Who Tube (Doctor Who YouTube) is hilariously terrible at the moment. You’ve got new fans being gatekept by old fans and then yelling at the old fans and then the old fans yelling back, people subtweeting each other on their channels “Some YouTubers, they know who they are”, people posting vicious rants as soon as episodes end--lots of really really toxic shit on both sides. Like. It’s hilarious--if you enjoy VERY thinly veiled misogyny on one side and blind adoration for progressiveness at the expense of decent writing on the other. If you listen to these people, it’s not very difficult to see where the canon schism between straight white “geek culture” males and anyone with a so labeled by said people SJW motivation come to blows. They both think the other side is just ignorant, and the constant lashing out is just. Wow. It’s really. Wow.

Saltiness ahead.

It frustrates me a lot, because I feel the show has been really hit and miss this season and the warring on YouTube is just another example of how you just can’t discuss this reasonably. It’s not all bad, but it’s certainly been far from all good. Some of it REALLY works, like for example Ryan’s dyspraxia and the decision to explore Yasmin’s character through her grandmother’s story, but some of it doesn’t. I was particularly dismayed today, spoilers, by James I being played through the lens of modern campness by Alan Cumming this week, turning the former monarch into a queer caricature (I know the guy most from his role in Spy Kids, Fegan Floop, which replays ENDLESSLY on british TV). I feel like a lot of the episodes of this season have been simply the characters thrown into chaos, bad guy is revealed to be an alien, then the Doctor gives a shockingly profound, emotional speech that makes you forget how awful some of the other parts were and you go away with ~feels~ and not much else, because all the endings are pulled out of the writer’s ass anyway. Just. That’s how I personally saltily feel about this show this season, like it’s been platforming for a bunch of different writers saying what they want to say about humanity through the Doctor’s mouth. Like she’s ceased to exist beyond her existence as that mouthpiece, and that in some ways the show has too. (just my opinion. anyway.)

But you can’t talk about this stuff. I find myself reading reviews and watching people who like the show and place no accountability on the show beyond being politically bold, and it drives me nuts. It doesn’t matter what form it comes in, so long as it’s pro-feminist, or it exposes people to history they might not have learned in class, or there’s a dude giving birth for 50% of the airtime. If I want to hear or discuss any challenge to those things, I find myself listening to purely negative reviews instead, and noping out when the person suddenly reveals halfway through that they believe that because men aged 18-40 is a big demographic, it only makes sense that they’re the group that are kowtowed to at every opportunity. Like wtf dudes, sorry you can’t hack that other people exist in the world and you aren’t being catered to 24/7 any more. Fuck off. So it’s no wonder the antis feel Doctor Who lovers are all SJWs and the pos!Who people are convinced that the antis are all racist misogynist fucks. (The showrunners do too afaik, and that isn’t helped at all by Chibnall and Jodie both being SO resistant to negativity that neither of them seem to be soliciting fan feedback that isn’t positive.) Is it hard to ask for objectivity, though? For something that comes down the middle? That isn’t racist and misogynistic, but maybe still cares about how the things we’re looking for in terms of representation are being handed to us? How about, at least, not having to listen to some people who are so entitled that they literally think that Jodie Whitaker shouldn’t have shot out any babies so that she can instead devote her entire life to making TV shows? (Seriously, I listened to one girl who thought that, and you could hear her contempt for people who have kids in every syllable.)

I’ve liked episodes of this season. The Kablam! episode was great, I only had minor complaints with the ep that I handwaved away because I felt like there was actually some dramatic tension. I liked episode 2 because it was idk. A fun adventurous romp and the characters all had flaws. I quite liked Rosa because it had the bones of something better, and that showed through in all the scenes where Rosa’s actress (Vinette Robinson, who was also in the Chibnall episode ‘42′, btw what nepotism how many british actors do you think there are?) interacted with the other characters. 

But they weren’t all perfect, at least to me. Maybe I’m a negative nelly, because everyone seems to be tripping over themselves to scream positivity about the show in their reviews, but I, personally, feel like much of it has fallen flat. When they did finally drop - as they’ve been avoiding for much of this season - the ‘If I was a bloke this wouldn’t have been a problem’ thing, it wasn’t even delivered with a great deal of gravity or purpose. Maybe some people think that was a good thing, I don’t know, but looking at the way sexism was handled in Timeless, for example, and hell, Sliders (which was a trashy 90s show about jumping between alternate realities; or Quantum Leap for that matter, which had Sam jump into the lives of women in the past and experience days in their lifetimes), it’s way past the era of TV to deliver that kind of line like it’s inconsequentially drawing attention to something nobody noticed before, you know? Why is the BBC always 100 years behind, despite playing like it’s the most progressive thing ever? Why do we let it, and say “Sure we’ll take it, that’s enough” instead of also insisting they tell GOOD stories, and not wave their hand and say aliens did it at the end of every episode? I get it’s a time traveling series but the aliens show up and then the doctor waves her magic wand and ~science~ and yes she quoted Arthur C Clarke but she can do that and be powerful and tell powerful stories that aren’t completely...halfhearted, and if you don’t have trumped up stupid bad guys you don’t have to have flimsy solutions for beating them at the end.

We SHOULD be seeing ourselves in the media we’re absorbing. I firmly believe that. I also think, though, that we’re entitled to be respected by that media as well, in that the stories we’re seeing that show US should be good stories. They shouldn’t be concentrating on making as many nods as possible to as many corners of culture as possible that it stops caring about the story it’s telling, because whatever politically correct points it scores will ensure people overlook its flaws. It’s disrespectul, and we shouldn’t allow it, because it means we’re nothing but a commodity, an unquestioning storyblind audience that just doesn’t care so long as our representation needs are getting catered to. That means we’ll keep getting more representation, but a lot of it will be shit, because no matter what we’ll throw up our hands and give it ten out of ten and rigorously defend it no matter what caricatures it throws in front of us.

We should demand better stories alongside our representation. Fandom is so powerful now that we’re being written for, because as a whole we aren’t objective. We engage in mass squeeing, we’re GREAT at giving positive feedback and high ratings like it’s our job to do it even if it’s undeserved (and arguably Who NEEDED that positive feedback this year) and best of all anyone who doesn’t agree can be written off as an angry white dude, or racist, or just ignorant. That’s good for ratings and good for clicks, and networks eat that stuff up because it makes them money. But that isn’t respect, and we shouldn’t be selling ourselves out for a bargain basement price.

That’s my last word on it for now. I’ll probably complain again next week, and I know I KNOW this isn’t a popular pov for people, but I’ve made my bed with that. For those of you who loved it, I’m glad for you. I’m mostly disappointed for myself. And I still think camp James I was fucking terrible but I already know people love him, so what do I know?

P.S. my tags are for my flist so they can blacklist properly, not to force my saltiness down the throats of other Who fans. You don’t have to agree with me. I just needed to vent.