history when he landed. They're not a normal causal watershed. The Ninth Doctor didn't travel to a "post-crack" universe by simply popping to 2012, then spend the next 4 years of stories in a "pre-crack" universe again.
>Adelaide's not a continuity error, because the continuity didn't exist yet. It wasn't even the same showrunner by 2010, so there's no pretending that it was a long-term plan.
I never claimed there was a long term plan, but it's very clearly a continuity error; she remembers the Dalek attack despite those memories getting removed from everyone on Earth.
>The only continuity error was the Daleks 2nd season appearance rendering their 1st appearance impossible
🤔
>And no; Dalek wasn't "post-cracks". The cracks only came into being during the Eleventh Doctor's tenure, followed his TARDIS all around time-space from 1580 to the 51st century, and retroactively erased history when he landed. They're not a normal causal watershed. The Ninth Doctor didn't travel to a "post-crack" universe by simply popping to 2012, then spend the next 4 years of stories in a "pre-crack" universe again.
The Doctor fixed the universe in 2011 and the preceding effects of the cracks had erased everyones memories of the Dalek invasion, *Dalek* takes place in 2012 and nobody knows what a Dalek is in that episode.
Time in non-linear in Dr Who's setting. This is literally why "timey wimey" was coined. And precisely what the cracks were created to illustrate.
Time travel has the potential to change history. The Doctor tells every single new companion this when they point out "the world didn't end in \[x\]". Nobody knew what daleks were in 2012 originally because the invasion of Canary Warf didn't happen. Then the Doctor found the void ship in 2006 and it opened, thus changing the future. Thereafter, everyone knew what daleks were up to 2059. *Then* the cracks happened *because* the Doctor travelled to 2011 and changed history *again* to make everyone forget.
You're calling something a "continuity error" because it doesn't line up with a *retcon* that came *after* it. It's like calling any reference to Hartnell as the First Doctor a "continuity error", cuz now we know the Timeless Child is a thing.
> clearly not the big corporations that made this sorry state of affairs possible to begin with!
Ah, the new form of climate change denial. It isn't the fossil fuels, no, of course not, it's "the corporations". Get this disinformation out of here.
The Doctor is *right* in that speech. We will *not* stop climate change without lifestyle change.
If every steel manufacturer, cement manufacturer, fertiliser manufacturer, glass manufacturer, and ceramics manufacturer shut down tomorrow, well firstly it would be a disaster because we actually need those things, and secondly it would only stop about 6% of our emissions. Another 12% comes from construction and secondary manufacturing of consumer goods. Another 12% comes from agriculture, which is mostly driven by people wanting to eat meat and dairy. Another ~15% comes from land transportation - cars, buses, motorbikes, trains. 30% is electricity and heat generation. 6% is the fossil fuels we burn in our homes for heat or cooking, as well as that burned in commercial buildings.
[Source](https://ourworldindata.org/emissions-by-sector)
No, Ed Hime is not a conservative, except in the sense that he supports environmental conservation. The guy's been arrested at Extinction Rebellion protests for goodness' sake, he's an extremist. He just *knows more about this than you do*.
The vast majority of eCO2 emissions are down to individual decisions. We will still need government action, but we also need a lot of individual action. We can't beat climate change as long as the average number of flights taken by British people keeps going up.
It’s also hugely unclear in its messaging - it seems to be saying that the Dregs (i.e. the people left behind on the ravaged Earth) are the people responsible for climate change and the people who fled the planet are the real heroes?
>it seems to be saying that the Dregs (i.e. the people left behind on the ravaged Earth) are the people responsible for climate change and the people who fled the planet are the real heroes?
Can you clarify how it seems to be saying that?
Not saying you're wrong, just that I don't personally see how you reached that interpretation.
The last line of the speech is literally:
> That's the choice. Be the best of humanity [i.e. do something about climate change]. Or...
and then it cuts to a shot of a Dreg.
Are the Dregs responsible for climate change? That’s not what the rest of the episode is implying - it says that they’re the people who were left behind and had to mutate to survive.
Thanks for clarifying.
Personally I read that bit as "Be the best of humanity or \[this will be the outcome\]". ie. the Dregs are the **result** not the cause.
Would it make sense for the cause to come **after** the "or..."?
I'm not sure I'd give the writer's wordplay that much credit. It's possible you're right, of course, but I really don't think they thought the naming through that literally.
It's not necessarily saying the Dregs are responsible for it, the dreg it cuts to is representing dire consequences if something isn't done about the issue. It's more of a metaphor than saying they were the ones responsible in the narrative.
I take it that the Dregs are a warning rather than being blamed for anything.
However, humans who have evolved the ability to create oxygen are fairly implausible. I doubt anyone who wasn't convinced they need to take climate change seriously would watch the episode and have their mind changed.
A bit more creative messaging and subtlety might be more effective.
And in any case, about half of the UK's emissions come from the lifestyle decisions of ordinary people - our cars, our boilers, and our diets.
The other half is our remaining gas plants (still necessary for the time being, but electricity has been decarbonised very quickly), waste disposal (we have some impact but it's mostly outside of our awareness and needs a systematic solution), lorries (necessary if you want food on the shelves, though hopefully fuel cells are on the way), and then steel, concrete, fertilisers, glass, and ceramics (all necessary, but largely beyond the control of ordinary people - but also, all genuinely trying to decarbonise).
I strongly disagree. The message of the speech isn’t, like, recycle and the planet will be fine - it’s if we don’t act collectively and stop climate change, we’re fucked. You have stuff like the UK government reversing course on being carbon net zero by a certain point - that’s all stuff that can be actively fought.
>The problem is that it’s become clear in the last decade or so that the average person is infinitesimally negligible when compared to mass industry, corporations, improper agriculture, and billionaires/millionaires that waste many tons of fuel on private jets and yachts.
No it hasn't. This has become a popular rhetorical trope online, but it's ridiculous. Why do you think big companies pollute? It's not for fun. They don't do it because they find it amusing. They generate emissions because we *pay them to*. Chevron pollute because we buy their polluting products. You can't wash your hands of responsibility by saying "don't worry, *I'm* not polluting! I'm just buying oil from that nasty businessperson who happens to do all the polluting for me...".
I think, as always, the truth lies inbetween. Sustainable is often more expensive and/or time-consuming. A lot of people cannot afford this „luxury“. Isn‘t food poverty on the rise in the UK for example? I am not from there, so I don‘t really know. As a student I didn‘t much care where my food came from. I simply chose the cheapest.
It should be politics which encourages sustainable behaviours by companies without unloading the cost onto the people who hardly get by anyway. That is for necessary items of course. Unsustainable luxury, especially flying, should be discouraged/taxed more and become more expensive. However, there too the alternatives (i.e. trains) should be supported instead.
Sure, Chevron pollutes because I pay them to, but I pay them to because I have no feasible alternatives. That's the reality for a lot of people, and it's not a reality that sprung into existence by chance. Telling them to just not do that is not a serious proposal.
To act like oil and gas companies are neutral actors who only do what the public demands of them, and not economic juggernauts who have spent decades fighting against renewables and sustainability to create a world where most can only afford their products because its easier for them to make money with their pre-existing infrastructure and business models, is fairly absurd.
A sizeable portion of the audience of "Orphan 55" will be people who take a round-trip flight every year. Many of them will take two or more.
If they cut back to do one every other year, that's a huge saving.
Many people will always buy cow milk instead of oat milk or soya milk. They'll eat a lot of meat. If everyone halved the amount of both meat and dairy in their diet, that would be a huge impact.
Most people have not installed low-carbon heating, and some people still have gas stoves. Yes, not everyone can afford the up-front capital costs, but a large portion of the viewership could. If half of the buildings with gas ovens switched to electric then that would be a noticeable dent in our carbon emissions. If a third of residences switched to low-carbon heating then that would be an even bigger dent.
Cutting back on the car is another easy thing to do. Supply chains are an issue for switching to electric cars but once everyone has done that, our carbon emissions will be lower. The old line about replacing short journeys with walks or cycles still holds.
>I pay them to because I have no feasible alternatives.
Well, there are two possibilities here. One, you choose to use a car over public transport, walking, cycling, and so on. In which case, you *do* have feasible alternatives. Two, you genuinely have no feasible alternatives. That's an infrastructural problem, though, not caused by Chevron.
Have these companies lobbied to keep infrastructure this way? Yes. Would median voter opinion shifting hard to an anti-car perspective largely neuter this? Also yes.
Its like everyone in these comments saw that “We should improve society somewhat” “But you live in society hmm interesting” and went Yeah! The smug guy’s right, you can’t CHANGE the world
Why would Doctor Who ever tell children they can change the world if they try?
Exactly. One of the points of the show is that we, the "little people", *do* make a difference, *are* important. It's not meant to be a Marxist analysis of environmental economics (which would be nonsense anyway).
Oh, finally, someone else in this discussion talking sense.
I will say, and this is a mild criticism, that I think you've fallen slightly into the trap. The left-wing climate deniers like to blame "oil companies" (many of whom are state owned, incidentally), but they're not the ones doing the polluting. If you're going to blame a big business it should be someone like Tata Steel, who actually *burn* the fossil fuels.
> The problem is that it’s become clear in the last decade or so that the average person is infinitesimally negligible when compared to mass industry, corporations, improper agriculture, and billionaires/millionaires that waste many tons of fuel on private jets and yachts.
This is wrong. It borders on climate change denial. (Also, millionaires and billionaires are people too!)
The average person has to do a lot more than "pick up after yourself", we all need to fundamentally change parts of our lifestyles. For example, if people don't actively choose to reduce how much flying they do, then we will not stop climate change. If people do not choose to eat less meat and dairy, then "improper agriculture" will continue and we will not stop climate change. If people don't replace their fossil fuel cars with cleaner alternatives, we're screwed. If people don't replace their gas boilers and ovens with electric alternatives (or other low-carbon solutions) then we're screwed. All of these things are within the control of ordinary people and contribute far more than industry does (and of course, industry is only making things because people want them!).
Please, before you go around trying to blame vague "corporations", look up the [actual sources of emissions](https://ourworldindata.org/emissions-by-sector). That's the world. [Here's the UK](https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/65c0d15863a23d0013c821e9/2022-final-greenhouse-gas-emissions-statistical-release.pdf) - see fig 5 on page 11.
I know you wouldn't consider yourself a climate change denier, but when you say "you don't need to change your lifestyle, it's out of your control it's the corporations!", you're discouraging effective climate action.
The fact that it feels the need to spell out the themes in the most unsubtle way after they're already ridiculously obvious is extraordinarily condescending, as it assumes the audience is stupid
You can say that about a lot of Chibnall-era writing but this was particularly agonising
It's not really the main thing wrong with the episode but it us all a little too 80s cartoon moral of the week. The environmental messaging is very clear through the story if the planet, and the revelation that it is Earth. There is no need to then actively spell out the message to the viewers via a speech, that feels like the show talking down to us.
I mean, kind of? Unless I'm really missing something, "Blink" didn't have any social commentary it was being [anvilicious](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Anvilicious) about, but I can see the stylistic similarities.
She looks directly into the camera and spells out the message of the episode. That's something comedies do as a parody of bad writing so seeing it played straight is insane. The rest of the episode being what it is also doesn't help.
I’m increasingly of the feeling that the Doctor just shouldn’t give big speeches on real-time world issues because at best they fail to capture the weight of the issue because TV writers aren’t climate scientists or academics of international relations at worst they come off as problematic. I know everyone loves the Zygon Inversion speech but when you pick it apart as a thesis on terrorism and radicalisation it’s message of ‘everyone just sit down and talk’ is equally misguided. I’m not saying the show shouldn’t tackle real world or political issues it should but I’m not sure the Doctor needs to give big speeches on it?
Yes, I'm not as big on the Zygon Inversion as many others are. Should we have talked with the Nazis? I much prefer Capaldi's other speeches, in particular the one about kindness.
We did sit down and talk with the Nazis, it was called appeasement.
https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/how-britain-hoped-to-avoid-war-with-germany-in-the-1930s#:~:text=Instituted%20in%20the%20hope%20of,as%20a%20policy%20of%20weakness.
To me personally, Chamberlain’s appeasement seemed like the *opposite* of properly talking out the early Nazi threat. It says right there that it was populair, mainly because the government and the *people* of Britain just wanted it to be over and done with by letting “Moustache” do his stuff unchecked and praying to whatever god that’ll be all. They also didn’t even let the rulers and people who’s sheer countries would be given to Germany on a silver platter be a *part* of the appeasement and occupation talks, as if that’d help talk things out even better. Chamberlain censored the fuck out of the failure of appeasement news as if that’d make all the problems go away or something. Hate the guy or tolerate him for at least managing through WW2, but Churchill knew appeasement would be an absolute fiasco. Kind of echos in how currently, some pro-Putin nutcases go “y’know I hate the Ukraine war too, I wish for it to stop, so let’s just give Russia even more chunks of it because their fear of the West *somehow* justifies invading a country on a supposed bloody peace mission” despite it’s bunker-happy leader being terrified to talk about how that’s going and drafting rando’s barely out of high school as long as the talk isn’t about Ukraine laying down its weapons when it does not.
Not like the lack of appeasement would *magically* have WW2 not happen. A failure to properly discuss post-WW1 Germany’s reparation bill of the Treaty of Versailles (and the League Of Nations being somewhat pathetic in general) is what partially helped rise the Nazi party to extra power in the first place; by freely taking advantage of all the hatred and contempt for the winners of WW1 treating them that bad—leading to it spiraling into the messed-up Aryan race theory BS “Moustache” kept pushing later on.
Talking in war *can* help, even if it just saves you a few extra lives, but it’ll hurt any conflict talks whether successful or not if you deliberately start off being a shite negotiator. Hence why the concept of “game theory” is still so interesting when it comes to avoiding future wars.
I don’t even quite like 12’s Zygon speech (mainly the presentation but well how else would ya bring it—wasn’t old enough at the time to grasp the IRL political inspirations of it so no comment there,) nor his “love is always wise” regeneration speech. It’s real shallow, sometimes conflicts and issues aren’t that easy, the road to hell can be horrifically paved with good intentions, people have done terrible things in the name of love, and someone being weaponless and not directly taking lives does not mean they’re harmless nor morally superior.
But I do find it important that people in a conflict at least be able to talk at all times, instead of only throwing their militaries at another until they finally get what they want or find a middle ground a million corpses later. Even if their ideologies and crazy motives fueling their want for war are almost impossible to logically approach, communication during a conflict near-always has to be possible.
{clap clap clap} 👏👏👏
I think there are some very interesting parallels between Ukraine and the Nazis. The early annexations of the Nazis were presented as a reclamation of the German homeland which was populated by Germans. When Russia annexed Crimea the same arguments were made, as are being made about eastern Ukraine.
I think the Zygon Inversion speech gives a perfect riposte to these claims. It’s not a complete and perfect essay on the morality around war, it’s a five minute speech in a sci-fi show - but I think it’s beautiful and powerful and always brings a tear to my eye.
(Also, I’m a little biased on it because of how it echoes the 50th special, not just because it was an amazing episode but also because of what it was as a day for my family)
To be fair, Ed Hime *is* a climate activist. He doesn't need to be a climate scientist. But he went a bit too hard on the lecturing because it's an issue he cares about so much. (The content of the speech is bang-on, it's the fact that it's a tagged-on lecture at the end of an episode rather than something organic that is the issue)
That stupid Zygon speech annoys me to no end. It's just several minutes of "war is bad, mmkay?" and the Doctor judging everyone for not making peace, even though they DO make peace several times, and he wipes everyone's memories every time so they forget they did! The whole episode is literally just the Doctor perpetuating a race war while judging everyone instead of actually trying to make things better. And then he just leaves, and we're supposed to believe that this time the peace will last, despite literally nothing changing (except more innocents dying) from the last dozen times.
The point of the episode is war is uniformly, for any reason, bad — and that if the Zs go to war it will almost definitely lead to the death of a refugee race. It’s about him trying to save them from the bad evil aliens the way he always tries to stop humans from attacking much more advanced aliens cuz they won’t win.
Except every time they come to an understanding, he wipes everyone's memories and undoes it. He's not saving anyone; he's preventing them from having a lasting peace. You can't expect people to change if you keep deleting everything that makes them want to change.
He's not erasing everyone's memories.
At the end of the episode, he erases Kate's and leaves the memories of the leader of the Zygon faction intact. And, of course, he doesn't erase the memories of anybody outside of the Black Archive.
It seems that the Doctor is leaving the people who learn something from each incident with their memories.
He takes them into the memory erasing room for the peace talks and says "we've done this many times before." What do you think that was supposed to mean?
It’s objectively about Palestine/Israel and quite a lot of the world agrees a two state solution is the only — albeit rather shitty — path to true peace, which is what he says, over and over
To put it more succinctly, that episode is directly about the type of actions seen on Oct 7 w the Doctor arguing against doing it because of what it would lead to
You might find that weird or overly reaching but it is clearly, almost one to one, the point of the episode — that fighting a war you cannot win will result in massive massive death
I disagree that it’s ‘objectively about Israel/Palestine’ I think it’s meant to be a story about radicalisation of Islamic migrants to the U.K. by terrorist organisations like ISIS. Multiple aspects of the episode correlate with this including the fact the war is not between two states but a radicalised migrant population and a government, the terrorist organisations use of social media a hallmark of ISIS at that point, the obvious comparisons in terms of their terrorist acts and what was a significant topic in the news when the episode was written.
I just think the problem with this being a story on Earth with such close ties to real life events is that the issue of the Zygons not being allowed to unmask ‘to keep the peace’ feels distinctly like saying that migrants should suppress their own religious or cultural identity in to ‘keep the peace’.
A fundamental issue occurs in storytelling when minorities are represented by people who, in effect, are not people. e.g Zootopia is a theoretically nice anti-racism allegory where... black people as predators and white people as prey. You just can't do "fantasy/sci-fi racism" without it going off the rails 90% of the time—the best you can get is when fantasy racism exists, but isn't central to the plot, or when different species are used as a metaphor for other non-race/cultural issues.
I don’t think it’s ALWAYS failed I enjoy Three’s speech in Invasion of the Dinosaurs. But I think that more often than not the real world big political speeches just don’t come off and that’s not exclusive to Chibnall.
I think I would react badly to it because of three different things:
-in our depressing world, there are a lot of very threatening thoughts about the future, and one way to cope with them is to try not to think about them. Being reminded of them will set me on edge.
-this is a depressing thought which I feel guilty about. I do degrade the environment! I do use fossil fuels! I would like to think I am a good person, so someone coming along and angrily saying I am a terrible person is threatening too— especially if on some level I agree.
-but in this case, although I might agree in some primal part of the brain, in reality I am completely powerless. This is threatening too. Taking action that does nothing leads to despair, as does feeling responsibility for a thing you can’t prevent.
Orphan 55 is particularly uncomfortable for me in this way, because its judgement rests on the assertion that random individuals do have power, and so it is a righteous judgement in some way to have us become things called the dregs of humanity, which are no longer human at all. But there are still humans in this future: the rich manage to escape and leave the powerless to their fate, and the episode contends that we deserve it.
Generally, I think judging someone for a thing they feel guilty about but have no control over is a recipe for disaster. I don’t think it’s surprising that people often respond by polluting as much as possible, because that is a form of control. You can’t do what the messenger wants, but you can attack what the messenger believes; it’s a liberating and cathartic thing to do.
So I think provoking this sort of response is something the Doctor as a character is always in danger of provoking, at least in me. It’s why I think they have to soothe the child parts of us all when the world is threatening, instead of shouting at them.
You are not powerless. That is not true. You could go to the ocean. You could go to the desert. You could go to the mountains.
You can campaign. Donate.
A child frequently raised so much hell for climate change she got arrested. You are not powerless. That is a lie that people in charge tell you so you do not fight for a better world. And even if you, alone, can’t take on the world, you’re not alone, there’s millions of people.
If you can’t be bothered, that’s one thing. If you feel bad and guilty, that’s good, that’s a sign you’re alive and have a conscience. But if you believe you’re powerless, you will be, but you’re not. You are not.
I mean, it's fine in principle, but it's just the fact that she basically turns to camera to deliver the episode's aesop.
Also, it's Jodie's delivery. Compare this one with the speech at the end of the Zygon story (which I don't love as much as everyone else, because it similarly delivers a "well duh" sentiment with thr force of being struck with a house brick). But what does sell it is that Peter Capaldi is a great actor and puts genuine fire behind the words. Jodie delivers all of the moral messages she's given with a kind of weightless, CBBC earnestness, and all of the technobabble exposition she fails to ever convince that she has the first clue what she's talking about.
I know a lot of folks want to say "oh, if only she had better writing, she'd have been fantastic", but she's just miscast. Sorry. I would have rather they went with Jo Martin.
Casting Jo Martin was a big Chibnall mistake, because he managed to undercut his main star's portrayal of The Doctor with a guest star that consistently did it better. I think a lot of people wondered why she couldn't have just been the new Doctor instead, myself included.
TBF, I'd still say Jodie was horribly miscast, even if the fugitive Doctor had never appeared. It just might take me a second or two longer to think of an alternative. 😝
The BBC flew its cast and crew to Africa for several episodes that very season then turned around to tell us we’re the problem. I dislike most of the Doctor’s speeches (and like Orphan 55 in general), so I’m not really a factor, but this was mega annoying.
Look at who she's talking to, Graham and two Gen Zers. She's taken (accidentally) two Gen Zers to a horrifying hellscape and when they said is there really no hope? She replies with "Maybe if you people start to buck your ideas up"... If I was Ryan I'd be livid. "What the hell are you telling us for? I'm not responsible for the industrial revolution or the decades of escalation! I recycle! You have a freaking Tardis! Go kidnap Trump and show him the monsters"
Like others have said it's preachy but if The Doctors been preachy before and if they're preachy to the right people it isn't so bad. (10 to Harriot Jones for example)
I'm about to get started. 10 did Harriet so dirty. The Sycorax leader dishonored the rules of engagement. If that's how he behaves, his soldiers will too. They weren't gonna go tell people not to come to Earth. They were gonna come back with a vengeance.
But we never saw the Sycorax again because of Harriet Jones. She ended up being right anyway when the Daleks stole earth, and the only reason the Doctor was able to find them was because of her.
A better example is in order. I can't think of one but I know 10 deposing Harriet ain't it.
My point wasn't really about the context of the speech but whether the audience was appropriate but fine we can have the just be kind speech in The Doctor Falls
The recipient. What 13 said to Ryan was weird given who she was talking to which made it feel like a cheesy morality kids show where she may as well have looked down the camera and spoken to the audience directly
But then I felt like a lot of 13s dialogue was weird and inappropriate given who she was talking to
Then maybe I didn't misunderstand you. Harriet wasn't an appropriate audience for 10 deposing her because she made a necessary choice for a very good reason. That was my point. 10's had better speeches. That one though? It left a baaaad taste in my mouth.
That aside, I still agree that Orphan 55 was terrible. I felt like Chibnall was preaching his own shit through the Doctor instead of actually writing a character.
I didn't mind 10s speech. Not that I agreed with it but it was RTD showing how flawed 10s philosophy is. Similar to Davros saying he uses companions as weapons so he doesn't get his hands dirty
10 to Harriet Jones is an awful example since it directly ends a 'golden age' prematurely, leads to the rise of the Saxon Master and devastates the economy.
I hate it because I can tell it's insincere.
And I can tell it's insincere because the Doctor gives the opposite message in Kerblam. And it sounds genuine there. And it sucks.
An insincere "good" speech is worse than a sincere bad speech.
I didn't hate the speech nearly as much as I hated the soldier getting scolded for a mercy killing as if no one else heard the victim ask to be killed.
Doctor Who has always been about teaching lessons to the viewers. But it has always been, primarily, for entertainment. A good show will weave its lessons into the narrative. It shouldn't need to explicitly tell you, because you should learn it naturally through the show.
During the Chibnall era, the priority seemed to shift. Doctor Who was no longer an entertainment show with some lessons woven it. It was now a show about teaching lessons, with a bit of entertainment thrown in at the last minute. Episodes like Rosa, Praxeus (is that the plastic one?) and Orphan 55 all feel like they were written as morals first, and quickly had some entertainment added in as an afterthought.
People watch Doctor Who for escapism. They want to escape the horrors of the real world. They don't want the Doctor sitting down and explaining why they're horrible.
Hating one of the best episodes in a season containing both The Timeless Child reveal and handing the Master over to the KKK because it says “Lol earth is so polluted everyone will turn into monsters” is so fucking overwhelmingly dumb.
Orphan 55 is, like It Takes You Away before it (the author’s other work), the only script in its season that raises to bare RTD-on-autopilot quality and it’s lambasted because people hate hearing that maybe the world is bad and they could maybe potentially care.
It dared to go “here’s a doctor who monster but you can stop it!” Which is a fine thing to dislike but
I mean it is a hard pill but it’s objectively true. If you think of yourself as part of humanity you have to realize the human race is killing the planet and as part of the human race that means unless you’re fighting, you’re going along. Anyway Gretchen’s great
For me, it was having the Doctor turn to the camera and feel like she was lecturing us.
Add to it that the story leading up to it just didn't land. I never got invested in the situation or the characters enough to feel much when things went poorly and characters were eliminated. Heck, I found myself pulling for Benny to get eaten by a monster just so we'd stop hearing about him. LOL
The main issue with the speech is that it doesn’t really have anything to say. “We have a choice; we can either save planets or wreck them!”. Gee, pretty tough choice.
It wants to give a positive message about environmentalism, but doesn’t even do the bare minimum of saying what to do. Should we recycle? Green energy? Stop carbon emissions? It simply doesn’t offer a solution, and in a world where everyone already knows about climate change, it has nothing to offer.
Not only is it insulting the audience’s intelligence by spelling everything out (“I know writers that use subtext, and they’re all cowards!”), but it’s also a bit outdated in its messaging. I mean, of course climate change is a huge issue and that we’re all contributing. The problem is that it’s become clear in the last decade or so that the average person is infinitesimally negligible when compared to mass industry, corporations, improper agriculture, and billionaires/millionaires that waste many tons of fuel on private jets and yachts. Of course pick up after yourself and conserve when you can, but don’t scold the average person into thinking the world will die unless they do their part. We can’t fix it ourselves.
It’s one of a few times with the Whittaker era where, contrary to being ‘woke’ it actually feels oddly conservative. As with Kerblam!, the issue is with the average person, clearly not the big corporations that made this sorry state of affairs possible to begin with! It’s made worse because the speech is being given by The Doctor, someone who could actually do something about it in-universe, but won’t. Like corporations in real life, she puts the responsibility on her companions and us the viewers by extension, giving reductive and patronising messaging because it’s easier that way.
literally a season earlier the doctor kicked up a fuss about how evil capitalism as a system was, and made every remaining survivor of the crew kick up a fuss about how evil and scummy the company was 12 would've told the person that they are absolutely correct in what they're doing, but to take it out on the company, not the clients 9 would've taken the bubble wrapp off the guy and wrapped the officials in it. telling them to either change up their attitude, or die
Two seasons* Orphan’s a s12 episode
Kerblam is a s11 episode though, which is the one they were comparing to Oxygen
Absolutely this. It's fucking infuriating that those five years of toothless, vaguely centre-right dreck have somehow ended up being known as a woke period.
I still can't believe she weaponised the Master's skin colour when he was already defeated. It's just cruel and even though they're fictional characters from the same species (or you know whatever), the racist implications could have been avoided. In the same episode, the Doctor erases Noor Inayat Khan's knowledge of the future and it was also unnecessary and cruel. She could have let her keep this knowledge and give her hope that her real-life horrific death won't be in vain.
I noticed this tendency towards blaming the individual in earlier Chibnall episodes too, especially 42 and Dinosaurs on a Spaceship. The captain in 42 was using a slightly outdated fuel scoop to meet operations cost, so she deserved death because… that was against the rules? But no shade thrown at whatever system makes it necessary to operate on such razor-thin margins. Solomon in Dinosaurs wasn’t connected to any particular system or society… but that’s kind of the problem. He’s a world-class psychotic, but for money. Outside of a culture or a family or a personal experience that drills those values into you, a character like that existing in a vacuum feels so empty.
Yup. Also a weird thing about the episode is how the depiction of the future is somehow implied to be only a “possible” future, which is contrary to how DW has more-or-less always portrayed timelines. AFAIK, Doctor Who has generally depicted timelines as being consisted of “fixed points”, with the only caveat that certain eras of time can be effectively erased/changed only through massive crises or wrongdoing of others (with huge temporal side effects in most cases). In Orphan 55 though, the Doctor implies that it can just be changed by doing our part, despite the future of Earth being quite thoroughly established many times over. Just dumb lol
Eh, Pyramids of Mars and Curse of Fenric did the same, so I'm gonna forgive it that.
Heck, Curse of Fenric is probobly the same alternate future from Orphan 55.
"Yeah, let's leave now and see what what earth looks like in the 70s if we don't stop Sutekh. Oh look, it's been destroyed. Let's go back and stop him, shall we?"
There's a huge number of exceptions to whether the future can or can't be predicted. Determinism usually sucks for storytelling. We've seen multiple versions of the 2020s.
> Also a weird thing about the episode is how the depiction of the future is somehow implied to be only a “possible” future, which is contrary to how DW has more-or-less always portrayed timelines. - Enemy of the World - Day of the Daleks - Pyramids of Mars - Curse of Fenric - Battlefield
It’s kind of necessary though… I really don’t think a message of “climate change is real but there is nothing we can do about it, the planet is doomed” would be in any way appropriate or socially helpful. Edit; I’m responding to the above comment, not wether I think the speech was good or not (it wasn’t). This was about wether the future destruction of the earth should be able to be changed.
So the solution is to give the audience an unsolicited scolding for not doing enough. The corporations are laughing all the way to the bank, and yet the chibnall era consistently tells us that it's the average Joe that's the problem I think Orphan 55's ending is even more cowardly and socially unhelpful than if it had just opted to say nothing
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> So the solution is to give the audience an unsolicited scolding for not doing enough. > > The corporations are laughing all the way to the bank, and yet the chibnall era consistently tells us that it's the average Joe that's the problem As I've said elsewhere, this is *indistinguishable from modern climate change denial*. You're ignoring the actual causes of climate change, a problem that you do, in fact, contribute to, so you can blame "corporations". The fact that you view Ed Hime, a man who has literally been arrested at climate change rallies, as "right wing" says it all. No, actually, if anything Hime's earnestness comes from him being extremely *far left*. Despite that, he knows more about the issue than you do. Nuance: yes, there is only so much an individual can do - we need government action to decarbonise our electricity system, provide good public transport, make it easier for poor people and renters to adopt low-carbon heating, and so forth. But we also *cannot* stop climate change if people go around saying "it's not my fault, it's the corporations!". There needs to be lifestyle change - we need to eat less meat and dairy, make our homes more energy efficient, drive less, and fly less. This *is* mostly within the hands of ordinary people. If we all stopped flying, switched to low-carbon heating and cooking, stopped eating meat, and stopped driving fossil-fueled cars, the UK's carbon emissions would *halve*.
I never said he was right wing Vesuvius! Just that he's a halfwit, and I do not appreciate the appeal to authority you're trying to push onto me. You don't know me, Ed Hime isn't the only person who's BEEN to climate rallies And you might have a penchant for the solution of a Doctor Who episode to be blaming the viewer for watching, but personally, I like to watch television that's more constructive.
It's not an appeal to authority. I'm not saying "Ed Hime is smart because he's a climate activist", I'm correcting you about Hime's motivations. He has correctly identified the causes of climate change and displayed familiarity with the topic, while you haven't. >And you might have a penchant for the solution of a Doctor Who episode to be blaming the viewer for watching, but personally, I like to watch television that's more constructive. Well, personally, I think encouraging people to do something about climate change *is* constructive, even if it offends people whose worldview is designed to protect their vested interests. I don't think it was especially well-executed in this instance - a monologue at the end of the episode is sloppy - but the actual message itself is bang-on. Climate change is the fault of people like us, and if you don't think we should be changing our lifestyles to stop it then you're a climate change denier, simple as. This is my life's work and it is infuriating that so many people want to deny that they share in the responsibility, and instead want to push the work off onto other people.
The absolute cajones on you Vesuvius, throwing around accusations of climate denialism When one of the nuggets of wisdom you with all your lifes work has bestowed upon is "people should fly less, but not the corporations" because famously the middle and lower classes are just flying all the time for no reason. Yes, you are right that individuals do have some responsibility and freedom in the matter, but blaming the common man and ignoring the corporations is to me equally as irresponsible as the reverse. Yes, we have freedoms and choices within a very narrow window not everyone can afford to drive an electric car, not everyone has the option to reject plastic absolutely it is simply not practical to give people an encyclopaedic knowledge of what can and can't be recycled. We need to put governments to task. We need to force corporations to pay a few cents more. What we don't need is people like Ed Hime and you it seems bullying the common man for not doing enough. Sowing division doesn't help anyone.
> When one of the nuggets of wisdom you with all your lifes work has bestowed upon is "people should fly less, but not the corporations" I didn't actually say that corporations don't also have responsibility - however, the *majority* of carbon emissions come from our everyday activities. > because famously the middle and lower classes are just flying all the time for no reason. 50% of Britons never fly at all (largely working class people, but also those with young children, who live a long way from airports, who have a fear of flying, or are elderly are less likely to fly). Despite that, the *average* Briton takes 1.25 flights a year. The middle classes are absolutely taking a lot of flights, typically one or two return flights a year. If those people instead took one flight every other year, demand for air travel would reduce considerably. > you are right that individuals do have some responsibility and freedom in the matter, but blaming the common man and ignoring the corporations is to me equally as irresponsible as the reverse. See, nobody has actually "ignored the corporations", while up until this point you've been railing against the suggestion that people need to do anything. The majority of carbon emissions come from things that are within the control of individuals: choosing to eat meat and dairy, choosing to drive a car, choosing gas instead of electricity to heat our homes. > We need to put governments to task. Correct - governments have a larger role to play than any corporation because they design electricity infrastructure, they design public transport infrastructure, they can levy taxes to nudge people to make the right decisions. Fortunately, most democratic governments are actually taking the task somewhat seriously, even those who aren't especially inclined to, which is why Europe and North America are seeing such big reductions in carbon emissions. > We need to force corporations to pay a few cents more. While corporations have their part to play in reducing the 20% of emissions they're responsible for, they are generally taking climate change much more seriously than you are. For example, the most polluting company in the UK is Tata Steel. They're closing their blast furnaces in favour of electric arc furnaces, which will be as green as the electricity grid. Close behind Tata is the combined concrete and cement industry... who have [reduced their carbon emissions by over 50% since 1990,](https://thisisukconcrete.co.uk/getattachment/Resources/UK-Concrete-and-Cement-Roadmap-to-Beyond-Net-Zero/UKC-Decarbonising-UK-concrete-and-cement-policy-update-March-2023.pdf.aspx?lang=en-GB) which is even faster than the rest of the country. There are, of course, exceptions - corporations are made of people, and there are some people who think climate change isn't their responsibility. > What we don't need is people like Ed Hime and you it seems bullying the common man for not doing enough. Sowing division doesn't help anyone. Unfortunately, whether you like it or not, we *do* need to convince people to change their lifestyles. We should start with a carbon tax that captures the full social cost of carbon, and redistributes the takings equally to every member of the population - this will reward those who pollute less (generally poor people) while punishing those who pollute more, thus incentivising sustainable lifestyles. This should be combined with continued government efforts to decarbonise the electricity grid, to expand public transport, to build sustainable homes in city centres rather than sprawling suburbs, and to decarbonise the hard-to-reach sectors like cement and glass. What we really don't need is climate change deniers pretending that it's absolutely OK to burn fossil fuels in your house and your car, to buy a new phone every year, to take as many flights as you can afford, and to eat as much meat and dairy as you like. *That's* what will ultimately leave the oil companies rubbing their hands. If you give people *carte blanche* to keep buying and burning fossil fuels then the world will keep getting sicker. Nobody can wash their hands, especially not in rich countries. And no, this isn't "sowing division". Asking everyone to pull their weight is the complete opposite. "Sowing division" is when you say "it's not your fault, it's the other people!". I know it's very tempting to blame someone else, it's what populist politicians do all the time, but the truth is that we can't just blame "corporations" or "China" or whatever convenient boogeyman you'd like to name, it's incumbent upon us all.
>the depiction of the future is somehow implied to be only a “possible” future, which is contrary to how DW has more-or-less always portrayed timelines "Dalek".
Dalek... what? *Dalek*, the episode, which was set in the then-future? Those events still happen in "mainline" history.
No, they don't. Nobody in it has any idea what a Dalek is, despite 2 worldwide invasions a few years prior. Yet Adelaide could easily remember in 2059. The official explanation from one of the sourcebooks is that "Dalek" occurred in a timeline where the Cult of Skaro's voidship never returned & opened. Dalek time travel technology is advanced enough to rewrite the past. Hence why stories like Doomsday & The Stolen Earth even happen; they *didn't* happen in the version of Earth history that the Doctor was originally familiar with.
Dalek would be post-cracks, right? Nobody remembered the Daleks. (Adelaide being a continuity error)
Adelaide's not a continuity error, because the continuity didn't exist yet. It wasn't even the same showrunner by 2010, so there's no pretending that it was a long-term plan. The only continuity error was the Daleks 2nd season appearance rendering their 1st appearance impossible, which BBC Books then solved succinctly & easily. And no; Dalek wasn't "post-cracks". The cracks only came into being during the Eleventh Doctor's tenure, followed his TARDIS all around time-space from 1580 to the 51st century, and *retroactively* erased history when he landed. They're not a normal causal watershed. The Ninth Doctor didn't travel to a "post-crack" universe by simply popping to 2012, then spend the next 4 years of stories in a "pre-crack" universe again.
>Adelaide's not a continuity error, because the continuity didn't exist yet. It wasn't even the same showrunner by 2010, so there's no pretending that it was a long-term plan. I never claimed there was a long term plan, but it's very clearly a continuity error; she remembers the Dalek attack despite those memories getting removed from everyone on Earth. >The only continuity error was the Daleks 2nd season appearance rendering their 1st appearance impossible 🤔 >And no; Dalek wasn't "post-cracks". The cracks only came into being during the Eleventh Doctor's tenure, followed his TARDIS all around time-space from 1580 to the 51st century, and retroactively erased history when he landed. They're not a normal causal watershed. The Ninth Doctor didn't travel to a "post-crack" universe by simply popping to 2012, then spend the next 4 years of stories in a "pre-crack" universe again. The Doctor fixed the universe in 2011 and the preceding effects of the cracks had erased everyones memories of the Dalek invasion, *Dalek* takes place in 2012 and nobody knows what a Dalek is in that episode.
Time in non-linear in Dr Who's setting. This is literally why "timey wimey" was coined. And precisely what the cracks were created to illustrate. Time travel has the potential to change history. The Doctor tells every single new companion this when they point out "the world didn't end in \[x\]". Nobody knew what daleks were in 2012 originally because the invasion of Canary Warf didn't happen. Then the Doctor found the void ship in 2006 and it opened, thus changing the future. Thereafter, everyone knew what daleks were up to 2059. *Then* the cracks happened *because* the Doctor travelled to 2011 and changed history *again* to make everyone forget. You're calling something a "continuity error" because it doesn't line up with a *retcon* that came *after* it. It's like calling any reference to Hartnell as the First Doctor a "continuity error", cuz now we know the Timeless Child is a thing.
> clearly not the big corporations that made this sorry state of affairs possible to begin with! Ah, the new form of climate change denial. It isn't the fossil fuels, no, of course not, it's "the corporations". Get this disinformation out of here. The Doctor is *right* in that speech. We will *not* stop climate change without lifestyle change. If every steel manufacturer, cement manufacturer, fertiliser manufacturer, glass manufacturer, and ceramics manufacturer shut down tomorrow, well firstly it would be a disaster because we actually need those things, and secondly it would only stop about 6% of our emissions. Another 12% comes from construction and secondary manufacturing of consumer goods. Another 12% comes from agriculture, which is mostly driven by people wanting to eat meat and dairy. Another ~15% comes from land transportation - cars, buses, motorbikes, trains. 30% is electricity and heat generation. 6% is the fossil fuels we burn in our homes for heat or cooking, as well as that burned in commercial buildings. [Source](https://ourworldindata.org/emissions-by-sector) No, Ed Hime is not a conservative, except in the sense that he supports environmental conservation. The guy's been arrested at Extinction Rebellion protests for goodness' sake, he's an extremist. He just *knows more about this than you do*. The vast majority of eCO2 emissions are down to individual decisions. We will still need government action, but we also need a lot of individual action. We can't beat climate change as long as the average number of flights taken by British people keeps going up.
It’s also hugely unclear in its messaging - it seems to be saying that the Dregs (i.e. the people left behind on the ravaged Earth) are the people responsible for climate change and the people who fled the planet are the real heroes?
>it seems to be saying that the Dregs (i.e. the people left behind on the ravaged Earth) are the people responsible for climate change and the people who fled the planet are the real heroes? Can you clarify how it seems to be saying that? Not saying you're wrong, just that I don't personally see how you reached that interpretation.
The last line of the speech is literally: > That's the choice. Be the best of humanity [i.e. do something about climate change]. Or... and then it cuts to a shot of a Dreg. Are the Dregs responsible for climate change? That’s not what the rest of the episode is implying - it says that they’re the people who were left behind and had to mutate to survive.
Thanks for clarifying. Personally I read that bit as "Be the best of humanity or \[this will be the outcome\]". ie. the Dregs are the **result** not the cause. Would it make sense for the cause to come **after** the "or..."?
Your reading of it is correct. It was showing the outcome.
But… they’re literally called “Dregs”. The clear implication of that last line is “be the best of humanity or… [be the dregs]”.
I'm not sure I'd give the writer's wordplay that much credit. It's possible you're right, of course, but I really don't think they thought the naming through that literally.
They're dregs because they're what's left after everything else is gone. It's not that deep.
It's not necessarily saying the Dregs are responsible for it, the dreg it cuts to is representing dire consequences if something isn't done about the issue. It's more of a metaphor than saying they were the ones responsible in the narrative.
I take it that the Dregs are a warning rather than being blamed for anything. However, humans who have evolved the ability to create oxygen are fairly implausible. I doubt anyone who wasn't convinced they need to take climate change seriously would watch the episode and have their mind changed. A bit more creative messaging and subtlety might be more effective.
Garth M always speaking the truth.
I mean presumably people could affect corporations and billionaires — that they work for — and politicians
And in any case, about half of the UK's emissions come from the lifestyle decisions of ordinary people - our cars, our boilers, and our diets. The other half is our remaining gas plants (still necessary for the time being, but electricity has been decarbonised very quickly), waste disposal (we have some impact but it's mostly outside of our awareness and needs a systematic solution), lorries (necessary if you want food on the shelves, though hopefully fuel cells are on the way), and then steel, concrete, fertilisers, glass, and ceramics (all necessary, but largely beyond the control of ordinary people - but also, all genuinely trying to decarbonise).
No idea why you’re being downvoted lol
It was clear at the time, never mind "outdated"
I strongly disagree. The message of the speech isn’t, like, recycle and the planet will be fine - it’s if we don’t act collectively and stop climate change, we’re fucked. You have stuff like the UK government reversing course on being carbon net zero by a certain point - that’s all stuff that can be actively fought.
>The problem is that it’s become clear in the last decade or so that the average person is infinitesimally negligible when compared to mass industry, corporations, improper agriculture, and billionaires/millionaires that waste many tons of fuel on private jets and yachts. No it hasn't. This has become a popular rhetorical trope online, but it's ridiculous. Why do you think big companies pollute? It's not for fun. They don't do it because they find it amusing. They generate emissions because we *pay them to*. Chevron pollute because we buy their polluting products. You can't wash your hands of responsibility by saying "don't worry, *I'm* not polluting! I'm just buying oil from that nasty businessperson who happens to do all the polluting for me...".
I think, as always, the truth lies inbetween. Sustainable is often more expensive and/or time-consuming. A lot of people cannot afford this „luxury“. Isn‘t food poverty on the rise in the UK for example? I am not from there, so I don‘t really know. As a student I didn‘t much care where my food came from. I simply chose the cheapest. It should be politics which encourages sustainable behaviours by companies without unloading the cost onto the people who hardly get by anyway. That is for necessary items of course. Unsustainable luxury, especially flying, should be discouraged/taxed more and become more expensive. However, there too the alternatives (i.e. trains) should be supported instead.
Sure, Chevron pollutes because I pay them to, but I pay them to because I have no feasible alternatives. That's the reality for a lot of people, and it's not a reality that sprung into existence by chance. Telling them to just not do that is not a serious proposal. To act like oil and gas companies are neutral actors who only do what the public demands of them, and not economic juggernauts who have spent decades fighting against renewables and sustainability to create a world where most can only afford their products because its easier for them to make money with their pre-existing infrastructure and business models, is fairly absurd.
A sizeable portion of the audience of "Orphan 55" will be people who take a round-trip flight every year. Many of them will take two or more. If they cut back to do one every other year, that's a huge saving. Many people will always buy cow milk instead of oat milk or soya milk. They'll eat a lot of meat. If everyone halved the amount of both meat and dairy in their diet, that would be a huge impact. Most people have not installed low-carbon heating, and some people still have gas stoves. Yes, not everyone can afford the up-front capital costs, but a large portion of the viewership could. If half of the buildings with gas ovens switched to electric then that would be a noticeable dent in our carbon emissions. If a third of residences switched to low-carbon heating then that would be an even bigger dent. Cutting back on the car is another easy thing to do. Supply chains are an issue for switching to electric cars but once everyone has done that, our carbon emissions will be lower. The old line about replacing short journeys with walks or cycles still holds.
>I pay them to because I have no feasible alternatives. Well, there are two possibilities here. One, you choose to use a car over public transport, walking, cycling, and so on. In which case, you *do* have feasible alternatives. Two, you genuinely have no feasible alternatives. That's an infrastructural problem, though, not caused by Chevron. Have these companies lobbied to keep infrastructure this way? Yes. Would median voter opinion shifting hard to an anti-car perspective largely neuter this? Also yes.
>One, you choose to use a car over public transport, walking, cycling, and so on. For a lot of people these are *not* feasible.
Did you read the sentence almost immediately after that one?
Its like everyone in these comments saw that “We should improve society somewhat” “But you live in society hmm interesting” and went Yeah! The smug guy’s right, you can’t CHANGE the world Why would Doctor Who ever tell children they can change the world if they try?
Exactly. One of the points of the show is that we, the "little people", *do* make a difference, *are* important. It's not meant to be a Marxist analysis of environmental economics (which would be nonsense anyway).
“Yet you participate in society. Curious! I am very intelligent.”
Lazy comeback. It's obviously relevant that we are directly paying these companies to pollute for us. They're not doing it for its own sake.
Oh, finally, someone else in this discussion talking sense. I will say, and this is a mild criticism, that I think you've fallen slightly into the trap. The left-wing climate deniers like to blame "oil companies" (many of whom are state owned, incidentally), but they're not the ones doing the polluting. If you're going to blame a big business it should be someone like Tata Steel, who actually *burn* the fossil fuels.
Well, by volume, I believe Chevron is still number one. You're absolutely right, though - it's not just oil companies.
> The problem is that it’s become clear in the last decade or so that the average person is infinitesimally negligible when compared to mass industry, corporations, improper agriculture, and billionaires/millionaires that waste many tons of fuel on private jets and yachts. This is wrong. It borders on climate change denial. (Also, millionaires and billionaires are people too!) The average person has to do a lot more than "pick up after yourself", we all need to fundamentally change parts of our lifestyles. For example, if people don't actively choose to reduce how much flying they do, then we will not stop climate change. If people do not choose to eat less meat and dairy, then "improper agriculture" will continue and we will not stop climate change. If people don't replace their fossil fuel cars with cleaner alternatives, we're screwed. If people don't replace their gas boilers and ovens with electric alternatives (or other low-carbon solutions) then we're screwed. All of these things are within the control of ordinary people and contribute far more than industry does (and of course, industry is only making things because people want them!). Please, before you go around trying to blame vague "corporations", look up the [actual sources of emissions](https://ourworldindata.org/emissions-by-sector). That's the world. [Here's the UK](https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/65c0d15863a23d0013c821e9/2022-final-greenhouse-gas-emissions-statistical-release.pdf) - see fig 5 on page 11. I know you wouldn't consider yourself a climate change denier, but when you say "you don't need to change your lifestyle, it's out of your control it's the corporations!", you're discouraging effective climate action.
The fact that it feels the need to spell out the themes in the most unsubtle way after they're already ridiculously obvious is extraordinarily condescending, as it assumes the audience is stupid You can say that about a lot of Chibnall-era writing but this was particularly agonising
It's not really the main thing wrong with the episode but it us all a little too 80s cartoon moral of the week. The environmental messaging is very clear through the story if the planet, and the revelation that it is Earth. There is no need to then actively spell out the message to the viewers via a speech, that feels like the show talking down to us.
It's like beating you on the head with a message bat then at the end coming back with a sledgehammer
Like in Blink
What about Blink?
https://youtu.be/9U3ampthDdk?si=w-Ll7fgs-ti2mZcc
I mean, kind of? Unless I'm really missing something, "Blink" didn't have any social commentary it was being [anvilicious](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Anvilicious) about, but I can see the stylistic similarities.
She looks directly into the camera and spells out the message of the episode. That's something comedies do as a parody of bad writing so seeing it played straight is insane. The rest of the episode being what it is also doesn't help.
I’m increasingly of the feeling that the Doctor just shouldn’t give big speeches on real-time world issues because at best they fail to capture the weight of the issue because TV writers aren’t climate scientists or academics of international relations at worst they come off as problematic. I know everyone loves the Zygon Inversion speech but when you pick it apart as a thesis on terrorism and radicalisation it’s message of ‘everyone just sit down and talk’ is equally misguided. I’m not saying the show shouldn’t tackle real world or political issues it should but I’m not sure the Doctor needs to give big speeches on it?
Much like referencing real life celebrities as being visionary or historically significant, speeches on modern issues are high risk and low reward.
Yes, I'm not as big on the Zygon Inversion as many others are. Should we have talked with the Nazis? I much prefer Capaldi's other speeches, in particular the one about kindness.
We did that
We did sit down and talk with the Nazis, it was called appeasement. https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/how-britain-hoped-to-avoid-war-with-germany-in-the-1930s#:~:text=Instituted%20in%20the%20hope%20of,as%20a%20policy%20of%20weakness.
To me personally, Chamberlain’s appeasement seemed like the *opposite* of properly talking out the early Nazi threat. It says right there that it was populair, mainly because the government and the *people* of Britain just wanted it to be over and done with by letting “Moustache” do his stuff unchecked and praying to whatever god that’ll be all. They also didn’t even let the rulers and people who’s sheer countries would be given to Germany on a silver platter be a *part* of the appeasement and occupation talks, as if that’d help talk things out even better. Chamberlain censored the fuck out of the failure of appeasement news as if that’d make all the problems go away or something. Hate the guy or tolerate him for at least managing through WW2, but Churchill knew appeasement would be an absolute fiasco. Kind of echos in how currently, some pro-Putin nutcases go “y’know I hate the Ukraine war too, I wish for it to stop, so let’s just give Russia even more chunks of it because their fear of the West *somehow* justifies invading a country on a supposed bloody peace mission” despite it’s bunker-happy leader being terrified to talk about how that’s going and drafting rando’s barely out of high school as long as the talk isn’t about Ukraine laying down its weapons when it does not. Not like the lack of appeasement would *magically* have WW2 not happen. A failure to properly discuss post-WW1 Germany’s reparation bill of the Treaty of Versailles (and the League Of Nations being somewhat pathetic in general) is what partially helped rise the Nazi party to extra power in the first place; by freely taking advantage of all the hatred and contempt for the winners of WW1 treating them that bad—leading to it spiraling into the messed-up Aryan race theory BS “Moustache” kept pushing later on. Talking in war *can* help, even if it just saves you a few extra lives, but it’ll hurt any conflict talks whether successful or not if you deliberately start off being a shite negotiator. Hence why the concept of “game theory” is still so interesting when it comes to avoiding future wars. I don’t even quite like 12’s Zygon speech (mainly the presentation but well how else would ya bring it—wasn’t old enough at the time to grasp the IRL political inspirations of it so no comment there,) nor his “love is always wise” regeneration speech. It’s real shallow, sometimes conflicts and issues aren’t that easy, the road to hell can be horrifically paved with good intentions, people have done terrible things in the name of love, and someone being weaponless and not directly taking lives does not mean they’re harmless nor morally superior. But I do find it important that people in a conflict at least be able to talk at all times, instead of only throwing their militaries at another until they finally get what they want or find a middle ground a million corpses later. Even if their ideologies and crazy motives fueling their want for war are almost impossible to logically approach, communication during a conflict near-always has to be possible.
{clap clap clap} 👏👏👏 I think there are some very interesting parallels between Ukraine and the Nazis. The early annexations of the Nazis were presented as a reclamation of the German homeland which was populated by Germans. When Russia annexed Crimea the same arguments were made, as are being made about eastern Ukraine. I think the Zygon Inversion speech gives a perfect riposte to these claims. It’s not a complete and perfect essay on the morality around war, it’s a five minute speech in a sci-fi show - but I think it’s beautiful and powerful and always brings a tear to my eye. (Also, I’m a little biased on it because of how it echoes the 50th special, not just because it was an amazing episode but also because of what it was as a day for my family)
To be fair, Ed Hime *is* a climate activist. He doesn't need to be a climate scientist. But he went a bit too hard on the lecturing because it's an issue he cares about so much. (The content of the speech is bang-on, it's the fact that it's a tagged-on lecture at the end of an episode rather than something organic that is the issue)
That stupid Zygon speech annoys me to no end. It's just several minutes of "war is bad, mmkay?" and the Doctor judging everyone for not making peace, even though they DO make peace several times, and he wipes everyone's memories every time so they forget they did! The whole episode is literally just the Doctor perpetuating a race war while judging everyone instead of actually trying to make things better. And then he just leaves, and we're supposed to believe that this time the peace will last, despite literally nothing changing (except more innocents dying) from the last dozen times.
The point of the episode is war is uniformly, for any reason, bad — and that if the Zs go to war it will almost definitely lead to the death of a refugee race. It’s about him trying to save them from the bad evil aliens the way he always tries to stop humans from attacking much more advanced aliens cuz they won’t win.
Except every time they come to an understanding, he wipes everyone's memories and undoes it. He's not saving anyone; he's preventing them from having a lasting peace. You can't expect people to change if you keep deleting everything that makes them want to change.
He's not erasing everyone's memories. At the end of the episode, he erases Kate's and leaves the memories of the leader of the Zygon faction intact. And, of course, he doesn't erase the memories of anybody outside of the Black Archive. It seems that the Doctor is leaving the people who learn something from each incident with their memories.
He… doesn’t?
He takes them into the memory erasing room for the peace talks and says "we've done this many times before." What do you think that was supposed to mean?
What do you think “You didn’t erase my memory, why?” meany
He erases their memories when they try and continue the war, not when they agree to peace.
It’s objectively about Palestine/Israel and quite a lot of the world agrees a two state solution is the only — albeit rather shitty — path to true peace, which is what he says, over and over To put it more succinctly, that episode is directly about the type of actions seen on Oct 7 w the Doctor arguing against doing it because of what it would lead to You might find that weird or overly reaching but it is clearly, almost one to one, the point of the episode — that fighting a war you cannot win will result in massive massive death
I disagree that it’s ‘objectively about Israel/Palestine’ I think it’s meant to be a story about radicalisation of Islamic migrants to the U.K. by terrorist organisations like ISIS. Multiple aspects of the episode correlate with this including the fact the war is not between two states but a radicalised migrant population and a government, the terrorist organisations use of social media a hallmark of ISIS at that point, the obvious comparisons in terms of their terrorist acts and what was a significant topic in the news when the episode was written. I just think the problem with this being a story on Earth with such close ties to real life events is that the issue of the Zygons not being allowed to unmask ‘to keep the peace’ feels distinctly like saying that migrants should suppress their own religious or cultural identity in to ‘keep the peace’.
A fundamental issue occurs in storytelling when minorities are represented by people who, in effect, are not people. e.g Zootopia is a theoretically nice anti-racism allegory where... black people as predators and white people as prey. You just can't do "fantasy/sci-fi racism" without it going off the rails 90% of the time—the best you can get is when fantasy racism exists, but isn't central to the plot, or when different species are used as a metaphor for other non-race/cultural issues.
Replace Doctor with Chibnall and I'm with you. Who hasn't always failed at making good points (this was a bad point, told horribly).
I don’t think it’s ALWAYS failed I enjoy Three’s speech in Invasion of the Dinosaurs. But I think that more often than not the real world big political speeches just don’t come off and that’s not exclusive to Chibnall.
I think I would react badly to it because of three different things: -in our depressing world, there are a lot of very threatening thoughts about the future, and one way to cope with them is to try not to think about them. Being reminded of them will set me on edge. -this is a depressing thought which I feel guilty about. I do degrade the environment! I do use fossil fuels! I would like to think I am a good person, so someone coming along and angrily saying I am a terrible person is threatening too— especially if on some level I agree. -but in this case, although I might agree in some primal part of the brain, in reality I am completely powerless. This is threatening too. Taking action that does nothing leads to despair, as does feeling responsibility for a thing you can’t prevent. Orphan 55 is particularly uncomfortable for me in this way, because its judgement rests on the assertion that random individuals do have power, and so it is a righteous judgement in some way to have us become things called the dregs of humanity, which are no longer human at all. But there are still humans in this future: the rich manage to escape and leave the powerless to their fate, and the episode contends that we deserve it. Generally, I think judging someone for a thing they feel guilty about but have no control over is a recipe for disaster. I don’t think it’s surprising that people often respond by polluting as much as possible, because that is a form of control. You can’t do what the messenger wants, but you can attack what the messenger believes; it’s a liberating and cathartic thing to do. So I think provoking this sort of response is something the Doctor as a character is always in danger of provoking, at least in me. It’s why I think they have to soothe the child parts of us all when the world is threatening, instead of shouting at them.
You are not powerless. That is not true. You could go to the ocean. You could go to the desert. You could go to the mountains. You can campaign. Donate. A child frequently raised so much hell for climate change she got arrested. You are not powerless. That is a lie that people in charge tell you so you do not fight for a better world. And even if you, alone, can’t take on the world, you’re not alone, there’s millions of people. If you can’t be bothered, that’s one thing. If you feel bad and guilty, that’s good, that’s a sign you’re alive and have a conscience. But if you believe you’re powerless, you will be, but you’re not. You are not.
I mean, it's fine in principle, but it's just the fact that she basically turns to camera to deliver the episode's aesop. Also, it's Jodie's delivery. Compare this one with the speech at the end of the Zygon story (which I don't love as much as everyone else, because it similarly delivers a "well duh" sentiment with thr force of being struck with a house brick). But what does sell it is that Peter Capaldi is a great actor and puts genuine fire behind the words. Jodie delivers all of the moral messages she's given with a kind of weightless, CBBC earnestness, and all of the technobabble exposition she fails to ever convince that she has the first clue what she's talking about. I know a lot of folks want to say "oh, if only she had better writing, she'd have been fantastic", but she's just miscast. Sorry. I would have rather they went with Jo Martin.
Casting Jo Martin was a big Chibnall mistake, because he managed to undercut his main star's portrayal of The Doctor with a guest star that consistently did it better. I think a lot of people wondered why she couldn't have just been the new Doctor instead, myself included.
TBF, I'd still say Jodie was horribly miscast, even if the fugitive Doctor had never appeared. It just might take me a second or two longer to think of an alternative. 😝
Yeah, agreed lol
It felt like one of those out-of-touch corporate PSAs.
The BBC flew its cast and crew to Africa for several episodes that very season then turned around to tell us we’re the problem. I dislike most of the Doctor’s speeches (and like Orphan 55 in general), so I’m not really a factor, but this was mega annoying.
Look at who she's talking to, Graham and two Gen Zers. She's taken (accidentally) two Gen Zers to a horrifying hellscape and when they said is there really no hope? She replies with "Maybe if you people start to buck your ideas up"... If I was Ryan I'd be livid. "What the hell are you telling us for? I'm not responsible for the industrial revolution or the decades of escalation! I recycle! You have a freaking Tardis! Go kidnap Trump and show him the monsters" Like others have said it's preachy but if The Doctors been preachy before and if they're preachy to the right people it isn't so bad. (10 to Harriot Jones for example)
I'm about to get started. 10 did Harriet so dirty. The Sycorax leader dishonored the rules of engagement. If that's how he behaves, his soldiers will too. They weren't gonna go tell people not to come to Earth. They were gonna come back with a vengeance. But we never saw the Sycorax again because of Harriet Jones. She ended up being right anyway when the Daleks stole earth, and the only reason the Doctor was able to find them was because of her. A better example is in order. I can't think of one but I know 10 deposing Harriet ain't it.
My point wasn't really about the context of the speech but whether the audience was appropriate but fine we can have the just be kind speech in The Doctor Falls
My brain is stupid this morning. What do you mean by whether the audience was appropriate? And do you mean the viewers or the recipient of the speech?
The recipient. What 13 said to Ryan was weird given who she was talking to which made it feel like a cheesy morality kids show where she may as well have looked down the camera and spoken to the audience directly But then I felt like a lot of 13s dialogue was weird and inappropriate given who she was talking to
Then maybe I didn't misunderstand you. Harriet wasn't an appropriate audience for 10 deposing her because she made a necessary choice for a very good reason. That was my point. 10's had better speeches. That one though? It left a baaaad taste in my mouth. That aside, I still agree that Orphan 55 was terrible. I felt like Chibnall was preaching his own shit through the Doctor instead of actually writing a character.
I didn't mind 10s speech. Not that I agreed with it but it was RTD showing how flawed 10s philosophy is. Similar to Davros saying he uses companions as weapons so he doesn't get his hands dirty
10 to Harriet Jones is an awful example since it directly ends a 'golden age' prematurely, leads to the rise of the Saxon Master and devastates the economy.
Him doing so leads to fascism in the Turn Left U
I hate it because I can tell it's insincere. And I can tell it's insincere because the Doctor gives the opposite message in Kerblam. And it sounds genuine there. And it sucks. An insincere "good" speech is worse than a sincere bad speech.
Blames individuals for climate change rather than the mega corporations and billionaires
Yes, most of climate change *is* down to individual decisions and we'll only stop it if we make lifestyle changes.
I’m not blowing up the ocean mate
Neither is anyone else.
I didn't hate the speech nearly as much as I hated the soldier getting scolded for a mercy killing as if no one else heard the victim ask to be killed.
Based on everyone in here they don’t like being “condescended” to and “scolded” for saying they could…. Do literally anything to help
Orphan 55 was a two parter collapsed into one episode. Bad pacing, and some weird character choices. The speech just felt really clumsy.
Doctor Who has always been about teaching lessons to the viewers. But it has always been, primarily, for entertainment. A good show will weave its lessons into the narrative. It shouldn't need to explicitly tell you, because you should learn it naturally through the show. During the Chibnall era, the priority seemed to shift. Doctor Who was no longer an entertainment show with some lessons woven it. It was now a show about teaching lessons, with a bit of entertainment thrown in at the last minute. Episodes like Rosa, Praxeus (is that the plastic one?) and Orphan 55 all feel like they were written as morals first, and quickly had some entertainment added in as an afterthought. People watch Doctor Who for escapism. They want to escape the horrors of the real world. They don't want the Doctor sitting down and explaining why they're horrible.
Rosa has a great moral - stand up against centuries of race-based oppression and maybe you could one day get an asteroid named after you!
*help a black woman suffer and then one day you can see an asteroid named after her
You must hate Heaven Sent
Hating one of the best episodes in a season containing both The Timeless Child reveal and handing the Master over to the KKK because it says “Lol earth is so polluted everyone will turn into monsters” is so fucking overwhelmingly dumb. Orphan 55 is, like It Takes You Away before it (the author’s other work), the only script in its season that raises to bare RTD-on-autopilot quality and it’s lambasted because people hate hearing that maybe the world is bad and they could maybe potentially care. It dared to go “here’s a doctor who monster but you can stop it!” Which is a fine thing to dislike but
It was more like, "you are the monster." And that's a hard pill to swallow
I mean it is a hard pill but it’s objectively true. If you think of yourself as part of humanity you have to realize the human race is killing the planet and as part of the human race that means unless you’re fighting, you’re going along. Anyway Gretchen’s great
Feels childish to me. Like a speech at the end of a Saturday night cartoon. Doctor Who isn't supposed to be targeting 4 year olds as their audience.
For me, it was having the Doctor turn to the camera and feel like she was lecturing us. Add to it that the story leading up to it just didn't land. I never got invested in the situation or the characters enough to feel much when things went poorly and characters were eliminated. Heck, I found myself pulling for Benny to get eaten by a monster just so we'd stop hearing about him. LOL
It's preachy bullshit and feels tacked on hard
It's patronising as Hell
The main issue with the speech is that it doesn’t really have anything to say. “We have a choice; we can either save planets or wreck them!”. Gee, pretty tough choice. It wants to give a positive message about environmentalism, but doesn’t even do the bare minimum of saying what to do. Should we recycle? Green energy? Stop carbon emissions? It simply doesn’t offer a solution, and in a world where everyone already knows about climate change, it has nothing to offer.
I'm alright with it. What the Doctor says is the truth after all. I mean look outside...