
Priorities
So, new Doctor *may* have done something REALLY naughty, not a grumble.
An interspecies snog gets complaints?? Oh how I love the readers of the Daily Mail...
Ofcom has declined to probe the BBC after it received complaints about the screening of a kiss between a lizard-like character and her human wife during an episode of Doctor Who. The watchdog received half a dozen complaints after the characters, played by Neve McIntosh and Catrin Stewart, shared a crafty live-saving snog* as …
Practically none. If you kiss your pet the same way you kiss a human you fancy then I worry about a) your pet or b) your unsatisfied partner
Personally I thought they're one of the best things to happen in Who in ages. At least they're comprehensively getting rid of screaming girlies, so common in classic Who
Yeah but, no but...isn't interspecies "stuff" extreme pr0n? Well according to HMG and mumsnet anyway. If the maid had tried that with a horse there would have been hell to pay, but lizards are there for the taking...is that the message? Mind you I quite fancy that lizard myself...I'm off to get a gekko now to see what all the fuss is about.
The kiss served no purpose in the story, didn't do a whole lot in the way of character development, and was rather clumsily shoehorned into the writing with an excuse.
I almost looks like this was the BBC's plan all along: Put something a tad provocative in knowing it would be sure to stir up complains from the easily offended homophobes* thus giving them a little publicity and making said homophobes look like the prudes and idiots they are.
*They all deny it, but does anyone seriously believe there would have been complaints had one gender differed?
I thought it was all quite ham-fisted - they've made the point that they're a married couple in previous episodes, but felt the need to mention it at least 3 times in this episode plus the pointless kiss, together with the ridiculous 'my lungs can store oxygen' which makes no sense at all. And they hinted that Clara is gay too. That's all fine, if it fits with the story, but it's grating to have it highlighted so many times, very amateurish and actually served to undermine their point.
"I thought it was all quite ham-fisted - they've made the point that they're a married couple in previous episodes, but felt the need to mention it at least 3 times in this episode plus the pointless kiss, together with the ridiculous 'my lungs can store oxygen' which makes no sense at all"
Yes but the real point is (and maybe they were deliberately doing this, maybe they weren't) if they were of different genders the exact same storyline plus the number of mentions of marriage and "kisses" wouldn't have been noticed or indeed have grated you.
I suspect similar storylines have happened between the Doctor (Matt Smith) & River with multiple mentions of their relationship.
"The kiss served no purpose in the story, didn't do a whole lot in the way of character development, and was rather clumsily shoehorned into the writing with an excuse."
Apart from the fact that the clockwork zombies home in on breath, and the human girl's lung capacity was less than the lizard girl's. So they shared.
Some reptiles, such as I thing Crocodiles, can hold their breath for amazingly long periods, so is it really unthinkable that she would have that attribute?
Do some strenuous exercise such as fighting off the aforementioned clockwork zombies, or moving a large item of furniture, and see if you can hold your breath for as long as you can when not breathing hard.
How do you propose the lizard transfers some of her air to the human?
A straw?
A "totally believable" snorkel carried on the off chance?
An arbitrary hollow finger?
Oh the howls of outrage from the nitpickers about the plot hole. And people whine about the over use of the sonic.
The monster homing in on breath is not a new concept either.
Some of the Chinese vampire movies such as Mr Vampire portray Chinese vampires as homing in on breath too, so to evade them, don't breath.
Countless stories where people share breath to get to the surface when one has been trapped underwater..
Some real insects even use breath to home in on prey.
"I almost looks like this was the BBC's plan all along: Put something a tad provocative in knowing it would be sure to stir up complains from the easily offended homophobes* thus giving them a little publicity and making said homophobes look like the prudes and idiots they are."
Oh no.. surely not.. They would never do that.. Like the two women who kissed on DS9 years ago and caused outrage among the easily offended, or Uhuru and was it Spock, or Kirk's mixed race kiss?
It's a plot line. It rounds the characters out a smidge with a potential for a bit of back story. Deal with it.
Any worse than Captain Jack, and the any gender, any species, any time meme?
"*They all deny it, but does anyone seriously believe there would have been complaints had one gender differed?"
Who all denies it?
With people who get outraged for a hobby.. Sure. Some just love to tell anybody they can corner how offended they are. Just look at any story here.
Good on Ofcom for telling them to grow up and piss off.
It's 2014. looking at your feet and mixing up words up is not a believable depiction of affection any more. People engage in marital unpleasantness all over the place, and this would be a great opportunity to explain to a kid that sometimes people like to snog someone the same gender.
"Some reptiles, such as I thing Crocodiles, can hold their breath for amazingly long periods"
Except Crocodiles aren't holding their breath. They simple not breathing and building up an oxygen debt in their blood. Crocodile blood is also known to be very efficient at storing oxygen AND their muscles happen to work well even with low oxygen. The point being their lungs have nothing to do with it. An equivalent practice would be like divers hyperventilating before a long dive. The capacity of the lungs hasn't changed, just the amount of oxygen in the blood.
I found the kiss to be jarring, not because of some homophobic agenda but my suspension of disbelief finally broke that a lizard could transfer oxygen back out of its blood and into its lungs in order to then breathe that oxygen into a human. I'm with another poster on this one, I think the BBC are trolling (JUST like they did with the panto-like Captain Jack). The kiss didn't add anything to the plot that hadn't already been said MULTIPLE times but was wedged in anyway at the expense of the science.
Science Fiction is at its best when extrapolated from already known science. When you start making things up that outright contradicts our understanding of the world then it stops being science and become magic, which has its place in a different genre.
* OK, I'll concede that 2 sets of lungs are better than 1, and so in that sense the additional capacity would have helped but rather assumes that Lady Vastra hasn't absorbed all of the oxygen contained in them already.
I imagine it also helps that they are ectotherms. That saves a great deal of energy.
Now there's an idea for a future scene... Characters fighting against killer robots with thermal infra-red vision. Clara, Vastra and some other characters pinned down, as the killer robots stalk them looking for any sign of heat to shoot at. Then the cold-blooded one calmly steps out, walks behind one and hits the off switch.
...at a lizard lady doing something improbable with her oxygen supply? How do you cope with the frequently killed immortal, who travels around in an extra-dimensional, time-hopping police box from the 1960s? Doctor Who isn't exactly "hard" sci-fi.
Until we all learn to stop viewing homosexuality as a deviant behaviour, any incidence of such behaviour in any TV show is probably going to seem jarring and shoe-horned in*. The Kirk/Uhura kiss probably felt like that to many viewers, way back when, but I doubt anyone would bat an eyelid, now.
*I honestly don't care if the writers included it solely to piss-off the moral outrage brigade - if it helps demystify homosexuality among Who's intended audience, it served a useful purpose (it prompted a brief discussion between my young son and I, about same-sex marriage - of course, he thinks that kissing is icky, regardless of the participants' genders).
Actually, homosexuality is "deviant" in that it deviates from the majority practise. That's a good thing too - if everyone was gay, there would be no more people and the human race would end. The beeb loves to promote it, but I found it to be an eww! scene. By explicitly sexualising the moment, it rather hit you in the face with "how would that work?" which just wasn't a thought that was required and completely dropped you out of the story.
The show has gone from being entertainment to social engineering. Surely it must be possible to have a show which is just entertaining. My kids are still kids, they aren't interested in sex and I'm reasonably sure Dr Who isn't the best way to teach them about it. If I did have kids who were interested in sex (say a 15 year old boy) I'm also sure putting images of sex between a woman and a lizard woman in his head is also not a really helpful thing to do.
I don't let the Beeb or any other mass media do my kids sex ed - that's a parent's role. I'd kindly thank the mass media to stop it - I'm not convinced they are either competant or have my child's best interest at heart. In the mean time, the button is off.
I think you'll find that many gay people procreate. Sometimes they grit their teeth and do it the old-fashioned way, because they want children, sometimes they use medical intervention.
I wouldn't call a minority preference 'deviant', especially when it is so deeply embedded. That would be to suggest that all left-handed people are 'deviant'. Right-handedness is the majority 'practice', but that means nothing at all. It just is.
Showing minority 'practices' is not teaching sex-ed, it is showing the world as it is. Children who are cocooned to believe that the world is just mummies and daddies are not being helped to face the world they'll live in when they grow up.
However, I always suspect a lesbian kiss or sex scene, as it always seems there to titillate the male part of the audience than for any plot-driven reason (I am speaking more widely that Dr. W) From a rough count through memory-land, I think it's about eight women-women kisses to men-men kisses on TV. Strange bias...
"However, I always suspect a lesbian kiss or sex scene, as it always seems there to titillate the male part of the audience than for any plot-driven reason"
Not really going to work when the two women in question are only there to try to generate a spin-off series that Moffat can run in imitation of RTD's Torchwood. I'd sooner see them drown than kiss.
New Scientist covered this particular point in their "Guide to the cool science bits" in the episode
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn26096-doctor-who-episode-1-a-guide-to-the-cool-science-bits.html#.VABKQEuZ47R
"Cameo-companion Madame Vastra, a member of the super-evolved reptile species the Silurians, finds it much easier to hold her breath, claiming she can store oxygen in her body to breathe later. It turns out that's actually true, at least for monitor lizards, which have bird-like air sacs."
"suspension of disbelief finally broke that a lizard could transfer oxygen back out of its blood and into its lungs in order to then breathe that oxygen into a human."
That's exactly what can happen. If you fill your lungs with oxygen free gas (like helium at a party) the oxygen in blood will defuse from your blood back into your lungs, and you pass out in seconds. There is no active transfer going on in the lungs, it's just diffusion from higher concentration to lower.
"Apart from the fact that the clockwork zombies home in on breath, and the human girl's lung capacity was less than the lizard girl's. So they shared."
Thus negating the purpose of holding their breath.
Badly written episode all round - Clara's motivation made no sense at all given that she is the one human to have seen all the Doctor's incarnations.
"An equivalent practice would be like divers hyperventilating before a long dive. The capacity of the lungs hasn't changed, just the amount of oxygen in the blood."
No it hasn't. Hyperventilating rids the body of more carbon dioxide. It is the build of of carbon dioxide that triggers breathing, not lack of oxygen. I have found that after hyperventilating it is actually beneficial to empty the lungs of air as it assists in reducing buoyancy when diving to 10m - you get there quicker. ~The air in your lungs has a much greater buoyancy effect in the first couple of meters than it does 10m down.
"Clara's motivation made no sense at all given that she is the one human to have seen all the Doctor's incarnations"
Have a listen to the Verity! podcast, there is an intelligent discussion about Clara's reactions and motivations, including the needs of the episode as a whole with relation to the audience. Both sides make valid points.
"Have a listen to the Verity! podcast, there is an intelligent discussion about Clara's reactions and motivations, including the needs of the episode as a whole with relation to the audience. "
I'll give it a go but the audience's needs includes some level of characterisation which rises above the needs of this week's plotline. Otherwise there's no point in having continuing characters. Or watching.
No she isn't. The sum of her splintered selves have seen all of the Doctor's incarnations, but a given splinter would not necessarily have knowledge of them all.
Granted, I too found it jarring and not fitting with the story. But they've hinted this is to be a somewhat darker Who than we've seen in the past so I was willing to cut them some slack on it.
"Badly written episode all round - Clara's motivation made no sense at all given that she is the one human to have seen all the Doctor's incarnations."
I wondered that too, but then it struck me that she had seen all the Doctor's *past* incarnations up to Matt Smith only. So for her it's a more difficult adjustment to make as she was in the unusual scenario with the impression she had seen all of the Doctor - to find out there were incarnations of him with which she was unfamiliar was harder to adapt to.
"Some reptiles, such as I thing Crocodiles, can hold their breath for amazingly long periods, so is it really unthinkable that she would have that attribute?"
Reptiles can hold their breath for a long time as they are cold blooded creatures, and don't consume huge amounts of oxygen making heat. Their shared breath would not have sustained the human very long. The plot line has a hole the size of..... er..... well..... a typical plot line.
i hate those characters.
"ooh i'm a lesbian. did i ever mention i'm a lesbian? OOOOOH! YOU MADE AN INNUENDO! CHEEKY! i'm married! to a woman!" it's like really bad panto
oh stfu with your mockney accent, you're only there as the serious ones for strax to bounce funny lines off
With the kiss I got the feeling that they wanted to do the same sex kiss to confirm the relationship between the women in the viewers eyes. They said they were married but because they are secondary characters, and therefore don't get the time for tender moments to establish that in the viewers eyes, a kiss was required to confirm the type of relationship.
The problem however is that not all international markets are as forgiving as the UK and therefore to ensure the scene is not cut in those markets they made it into an awkward "let me give you the air from my lungs" thing.
If they'd made it a full blown give me a kiss because we're about to die thing. They still would have got the same 6 complaints in the UK and no complaints in any other country because for them they would have had to cut the scene. Ok maybe not every other country, but I can think of one or two large markets where it might have been an issue to show it.
I've seen very little of the series since it was restarted but it seems to me that eye-candy has almost always been there albeit in different forms: from the earnest but still nubile assistants to the more explicitly erotic. Something for everybody's fantasy.
The episodes I have seen have singularly failed to capture the sense of reaching for the stars that seemed to drive the original series: yes, it was science fiction but it also attempted at times to explain the science of the time. Maybe because you can't keep that up forever and because it gets cheesy at times.
I guess the real challenge will come when the Doctor returns as a woman. Could be interesting.
What "New Series" are you talking about? If it's Series 8 of the New Era, then that's not surprising, it was the first episode.
If it's the New Era itself, starting with Christopher Eccleston, then you cannot really categorise it as a single "series", seeing how variable it has been.
I hope that they can bring it back from the travesty I feel it had become with Matt Smith as the Doctor, but I fear that the problem now is the lack of imagination of the writers. The last seriously good episode in my opinion was "The Doctor's Wife", which was written by Neil Gaiman, not one of the stock writers.
Also I seem to have some different memories of the original Who series, especially around the Tom Baker/Peter Davison eras. The former always used to enjoy an innuendo and a letch, plus assistants like Leela (Louise Jameson) running around in basically a bikini for most of it. Plus I think there was a story set on the planet "Kly Torus" or some similar spelling, and at least one monster that looked like an overgrown organic dildo.
Plus there is of course the famous death/regeneration scene with Peter Davison acting his heart(s) out before bloating into Colin Baker, but all male eyes were drawn to Nicola Bryant's cleavage floating just over his head at the time.
all male eyes were drawn to Nicola Bryant's cleavage floating just over his head at the time
I think she appealed only to the younger or more lecherous men (of which I was one :-)) to be honest. She wasn't as good as Tegan but the Calamity Jane stuff worked quite well at times with Peter Davison. The costumes and the slightly too blatant sexing it up was an attempt to disguise shit stories and ever wobblier sets. And that was long before Satan's spawn, Greg Dyke, got to the beeb.
@Peter
What "New Series" are you talking about? If it's Series 8 of the New Era, then that's not surprising, it was the first episode.
I mean all of the New Era - if it's available here in Germany then it's dubbed and I don't do well with that. I've seen a couple of the Eccleston's and a couple of the Tenant's. I appreciate the vastly improved production values (mainly the sets and effects). Dr Who was always a bit hammy and I was never the greatest fan. I guess it could only take the pseudo-science seriously for so long but when I always preferred the thought-provoking episodes over the action ones. The older doctors perhaps had it easier playing the boffin.
[On why Old Who is better than New Who...]
" yes, it was science fiction but it also attempted at times to explain the science of the time.
Why does that comment suddenly cause me to conjour up an image of Jon Pertwee sat at a table on which he has constructed something from a tea cup and some coat hangers, and other odd things just lying around, to act as some kind of sensor. I wish I could remember what episode it was, but I can't.
Yes, I also found that an interesting scene.
However, her shallow objectification of women whom she found physically attractive and, in this scene, the desire to use her heavily bossed about wife to titillate her fetish while she did 'serious' work, is hardly a positive image for loving relationships between two equal women.
> The only one who seemed mostly untouched was Strax, but then he is just the light comic relief.
Not only has he become a comedy character so has his weaponry: clockwork robots shot at point blank range with Sontaran blaster but come to life again minutes later.
Six people complain and the news that nothing is going to be done for this 'multitude' of people who fell for the 'shock and awe' news bait (let's horrify middle England and get even more free publicity because we're so brave and only Mary Whitehouse types would complain about Doctor Who) where a lizard female 'kissed' a human female is news.
Six people with very little else on their minds... Mind you, on another topic, the Beeb reports that among the complaints regarding alleged (and hardly very likely) sabotage on a cooking show, there were demands to have the contestant arrested. There's a sparrow in the garden here with more brains and moral certitude than that.
Ref - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-28964737
On the Bake-Off one, I thought it more amusing that people were demanding that the sabotaged contestant got reinstated, given that the whole series was recorded back in May-June time.
Makes you wonder that people think series like this (and indeed a lot of other clones of the idea) are recorded day to day or week to week just before broadcast...
"6 out of how many viewers?"
Those same 6 people could be given a million pounds and probably complain about having to carry it home.
Happens all the time, 10 million people watch something and sometimes as many as a couple of hundred complain. Hmm I am thinking that in a so called democratic society, they are outvoted, move on, nothing to see here.
I don't understand the reference to lesbians as this is apparently an interspecific sexual interaction. I believe this kind of interaction was made illegal by the last government though I'm not sure if representations of same are illegal, though I would guess they are judging by similar silly laws that have been passed.
She hadn't yet passed out, but this was basically the "PR" bit of CPR...
Although there are many male nurses my experience suggests that they are outnumbered by their female colleagues. So women need to be doubly sure not to require CPR on TV now...
Basically they need some sex in it nowadays for it to be viable - or at least that's clearly the conclusion they have reached, not entirely sure I agree - and Capaldi is a little old to be flirting with the current intergalactic companion totty, so they felt the need to over emphasise the lesbo-lizard action. A bit heavy handed, but that's modern Who for you I guess.
I really shouldn't get involved in this. But (correct me if I'm wrong, Whovians) she is not a reptile, she's an alien who in some ways resembles an Earth reptile. There is no reason to believe her species' internal plumbing in any way resembles that of an Earth reptile. They evolved completely independently.
(By the same token the debate over whether lizardwoman can supply breath to her wife via kissing - "no, crocodiles' lungs don't work that way", "yeah, but monitor lizards have air sacs" - is silly. Her species isn't descended from crocodiles or monitor lizards or any other Earth lizard, she's descended from a completely different alien species and she can have whatever biological features the writers feel like.)
First: Dr Who isn't Sci-fi (and arguably hasn't been ever since RTD picked up his pen): it's fantasy with a bit of technobabble and the occasional[*] Deus-ex-machina thrown in.
Past there, the kiss scene was pretty blatantly crowbarred in[**], but to be fair, the entire episode was pretty much made up of heavy-handed, self-indulgent and distinctly clumsy set-pieces, most of which were intended to establish this series overarching plot-thread rather than progressing the story at hand.
So overall, I'd say there's far more worthy things to complain about[***] ;)
[*] Alright, more than occasional, especially if you throw in the way the sonic screwdriver gets used these days. I was trying to be generous...
[**] Given that the robots stopped moving instantly when you stopped breathing, the characters could have gulped a breath every 30 seconds and gotten away scot free without any issues at all...
[***] No, I wasn't impressed. And I am getting bored of footnotes, so I'll stop now ;)
"Given that the robots stopped moving instantly when you stopped breathing, the characters could have gulped a breath every 30 seconds and gotten away scot free without any issues at all..."
My thoughts exactly - like those weeping angel statue things, you could risk the odd look or breath in this case.
TBH the Torchwood and DW writers do seem to like to sledgehammer in these "hey it's great being LBGT!!" constantly. It doesn't bother me apart from I just think "ok, I get it already and it's holding up the ACTION."
So 6 complaints out of a viewership of around 8 to 9 million - seems quite underwhelming.
How many complained about the portrayals of other things in the episode, eg
1) setting a non-dangerous T-Rex alight
2) the Doctor threatening a Victorian homeless person (played by Brian Miller, Liz Sladen's husband if you're interested) and possibly robbing him
3) Organ-harvesting robots
4) The Doctor pushing (or not?) a sentinent being to its death
I watched the first episode with low expectations, which were met, right from the appearance of the 300 foot tall T. rex (why and how?). I lost interest when it spontaneously combusted and didn't pay attention to the rest of the episode.
As a child I remember plots which were challenging (at least to a 10 year old) combined with Special effects which were laughable. Now thanks to CGI the the SFX are really good but the plots vacuous, relying on retreading the same old characters and plot lines over and over, why is it always set on Earth for a start?
I think I might be 'Who'd out', but I do live in Cardiff home of the program and the 'Dr. Who Experience'. BTW for those of you thinking of visiting the Experience, it's smaller on the inside than it looks on the outside.
[SPOILER ALERT: If you haven't seen the episode yet, look away now.]
I'm glad I wasn't the only one who wondered about the Godzilla-sized dinosaur. T. Rex – on which the dinosaur is clearly based – only grew to about 40-odd feet tall, which is smaller than the Sovereign's Entrance at the foot of the Queen's Tower. The _really_ big dinosaurs were the herbivores, but even those would have been hard to spot if looking across London over the Houses of Parliament.
The poor standard of the foley work didn't help: at no point does the dinosaur ever sound like it's standing in the middle of a major river.
I think the fundamental problem here is that Moffatt just isn't a particularly good show-runner. RTD might not have been able to write a genre story worth a damn, (which is why he kept falling back on soap-style melodrama + comedy), but at least he knew how to produce a show. Even if it did include comedy farting aliens.
*
Others seem to be bothered by Clara's reaction to New Doctor™, but I'm not. Although she'd met the Doctor's previous incarnations, she was clearly only aware of regeneration as an abstract concept. Actually seeing someone a good friend, whose life you literally just saved (and got "rebooted" into the bargain), change from Mr. Over-actor into Mr. McFurious right in front of your face—when the space-time machine you're both standing in is also about to crash—is bound to shake you up a bit. She's still a human being.
It's well crafted and engaging, with clumsily shoe-horned homosexual activities.
I have no preference over gay or straight behaviour in an Dr Who episode, or any other TV for that matter, but Steven is amateurish and ham-fisted every time he adds it in.
The constant 'Dr Who / Jack are flexible when it comes to relationships - bi, interspecies, hey whatever' is tedious.
Relationships of any type should be part of the natural narrative, not jarringly bludgeoned into a storyline to satisfy the authors agenda.
I just recall 'Battlestar Galactica' had some varient of interspecies procreation, as in one of the humanoid Cylons got pregnant by one of the humans. And in 'Lexx', Zev Bellringer was a half cluster lizard/half love-slave who had sex with Kai, a 2000 year (old) dead man. A disembodied robot head called 790, also had the hots for Kai. Once upon a time, that would have seemed weird to me.
BBC seems to care more about promoting LGBT than actually decent plots / Stories any more. I'm not saying I agree or disagree with "promotion of LGBT" but if you think it is your mission surely it should not be amateurishly shoe horned into kids programs. Well Dr Who used to be for kids long ago.
Philosophically is a sentient entity who isn't Homo Sapiens a beast? Surely only sexual activity with Beasts (Animals) is Bestiality and a lizard like sentient being is something not quite envisaged in past Moral codes. Or was it?
It's not clear who the "benei ha-elohim" and "ha-nephilim" were. Maybe Eric Von Danken claims they are Aliens, I don't remember.
The Koran and Hindu writings have strange beings.
Greek Myth has Zeus as Bull seducing a woman.
http://www.desy.de/gna/interpedia/greek_myth/zeusLover.html
Genesis 6:1-4
"And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born to them, that the sons of God (benei ha-elohim) saw the daughters of men that they were fair, and they took them wives of all which they chose. And the Lord said, My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh: yet his days shall be a hundred and twenty years. There were giants (ha-nephilim) in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God (benei ha-elohim) came unto the daughters of men, and they bore children to them, the same became mighty men (ha-gibborim) which were of old, men of renown."
I've nothing against gay rights, each to their own and all that. However it seemed like Moffat was pushing the gay agenda at the expense of the story to me. It seemed gratuitous. And the whole dinosaur roaming london thing was a bit to much like a story primary school kids would make up in the playground. All a bit over the top. V. Poor, in my view.
A shame mind you, as I was looking forward to Peter Capaldi as the doctor.