• pruwyben
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    6 months ago

    It’s actually racist not to cast a white man if you think about it – which I haven’t, obviously.

    Excellent

      • admiralteal@kbin.social
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        6 months ago

        Jodie Whittaker was a fabulous doctor. I really liked her whole vibe, her personality, her presentation. I wanted to love that doctor so much.

        But the stories were boring and the writing was lame.

        An otherwise-mediocre show with great writing can still be a huge success, but even an otherwise-flawless show with bad writing will always suck. I’ll never understand why all the TV producers think they can get away with cutting all the corners on writing.

        • Iheartcheese@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          Same thing with Capaldi. I liked him. His episodes sucked.

          …Missy is the best thing to ever happen to Who tho.

          • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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            6 months ago

            I would also add that not a single Whitaker episode reached the levels of stupidity of Capaldi’s Kill the Moon episode. That one made me angry, it was so stupid.

          • Sigh_Bafanada@lemmy.world
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            6 months ago

            Yeah Capaldi is my second-favourite doctor (after Tennant"). But I’ve watches fewer than half of his episodes, cause the writing had already gone downhill at that point.

        • FaceDeer@fedia.io
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          6 months ago

          I’ll never understand why all the TV producers think they can get away with cutting all the corners on writing.

          My previous comment shows one possible reason - I said I didn’t like one of her seasons and now I’m getting downvoted. There’s a ready-made excuse to sling at anyone who criticizes the show.

          I was actually excited to see a female doctor when it was announced, but I’m not going to like a show simply because of the gender or race or whatever of the actors. I saw that the quality of the writing was bad and so I left. The new season hasn’t exactly enticed me back.

  • jettrscga@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    People complained that there was a black character in the video game God Of War Ragnarok.

    They seem to ignore the fact that it’s a game series about Greek mythology and that game is suddenly Norse mythology. Guess continuity issues like entirely different cultures are fine as long as we keep it white!

    • BarrelAgedBoredom@lemm.ee
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      6 months ago

      Just want to preface that I completely agree with you, I just want to share some fun trivia. The Greek and Norse mythologies are the same*. They both originate from the Proto-Indo-European people. They’re not the only ones either, the Proto-Indo-Europeans are thought to have a wide reaching influence, even to this day. As stated, Greek and Norse mytholfogies along with the Roman pantheon, Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Bahaism, zorastrianism, along with Celtic, Baltic and Slavic mythologies. There’s even reason to believe that the Proto-Indo-Europeans had an influence on Shinto and early Judaism. To my understanding, its believed that Norse mythology is the most “intact” version of the Proto-Indo-European myth. Pretty neat stuff!

      • Dharma Curious (he/him)@slrpnk.net
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        6 months ago

        I’ve always been incredibly fascinated by the PIE>Hindu>Zoroastrian path and how that may have influenced early Judaism. The vast majority of religious people today practice a religion that is either directly or indirectly influenced by PIE mythos and culture, and that’s just mind boggling!

  • Couldbealeotard@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    I feel that lore-wise, the doctor changing sex was a bigger test of suspension of disbelief. But they prepped for it by having the Master do it. The Master has previously spent time being a walking corpse, so that is a fairly straight line of baby steps to get there.

    Once that’s been established, changing race is nothing. And arguably the doctor has shown a not insignificant amount of racial diversity already to prove it’s not impossible.

    The show just sucks for a variety of other reasons.

    • havocpants@lemm.ee
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      6 months ago

      The show just sucks for a variety of other reasons.

      Terrible writing. It’s been bloody awful for a few seasons now imo. I don’t care about the race or gender of any of the actors, but you’ve got to give me good storylines.

    • SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca
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      6 months ago

      Considering the lore, the Doctor changing genders or race is very far down on the list of tests of suspension of disbelief.

      I’m too busy being outraged over the Moon being a dragon egg to worry at all about any of this.

  • gregorum@lemm.ee
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    6 months ago

    I really like the 15th Doctor. Ncuti is doing a great job, and RTD really seems to know what to do with him. I really haven’t heard any complaints other than some people whining that the new season is a bit too “fantasy”, but, like, have you ever seen the show?

    • Monument@lemmy.sdf.org
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      6 months ago

      I only want realistic episodes of a show centered around a godlike being that can manifest any reality they choose.

      Where’s “The Doctor has to paint a fence”, “Dr. Who and people coughing while standing uncomfortably close at the shops” or even “Dr. Who’s request for holiday got denied and now they are answering emails on a glorious day”?
      If my escapist fantasy isn’t reminding me of my dreary life, then what’s the point?

    • I dislike how the stories end. The buildup is alright, the setting’s the same. But then the ending is terrible. The Doctor isn’t being clever or smart or witty or whatever, a solution randomly presents itself and that’s it.

      It’s like, great you can move the space station by causing a burst of baby farts, but you have a TARDIS. You can take the babies yourself. You even talked about that with the only adult there! He then was soundly defeated by the Maestro, only for the Beatles to randomly show up and play a random chord? They even had a clever way to defeat the Maestro (the bubble of silence that the sonic could create), and then did nothing with it.

      It’s just so… Meh. If only they could write the Doctor to be clever again, I’d enjoy it so much more!

  • PrettyFlyForAFatGuy@feddit.uk
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    6 months ago

    You don’t watch Dr Who because they cast women and black men as the main character

    I don’t watch Dr Who because i have hated the piss poor writing since Moffat took over

    We are not the same

    Yes i am aware RTD is back, he had four episodes to bring me back to the franchise (three with my favourite Doctor) and i only kind of liked one of them.

    and that Goblin episode… wtf was that? Dumb… that’s what it was

    I thought i hated Matt Smith until i saw him in something that wasn’t written badly. Capaldi could have been a fantastic doctor if the writing wasn’t so shit. I gave up before i got to Whittaker so have no opinion of her tenure

    • 🔍🦘🛎@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      She’s a fantastic actress that had horrible writing. Also, she really aped Tennant’s Doctor’s mannerisms more than making her own, though I’m not sure how much of that was within her control.

      Watch Broadchurch if you want to see them in something good~

    • Naboo_calls_for_aid@sopuli.xyz
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      6 months ago

      Yes, so much so! Thank you, when I heard 10 was returning for a special I got so excited I started binging starting back at capaldi since that’s where I’d stopped. I didn’t make it through his tenure before the special aired. I was so disappointed in that first part of the special that I didn’t bother finishing capaldi or watching the next part of the special.

      • PrettyFlyForAFatGuy@feddit.uk
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        6 months ago

        something something flying sharks and the moon is an egg is all i remember from Capaldis era

        Dumb…

        DUMB…

        so much wasted opportunity

        • SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca
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          6 months ago

          Yeah the dragon egg one was where I tapped out.

          A dragon egg? Instantly laid by a dragon that just hatched from another egg? With the exact same mass and size as the egg the dragon just hatched from? With the exact same craters as the previous egg? And that egg is the moon?

          Like the exact same kind of feeling that Supernintendo Chalmers had to hearing about the aurora borealis in Skinner’s kitchen.

    • Aux@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      Yeah, modern DW is a piss poor story telling. I can’t get over how bad Capaldi seasons were, he’s such a great actor! And bloody butchered in DW… I stopped watching it around then and don’t really care what’s happening now.

  • Meissnerscorpsucle@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    WOT having racial diversity in a village where the book made a huge deal about the fact that everyone looks the same due to isolation and inbreeding. That I had an issue with. This is stupid. It is well established that the doctor can come back looking like anything.

    • zalgotext@sh.itjust.works
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      6 months ago

      a village where the book made a huge deal about the fact that everyone looks the same due to isolation and inbreeding.

      Two particular families were called out as marrying into one another often, not the entire village. In fact I feel like Robert Jordan generally does the opposite of what you describe here - he goes out of his way to uniquely describe a ton of Emond’s Field residents, and gave them all pretty varied appearances. Heck, two of the main characters, Mat and Perrin, are different as can be in appearance, aside from the fact that they both have dark hair.

      Anyways, either way, even if what you’re describing is accurate, it’s still not a good excuse to get upset that they casted dark skinned actresses for Egwene and Nynaeve.

      • nxdefiant@startrek.website
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        6 months ago

        Especially given that they’re all descendants of people that lived in one of the biggest cities of the time.

      • Meissnerscorpsucle@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        never said i was upset about “Egwene and Nynaeve”. Not sure where you got that. I just remember the one power being more common in the village because “the blood of Manetheren flows strong Emond’s Field” and everyone commenting how Rand looked so different from the locals. They also commented that those in watch hill mixed with outsiders but Tam was strange because he married someone from off. Rand remarks that Mistress Grimwell (Else Grimwell’s mother) has yellow hair, a hair color he had never seen before in his life. Rand sees Thom he notices that he has blue eyes and Rand remembers a time he fought Ewal Coplin because he made fun of Rand’s grey eyes (so we can infer from that this eye color stands out there and Rand suffered at least one episode of bullying). I think everyone should have been dark skinned, or at least all similar. Its the variaty i did not like.

  • Ballistic_86@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    A similar thing is happening with the new Assassins Creed game. Lots of people trying to make every argument against a black male protagonist without just saying they are racist/white supremacist. I’m sure the game is bad, the last several Assassins Creed games were pretty bad. But blaming this one “historical accuracy” or Ubisoft “pushing an agenda” is an intentional (or maybe unintentional) attempt to justify white supremacy.

    • Clbull@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      I can’t tell if Japanese gamers are genuinely frustrated with the inclusion of Yasuke or if right wingers are comment/review bombing the Ubisoft Japan YouTube account’s upload of the trailer.

      Apparently a lot of the angry comments read as if they’ve been put through Google Translate and aren’t actually in Japanese.

      • Solemn@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        6 months ago

        I’ll admit to not following the news on this one, but would it be that surprising that Japanese gamers were hoping to feel personally represented in the game?

        • Cethin@lemmy.zip
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          6 months ago

          I don’t know anything about this either, but yes, It would be, as this seems to be an actual historical Japanese person who existed and was from Africa. Sure, Japan is pretty culturally homogeneous, but not totally. If they’re upset about their actual history then they have a fucking issue. It’s one character.

        • Encrypt-Keeper@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          You think the Japanese are upset about a person from Japan’s history being included in the game about Japanese history?

          • Solemn@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            6 months ago

            I tried to be upfront with the fact that I know nothing real about the game. If he’s the main protagonist, I could see that being a thing. If he’s just a character in the cast, then no, that wouldn’t be particularly sensible.

              • Solemn@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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                6 months ago

                I don’t think it would be totally unfair for people to feel less than fully represented by someone who doesn’t look like them, even if they’re a legitimate historical figure. He’s also not a native historically either. Japan in particular does have a lot of racist tendencies, as far as who’s considered Japanese, to add to the issue.

                • Encrypt-Keeper@lemmy.world
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                  6 months ago

                  If the Japanese didn’t think this guy represented the history of Japan very well, then why did they go through the trouble of representing him in their history to this day, for more than 400 years?

        • Couldbealeotard@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          We should start a petition to change sonic the hedgehog to a white man. Currently he doesn’t represent the gamers.

    • RavenFellBlade@startrek.website
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      6 months ago

      I legitimately believe the best game in the series was Origins, with Bayek. He had the most relatable character with the most relatable story in the series. More importantly, Origins was an eye-opening experience for me. I resisted playing it initially because I firmly believed playing as a black man would ruin the experience for me. It turned out to be my favorite game, and Bayek my favorite character, and it really made me closely examine my prejudices. Dumb as it may be, playing as and connecting with Bayek made me a better person.

      • exocrinous@startrek.website
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        6 months ago

        First off, that’s an incredibly reductive description, especially considering Moffat ran it for a few years. Second, The Owl House is 100% a kids show and had much better stories than the last time I watched Dr Who

    • then_three_more@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      They always have been. Next step is realising that even though they’re stupid as fuck they’re still pretty enjoyable.

  • darkphotonstudio@beehaw.org
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    6 months ago

    I stopped watching Dr Who years ago, because the writing was terrible. The Doctor also suffers from Silver Age Superman Syndrome – they are so overpowered and know everything and are basically infallible. Boring. I don’t care what colour or gender they are, just get better writers.

  • Ilandar@aussie.zone
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    6 months ago

    Mocking the minority of people who hold these opinions just gives them more attention than they deserve. No one relevant actually cares that the character is being played by a black actor. As always, the majority of complaining is coming from conservative trolls who take their anti-woke brigade to literally any film or TV series that has cast minorities in leading roles. It’s just the same people doing it every time, they are not actually fans of any of these things and were never going to watch them anyway.

    • FordBeeblebrox@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      Yeah I remember reading similar headlines when Jodie was announced as the next Doctor. Same assholes, different day. I’m more concerned that the first few episodes have had terrible writing.

      • HowManyNimons@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        Space Babies was OK. I liked the bit where the Doctor stared dead into the camera and explained the allegory. That was funny.

        The rest have been a load of wank. I had hoped that a bit of time off might have curbed some of RTD’s excesses, but alas.

        And Moff’s script just seemed … tired. Like he just couldn’t do it any more. Blah blah, arms suppliers are bad, fish fingers and custard, love will save the day, something something atheism, … .

    • SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca
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      6 months ago

      Yeah, I feel the same way.

      There’s always going to be dickheads on the internet, and I think in this case it’s a very small group and of that group you could probably count on one had that are actually Dr. Who fans, if there’s any at all.

      If it were a significant percentage of fans then there might be something to talk about. But this seems another case of people that don’t know anything about a show and just seeing a black actor being cast in a role what was previously played by a white actor and making racist hay.

      Anyone that knows anything about Dr. Who knows the established lore allows any actor of any race or gender can play the part.

  • mindbleach@sh.itjust.works
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    6 months ago

    There’s cases where I will play devil’s advocate for such asshats. Some comic-book events feature a black Superman, and that raises questions about whether Kryptonians coincidentally match every ethnic group on Earth, or if they’ve got some skin colors that aren’t an option for humans, or if there’s some imprinting transformation wiggle-room when they show up as babies on rocketships. Remember that Supes works with a dude from Mars - cosmically our next-door neighbors - and his ass is green.

    And for the constant murmur of Idris Elba maybe playing James Bond, I have to point out the sliding window of ambiguous canon. From Dr. No until Die Another Day, the previous film was definitely the same guy, probably, and beyond that ehhh don’t worry about it. It was completely unreasonable that Pierce Brosnan during the handover of Hong Kong could be the same man as Sean Connery during the Cuban missile crisis - but there was no hard cutoff. You could suspend disbelief, movie by movie, and never really think about it. Did a character change? Did some details shift? Retcons happen, why worry. Don’t ask what movie Bruce Wayne and his parents were seeing. For forty years, 007 was played by 6’1" commonwealth blokes with light skin and dark hair, and the unspoken through-line is that audiences can be convinced all white actors look alike. Casting anyone else would require acknowledging that the codename can be transferred - or starting a new continuity. (Admittedly less of an issue since the Daniel Craig films pretty solidly cover a new continuity with yet another 6’1" commonwealth bloke with light skin and blond hair.)

    But… Doctor fucking Who? They’re shapeshifters. Every single Gallifreyan gets a dozen chances (or a dozen ish, evidently) to completely scrobble their appearance while maintaining a continuous personality. Even their fucking accents can change. Any losers sincerely whining about this are being bigots about an aggressively queer and accepting production. Even the original run started with an educational bent and tried to be progressive for the betterment of its audience.

    The people this article mocks might as well kvetch about Star Trek being kind of preachy.

    • exocrinous@startrek.website
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      6 months ago

      Some comic-book events feature a black Superman, and that raises questions about whether Kryptonians coincidentally match every ethnic group on Earth

      Not exactly, but they have dark and light skin. Krypton’s red sun is a big deal in Kryptonian health. Kryptonian communities living closer to the equator would probably evolve higher melanin the same as humans did. Actually, light-skinned Kryptonians require a bigger suspension of disbelief than dark-skinned ones do.

      And obviously the racial dynamics between dark and light Kryptonians wouldn’t be the same as on earth. It would depend upon factors like the shape of continents, the location of arable soil, of large herbivores and of predators, and of minerals.

      Fun fact: swords made out of meteorites are a common trope in Japan, because Japan has poor iron and big mountains.

    • SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca
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      6 months ago

      Some comic-book events feature a black Superman, and that raises questions about whether Kryptonians coincidentally match every ethnic group on Earth, or if they’ve got some skin colors that aren’t an option for humans, or if there’s some imprinting transformation wiggle-room when they show up as babies on rocketships.

      With Kryptonians, I think if you can suspend disbelief enough accept that a planet in another star system could evolve people that are identical in appearance to humans, then you kinda have to accept that there would also be similar ethnicities there too. I mean it seems impossible someone from another planet would look exactly like a human, so you have to be willing to accept the impossible for Superman to work at all. Also Kryptonians are somewhat an metaphor for Jews and there’s black Jews, so there should be black Kryptonians to fit the metaphor.

      And for the constant murmur of Idris Elba maybe playing James Bond, I have to point out the sliding window of ambiguous canon.

      Yeah I feel like James Bond is operates under comic book time. So yeah it’s the same character, but part of the suspension of disbelief relies on accepting that we just aren’t supposed to think about how this guy doesn’t age. So the same character changing ethnicity feels like it’s it’s either stretching that suspension of disbelief too much or straight up abandoning the comic book time continuity aspect of James Bond. Either way there’s going to be people bothered by it and it’s not necessarily a racist thing, it’s just not liking that an aspect of a franchise they enjoy has been changed.

      Don’t ask what movie Bruce Wayne and his parents were seeing

      If you want to feel old, Bruce Wayne could have watched one of the Antonio Banderas Zorro movies as a child and be in his 30s today.

      But… Doctor fucking Who? They’re shapeshifters. Every single Gallifreyan gets a dozen chances (or a dozen ish, evidently) to completely scrobble their appearance while maintaining a continuous personality. Even their fucking accents can change.

      Hey… lots of planets have a North!

  • DaSaw@midwest.social
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    6 months ago

    I just hope they eventually cast some fully Britishized actor originally out of Hong Kong… one trained in certain things Hong Kong actors are known for. I want a kung fu Doctor. :p

    • Obi@sopuli.xyz
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      6 months ago

      Just thinking of the running scenes through random spaceships being spiced up with some wall runs and flying rotating kicks and it is glorious.

    • Flummoxed@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      You have watched the Pertwee era right? Actually, on second thought, if you really like kung fu, don’t watch Pertwee 😁