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[TempAcc]

I mean the (new) comics. The movies have been great so far. Have a look at how many new characters marvel has been trying to launch and ended up failing miserably because said characters were entirely designed a certain progressive stereotype.

Black panther is one of the oldies so he was mostly spared.

[Loud Whispers]

Oooorrr... the theme isn't changing, it's just incorporating contemporary cultural issues, because they're relevant to the grand theme and... contemporary.

You're missing the context of how there's been a long campaign against a couple of the directors behind Dr. Who to make the Dr a woman because it's progressive. They got rid of the last one who was all "but why" and it gets lol worthy when BBC uses the time travel to reshape their perception of history. Considering most of the BBC are progs it's honestly altogether surprising they didn't cave sooner to the demands

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

ayyyyyyy
My only worry is how heavily they're banking on progressive cred. Never good when your lead starts off going on about how as a blankety blank I[...], it's relying more on style and politics than substance. Too early to say, especially as casting decisions nebulously made can still turn out well. End of the day though, Dr Who is a unique show being so old and long-lasting, it is very hard to kill. If this decision turns out good, hey it turns out good, if it turns out trash, hey just wait till next actor's signed on.

Also while we're talking about the BBC, Viceroy's House was dank

Also the grand theme is variable, but it is not as optimistic as the Doctor teaching the sanctity of life and all. It usually starts off with the Doctor exploring time and space, then finding that underneath everything as absolutely horrible and the world hates everything and continually needs fixing, but can never be fixed, himself the last of an extinct species and what not. Pretty grimderp

You kidding me M8?  Outside of the Winter Soldier cast, Black Panther was the only good thing to come out of Civil War.  Fucking great character.

The only good thing to come out of that was RDJ getting the crap beaten out of his character, everything was trash

[TD1]

Pish posh.

It can most certainly have flavours of darkness, but it does seem to me to be predominantly about life before death (journey before destination, anyone? Heh. Ignore random reference.)

This speech kinda encapsulates that. It's certainly got darkness in it, but that's just to point out one thing - live, don't kill.

They also used to make a much bigger deal out of the doctor not using guns, and that's still there in the background - peace before violence.

Another example. The Doctor saves the lives of a galaxy(?). They were going to sacrifice a girl to appease a parasite-god, but he stops them. Flavours of darkness again introduced, with one overriding ambition; saving that galaxy and its lives. Hear them sing?

And another. He doesn't kill them; he lets them live. Still dark, though.

So yes, adventures and darkness galore. But at the very heart, the preservation of life.

[overseer05-15]

Dr. Who only exists because the British would finally give up and die if it wasn't around.

preservation of life

[TD1]

To be fair, the doctor does kill the odd enemy/army. This is generally portrayed as a troubling and Bad Thing.

[Loud Whispers]

Pish posh.
It can most certainly have flavours of darkness, but it does seem to me to be predominantly about life before death (journey before destination, anyone? Heh. Ignore random reference.)
This speech kinda encapsulates that. It's certainly got darkness in it, but that's just to point out one thing - live, don't kill.
They also used to make a much bigger deal out of the doctor not using guns, and that's still there in the background - peace before violence.
Another example. The Doctor saves the lives of a galaxy(?). They were going to sacrifice a girl to appease a parasite-god, but he stops them. Flavours of darkness again introduced, with one overriding ambition; saving that galaxy and its lives. Hear them sing?
And another. He doesn't kill them; he lets them live. Still dark, though.
So yes, adventures and darkness galore. But at the very heart, the preservation of life.

To be fair, the doctor does kill the odd enemy/army. This is generally portrayed as a troubling and Bad Thing.

Sure the Doctor is all about preserving all life (I like the bit where he defends the AI murdering all the human colonists the moment he realized the AI had developed into a form of life, a form of life worth preserving shows this - it is an injustice, but he arbitrates it successfully to an uneasy reconciliation nonetheless). Hell, the Doctor himself desperately does all in his power to even save the life of his extremely dangerous nemeses (even trying to save the master and fucking daleks (and human-dalek hybrids), who are the reason his species his extinct). This is not exclusive to anything I say. That being the overarching ambition of the Doctor is not the same as the overaching theme of the series. The Doctor is not going from world to world in colourful festivals to teach the sanctity of life, he is going through time and space trying to preserve as much as he can in a universe that is destructive and dark. Goes to a Roman festival, it's fucking Pompeii. Doctor helps save colonists' lives, saying goodbye to little boy in heartfelt moment. Moment later, said boy has alongside the other colonists been forcibly turned into a warmachine in a body horror face-machine meld and set loose through time upon planet earth. All in the backdrop of running through time from a collective time abortion he is the last survivor of, though survivor suggests he was a lot more passive in that war than he was.

Haha, I don't need any more examples than this grimdark; there's a fucking great moment when Bill asks the most recent incarnation (which is, I might add, one of the most optimistic and idealistic incarnations we've yet seen) how many people he's seen dead. He doesn't know. She asks him, how many has he killed?
He doesn't answer. Saying only that he can't be outraged, because if he loses his good frame of mind, more people die. This is a dude who has killed billions, then killed them so hard they stopped existing. Not exactly the odd "enemy/army", he's killed billions of children, and one thing we've learned for sure is that "enemies" and "armies" are life just as worthy of protection, and yet he's wiped out so many that he had to forget (from dying many times) to move on. That's just numbers we know he knows, as since he's forgotten, we don't know the true extent of his destruction.

Shit's fucked. And the doctor churns through companions too for this same reason. He wants to protect them, wants to protect everyone, but he can't always and they die in horrible ways, heck IIRC The Tenth one tried to stop people joining him for a time out of guilt for how they'd end up inevitably killed (or as it were, trapped inescapably in alternate dimensions fighting a war). Twice when he traveled without companions, his tendency to sacrifice others increased, and of course when he has companions, they tend to end up sacrificing themselves in a rather regular pattern. In the end the Daleks are right, the Doctor is rather alike them, being the last remnants of the two time warring factions in a Universe that can't really stop them (seriously the dude fucks with time). That's why the story focuses on the real stakes: The companions, the humans, the cosmos's other lifeforms introduced, because the Doctor himself is this idealistic immortal time twister, the stakes come not in whether he'll be imperiled, but instead in whether he can protect this fragile world from the horrors it wreaks.

"Are you mad? You know the stories about the Doctor? The things that man has done? God help us if you make him angry!" - A good man goes to war.
"He never raised his voice. That was the worst thing. The fury of the Timelord. And then we discovered why. Why this Doctor, who had fought with gods and demons had run away from us. He was being kind. He wrapped my father in unbreakable chains forged in the heart of a dwarf star. Tricked my mother into the event horizon of a collapsing galaxy, to be imprisoned there forever. He still visits my sister once a year, every year. I wonder if one day he might forgive her, but there she is, can you see? She trapped her inside a mirror. Every mirror. If ever you your reflection and see something behind your mirror, just for a second, that's her. That's always her. As for me, I was suspended in time, and the Doctor put me to work standing over the fields of England as their protector. We wanted to live forever. So the Doctor made sure we did." - The Family of Blood

I'd scarcely brush away the fact that wherever the Doctor goes, he is trying to keep the darkness at bay - this darkness is not a mere flavour dusted over the top of light hearted adventure and appreciation for life. This is the entity that put an end to the time war, that wiped out not just all the Daleks, but wiped out all of the Time Lords - including all of the Time Lords' children. He is beyond genocidal, he is apocalyptic, though slow to it I suppose. Consider that this is an entity that considered destroying the Universe in a cosmic suicide. Deepest lore m8, deepest lore

"You'll find that it's a very small Universe when I'm angry with you."

Shit's fucked fam. If shit wasn't fucked, no one would be calling for a Doctor to fix it

*EDIT
Also if you really don't believe me, have the doctor gloating to the last survivor of a race he exterminated, his role as the architect of their death

[inteuniso]

Has anyone posited the idea that the doctor is that malignant force at the end of time who finally realizes he can't stem the darkness so it's best just to put everyone out of their misery?

[Yoink]

You're all fuckin' nerds. That is all.

[Rolan7]

Well yeah, intelligence is hot!

[Loud Whispers]

2cool4school

[SalmonGod]

I don't think anyone will disagree that it's a grimdark setting.  But that only serves to highlight and dramatize the stoic idealism of The Doctor and his companions.  That's the whole point.

[Loud Whispers]

I don't think anyone will disagree that it's a grimdark setting.  But that only serves to highlight and dramatize the stoic idealism of The Doctor and his companions.  That's the whole point.

Nah m8 it doesn't "only" highlight and dramatize stoic idealism, it's considerably more complicated than that. Unless the Doctor convincing people to kill themselves or gloating about being the murderer of an entire race to its sole survivor is "just highlights" for adventure and idealism, which it most certainly is not. And if you look above, there's immediately one person who disagrees that the setting is dark, being instead flavoured with dark
Cos you can't ignore that the Doctor isn't 1 dimensional, certainly isn't a hero nor even a good person (alien?) entity, and that's just the overarching general theme owing to how the character changes each time it dies. And it's worth mentioning too that the setting itself will inevitably change things greatly, whether they're in WWII or Andromeda or the End of Time; they do not exist only as colourful backdrops to shine contrast on the main characters, and the contrast they do shine does not come from someone pursuing ideals - coming from an ancient being running from a very terrifying reality, with the worst part being it is a reality they created.

"The man who abhors violence, never carrying a gun. But this is the truth doctor, you take ordinary people, and you fashion them into weapons. Behold your children of time, transformed into murderers. Already I have seen them sacrifice today, for their beloved doctor. How many more, just think, how many have died in your name? The Doctor, who keeps running, the man who never looks back out of shame. This is my final victory Doctor, I have shown you yourself." - Big boss Dalek fucker, Journey's End, Children of Time
The quote is considerably more pertinent in the context of the Doctor's companions threatening to nuclear bomb all of mankind and then envelop it in a supernova just to make sure nothing survives in an ultimate samson option. I don't like ignoring the cool moments where the Doctor scares himself. Doctor's got so many self-imposed rules, because unrestrained is fucking mental. In short, when he's not "THE" Doctor, he's the last Time Lord Doctor. And the Time Lords were dickheads

The idealism is important, all I'm saying is don't reduce it to "justs" and "only" cos when the writer's aren't being retarded, there's a lot of them putting loadsa work into it, which the actors then put a loada work into making it dank, and the most fundamental thing about Doctor Who is that it deals with a dangerous entity who has oceans of blood on their hand trying to help a fragile timeline full of fragile things find their way in the universe, and in this setting multiple narratives are spun in tandem. Most definitely isn't stoic either, dude hears the screams and is visibly pained for it. It's a balance, good and bad, triumph and failure, optimism and frustration, seems an injustice to take a show that with its multiple lifespans, characters, timelines and settings is trying to tell multiple strands of messages, to then take one and

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[EnigmaticHat]

I've heard Doctor Who described as a "show about running down hallways."  Its structured partially as a horror show; the function of the darkness is to keep things tense.  I would also add that parallel to the theme of all life being valuable is the theme of grief.  The Doctor knows how everything ends and has experienced the death of himself and others countless times.  What makes him the hero isn't just that he refuses to kill, its that he genuinely personally cares when the random people around him start dying.  So the grim darkness does fit the themes of the show I would argue.

Depends on the writer of course.  Usually he's a saint, occasionally he blows up a planet or something.  In the episodes I've seen his motivations were believable but I could see an argument that they aren't.

Anyway, I don't see how a female doctor really counters the themes of the show.  Time Lords have always been able to regenerate as the opposite gender.  It happened to the Master way back in the original run.

[Rose]

I think the main worry people have isn't that the doctor is meant to be male or whatever, but that people are worried that the doctor being female will be tokenized.

[Loud Whispers]

I think the main worry people have isn't that the doctor is meant to be male or whatever, but that people are worried that the doctor being female will be tokenized.

Well that and this is following a BBC pattern of randomly replacing people with "progressive" alternatives for no reason, not really putting any effort into the shit they replace. It's part and parcel with all the people saying make Bond a woman because Bond must not be a man in current year +2, the primary focus should be on the character and story not on identity politics. The more common mistake Beeb keeps making is flanderising all the diverse replacements, wherein they make the identity the sole focus of the entire character regardless of setting or appropriateness, erasing character depth in favour of a cardboard cutout of a person

Spoiler: also lol unrelated (click to show/hide)

It's all like, if you're gonna do something like this why would you half arse it to sub-mediocrity expecting to coast off of fashionable politics that'll be out of date in a bloody season. Your work's gonna outlive you, so why relegate your work to little more than a context piece of your shitty times? And then there's the motive

“It feels completely overwhelming; as a feminist, as a woman, as an actor, as a human, as someone who wants to continually push themselves and challenge themselves, and not be boxed in by what you’re told you can and can’t be,” Whittaker continued.

I'm always concerned by statements that begin with "as a blankety blank" because it shows when you're at that most critical juncture, when you need to prove to people what you're adding to the table and all you add are meaningless labels - deep concern is aroused. They can't treat it as a cheap arse gimmick like that, cause if they do they fuck up the franchise lel.
I'm talking of course about the writers. Having good actors does fuck all if the scripts are shite. Whittaker's good, seen her in Attack the Block, so there's only gonna be an issue if the writers fuck shit up, and I'd rather be cautious than disappointed, cos being cautious costs nothing than building up a hype train to unrealistic expectations. And the hype train is already choo chooing down the tunnel

Imo this is part of a larger cancer, of how people get their politics from harry potter and reddit wars references. Thus the scope of what becomes political battleground widens, as all mediums and all cultures must fight to deny their enemies ideas and shitty consumable pop media in a race to the bottom, a race only ironic youtube shitposting can win.