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theepsizet · 3 years

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Me ranting about Chris Chibnall part 1: Historical Stories

Over the next few weeks, I’m going to be ranting about the Chibnall era and how frustrated I am over the quality of it. Today we’ll be looking into historical stories and why they don’t work in Chibnall’s tenure as showrunner compared to his predecessors.

Watch for the tag “Chibnall rants” if you want to view more. With that out of the way, let’s get started.

While I could technically be making a YouTube video about this, plenty of others have already done so.

The thing is about the writing quality of the show is that it dropped. Dramatically. Chris Chibnall has a knack for writing crime dramas — anyone who has seen his work on Broadchurch and Life on Mars can agree with that — but so far he’s shown to be pretty bad with science-fiction such as Doctor Who. (This is evident in his episodes in the RTD and Moffat era, but that’s another entry for another time.)

One of the things that he often gets criticized for is the fact that he has this habit of putting “politics first, story next”. And yeah, he does. We’re about 24 episodes in, and it’s pretty obvious he’s only making firm political statements about humanity and society are the main focus rather than the plot & characters of a story.

The historical stories in his era of a blatant example of this. Since Doctor Who is a show about having adventures throughout time and space, it wouldn’t

Well... uh... yeah in this case it is.

Most of the historical stories in the Chibnall era — except for Demons of the Punjab but we’ll get to that — tend to have their main focus on real-world historical figures rather than the plot. Historical stories in Doctor Who tend to find the Doctor and their companions landing in a historical setting and, coincidentally, battling aliens alongside those historical figures. Usually the story will focus on what made the figure well-known and inquorate. And while it comes across as formulaic, it’s not a bad formula:

The Doctor and Rose battle ghosts with Charles Dickens.

The Doctor and Martha battle alien witches who share Shakespeare's genius for language.

The Doctor and Donna solve a murder mystery with Agatha Christie.

The Doctor, Amy, and Rory attempt to discover why a siren is plaguing Henry Avery’s crew.

And so on and so forth.

Except with the 13th Doctor... the stories focus on the historical figures, not the story. The best example is perhaps the weakest of these historical stories, Nikola Tesla’s Night of Terror, where the Doctor and her companions spend 80% of the story learning about Tesla’s life (even going as far as to include Thomas Edison, who doesn’t do anything other than being an egocentric nuisance) and not bothering to deal with the fact that piratical alien scorpions are trying to kidnap him and take over the world. The Doctor solves the problem by simply pointing her sonic screwdriver pointing at the queen’s device and sending her back to her ship. She then tells Tesla to activate the tower and the Skithra leave Earth. The story then ends with the Doctor telling Yasmin about the future once they leave.

That’s it. That’s exactly what happens, and it’s jarring to think this is what Chibnall presents a historical story as. Pointless runaround and educating the audience about a historical figure, not caring about the conflict at all. It’s bland, pointless, and feels like a waste of time once you move on.

Before Chibnall became showrunner, Moffat presented a historical story called Let’s Kill Hitler, in which the Doctor, Amy, and Rory take their best friend Mels. At some point — for spoiler reasons I’m not saying — River appears and steals the show, allowing the audience to get invested in a River who just became herself.

The thing is, Hitler is simply locked up in a closet after 10 minutes of screentime. And while Let’s Kill Hitler is one of Moffat’s weaker scripts, the episodes mocks the idea of focusing only on a historical figure. Even the Teselecta is just a cheap time machine that represents the classic “touring through time” trope that is quite childish compared to what Doctor Who presents it it’s audience.

This is a complete opposite to something like Vincent and the Doctor, which is the complete reverse of the formulaic historical Doctor Who story. Instead it focuses on Vincent Van Gough and the only real reason it isn’t educational is because it focuses not on Van Gough’s life, but on his friendship with the Doctor and Amy, something that the recent historical tries to avoid; the Doctor instead visits them as a total stranger, rather than try and get along with them to not the situation too awkward (a great example is how the Doctor is going as far as to avoid interacting with Rosa in Rosa, which though might also be due to the racism at the time) .

Then there is the case of using historical figures for fan service. Both Spyfall: Part 2 and Rosa feature historical characters that barley impact the plot but just seem to be there just because the writers thought it would be a good idea. In Spyfall: Part 2, the Doctor just happens to meet Ada Lovelace and Noor Inayat Khan out of the blue and just because the writer [Chibnall] wanted her so. They’re only impact in the plot is, in Ada’s case, the Doctor finding a McGuffin from the previous story and landing in a different time period, and seeking shelter (both Ada and Noor’s case). In Rosa, while the episode tries and focuses on her, the weak antagonist and how easy the situation gets resolved leaves a pretty bad taste in the mouth. Rosa Parks is characterized well, good even, but the conflict doesn’t seem to serious. Technically speaking, Rosa Parks could have still gotten on the bus and still went to jail; the only difference is the bus-driver. The other problems include the fact that situation is resolved so easily, and well, again the inclusion of historical figures. Martin Luther King Jr. pops up, but he’s immediately sidelined, and seems to really only be there because the writers gave a shout-out along the lines of “hey this guy changed racism in America, he’s important and you should pay attention” rather than focus a story on him.

This feels like something the classic series would do. Speaking of which...

Classic Doctor Who started off as an educational show, and the earliest historical episodes did either focus on a time period or a person — i.e. the first Doctor’s tenure had an episode where the Doctor and his companions join Marco Polo and interact with King Richard the Lionheart during the Crusades — but historical stories pretty much mellowed out in favor of more science fiction approaches. When a historical story did show up, it was more focused on the science-fiction aspect of it, rather than the historical part.

There’s a self-aware joke of doing a historical Doctor Who story by —sorry everybody, but he’s clever — Douglas Adams, in the episode City of Death.

For those of you who don’t know, City of Death follows the 4th Doctor and Romana trying to stop an alien from travelling back in time and causing a paradox that will prevent his species from extinction. Indeed, he has to fund his time machine using six copies of the Mona Lisa, which the Doctor later has to go back and time and drop off the blank canvases so they can be painted for this future adventure.

...this feels like something Steven Moffat would write.

Anyways, during the first part the Doctor and Romana visit the Louvre and visit the Mona Lisa. While the 13th Doctor would be characterized at showing how amazing Leonardo Da Vinci was and how his work will impact humanity forever (similar to what she did in Rosa), this exchange occurs:

Romana: Why hasn’t she [the painting] gotten any eyebrows?

The Doctor: What? Is that all you can say? No eyebrows? We're talking about the Mona Lisa! It's the Mona—

(The Doctor inspects the painting more closely)

The Doctor: Good heavens, you're right. She hasn't got any eyebrows. Do you know, I never noticed that before.

Get it, it’s funny because it works? Ah, I guess I’ll see myself out.

So... yeah. That’s it for now. This is part 1 of me ranting about Chibnall’s poor Doctor Who writing.

Side-note: The reasons I didn’t talk about stories such as The Wtichfinders and The Haunting of Villa Diodati is because — at least in my opinion, feel free to complain in an ask — they worked as episodes, even if it dragged at times. The Witchfinders did a pretty good job at demonstrating the sexism and paranoia over something logical at the time and The Haunting of villa Diodati did a fantastic ghost story by following the formula of the new series. Mary Shelley and Frankenstein was the main focus, and the Doctor and her companions had an adventure inspired by, well, Frankenstein.

Also I don’t count Can You Hear Me? because the historical setting wasn’t very important; it wasn’t really a historical episode.

(Screenshots © copyrighted by the BBC; do NOT give me credit for the pictures)

#The Epsizet rants #chibnall rants #doctor who #chris chibnall #nikola tesla's night of terror #let's kill hitler #vincent and the doctor #spyfall doctor who #rosa doctor who #thirteenth doctor #team tardis?#eleventh doctor #amy pond #rory williams #steven moffat #fourth doctor #romana ii #douglas adams #analysis i guess

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theepsizet · 3 years

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Okay, let’s be honest. Tumblr’s biggest cyberbullying problem comes from its askbox.

While I haven’t experienced this at all — only because I keep my askbox off — there have been several posts by bloggers basically asking people to stop sending them messages that come across as volatile or offensive. Some would even go as far as to repeatedly ask people to stop sending threatening messages if nothing ever calms down.

This kind of behavior is straight-out fucked, and EVERYBODY KNOWS THIS. And yet, tumblr doesn’t really seem to do anything about this. Oh sure, their policy guidelines explicitly state that “Tumblr is not for: Hate speech… Threats… Non-genuine behavior… [and] Harassment” but all they do is turn a blind eye towards the asks that do in fact promote this. And I’m not the only one who realizes this. Multiple bloggers have asked — wait, no actually, not asked, demanded for this cyberbullying to stop but nothing ever happens. Basically, Tumblr is quite shitty when it comes to the prevention of cyberbullying through the ask box.

Now, I just want to clear up something that is probably on your mind as you’re reading this: I’m not saying Tumblr should get rid of the askbox. Not at all. In fact, I’d prefer it if it was kept. What I am saying is people take advantage of sending offensive messages through the “ask anonymously” checkbox — THIS is the problem.

There are two reasons why someone would click the “ask anonymously” option:

The person who wants to ask the tumblr user doesn’t have an account and genuinely wants to ask a question about the content they post.

The person wants to ask questions, but doesn’t want to be discovered. Either because that person is shy and might be uncomfortable about their identity becoming public or — and this is what I’m talking about — they want to criticize someone and the content that they post, more often than not using a tone that can be categorized as hateful or just basic anger.

See, here’s the thing: criticism is a neutral term, as it can be both beneficial and toxic. It can be beneficial because criticism can be used to learn from one’s mistakes whether it's the way an art piece looks or whether they need a text to be fixed etc. However, it only gets toxic when the criticism outrights nitpicks and offends the artist to the point where they have to address this because this is hurtful to them. Beneficial criticism will, mostly, show up in option A, as the anons who are sending these asks are usually individuals who enjoy the content. Toxic criticism, on the other hand, will show up in option B, and ends up running the risk of classic cyberbullying. Nobody knows who is making the offensive remarks because their decision to remain anonymous allows them not to get caught. Also, it's difficult to ban someone from tumblr if their identity is 100% secretive.

Not to mention, the icon may be responsible. I reblogged this, but @thechekhov — a tumblr artist who has been on tumblr since 2012 and overall a pretty swell human being — ended up creating a petition to change the icon from a head with sunglasses to a head that is more nervous-looking. While it might come across as comical at first, they have a point. When someone commits rude behavior under the “ask anonymous” option, the blogger concludes that the anon is basically smug and genuinely doesn’t care if the user gets [emotionally] hurt. And it’s not even clear why they do this. It may be just because it makes them cool, but if that’s the case then just… ugh. There are multiple examples of these. Seriously, just check out any posts under the tag “anon hate” and you're bound to find a few where anons specifically use swear words and even the phrase “I hate you/I hate this blog” in their message towards a blogger. No joke. This isn’t just unacceptable — this is fuck. Absolute fuck.

So, what to take away from this? Well, cyberbullying is unanimously not dealt with properly by Tumblr and it leaves a chaos-storm of bloggers who are deeply hurt by these comments and this kind of behavior is the absolute fucking nightmare of anyone who posts on tumblr. The only solution is maybe, just maybe, tumblr should get rid of the “ask anonymous” option. It won’t completely prevent cyberbullying, but if a tumblr user with an account sends an offensive ask, at least they can be caught. Again, I haven’t experienced this, but I’m getting sick and tired of watching this hate ooze its way through blogs with no regard for the consequences it may impose on the emotions of users. And while tumblr isn’t the only social platform that has cases of cyberbullying, it allegedly has the most obvious problem of how this cyberbullying spread.

Of course, considering that tumblr is well, tumblr, there is no doubt they may not do anything on the matter. And who knows the conflict that might occur if this is emailed to them. But setting that aside (and I’m gonna sound like a preacher, sorry for that), if your experiencing this problem you can do two things:

Turn off the anonymous option from your askbox. That way if cyberbullying does occur, again, it will be recognized more easily and the cyberbully can be tracked down

Close the inbox for a while. Seriously, this is perhaps the best way to prevent any form of this shitty behavior

[One-last note: Chekhov if you’re reading this then first, hi! But, really, I’d genuinely like to apologize for using you as an example. Your posts were the best things I could find regarding this topic, and the last thing I want to do is call you out. That was not the intention, and I’m sorry if you feel offended.]

#cyberbullying #tumblr #The Epsizet rants #anon hate #this is a problem and I'm genuinely surprised this hate still goes on #I can't take it anymore I have to say this #but tumblr wtf

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