Too darn Hot!

 Hi All, 

Too hot, way too hot!

Freeeedom!

 Hi All,

Freedom Day today! 

Shabbat Shalom!

 Hi All, 

Open thread as usual 

A gay Dr Who?

 Hi All,

The rumour mill has it that Jodie Whitaker is to step down from the role of Dr Who and is going to be replaced by someone I've never heard of , who happens to be a gay man. The discussion on social media is, unsurprisingly talking about the actor's sexuality, rather than acting talent. Sigh. I thought it didn't matter any more? 

But first some context: Dr Who a science fiction tv show about a time traveling alien called the Doctor,  started in 1963 and finished in 1989, before a brief revival in 1996, it was next back on our screens in 2005. The new show hit a peak under the Tennant and Smith Doctors, before levelling off a bit with the next Doctor, Calpaldi, but then the BBC decided they would try to reboot the show by making the Doctor a female and thus cast Jodie Whitaker in the role. The woke mob loved this, but as most don't actually watch the show and spent time vilifying anyone who disagreed, the ratings, after a bounce, plummeted and this bit is crucial- not just in Britain wherein the license fee means you have to pay for whatever the BBC wants to produce- but who abroad, especially in America where the show went sub-million in terms of viewing figures, between that flop and the merchandise not sold, sent the BBC into denial mode . I would say this  flop wasn't just because of the gender change- I think there were plenty of fans who had their doubts, but gave the benefit of the doubt- but as a  result of terrible scripts and bad acting and a sub-par performance by Whitaker who seemed not to be able to settle into the role and whose characterisation of the 13th doctor was that of a liberally minded , but still obnoxious  'Karen', displaying little sympathy for a companion who'd lost their wife and had cancer worries. Added to this the showrunner decided to re-write the entire lore and canon of the show, to make not William Hartnell's Dr Who of 1963 the first doctor, but instead to make a black female Doctor the first of thousands of incarnations. Oh and the Doctor isn't a time lord, but created them. Utter tosh and I will admit I haven't been watching much of the show in the past couple of years.  

So after this disaster you would have thought the BBC would have gone for safety and appointed a safe pair of hands- an established actor, who was male whilst the last couple of years were slowly retroed out as being the canon of the show. But if the rumours are true, it seems that they now want to go with another alternative to try to regain interest in the show( rather than, say, actually writing good scripts and getting actors who have a passion for the show).

The first gay Dr Who is of course a bit of clickbait :surely ?. The Doctor, the character not the actor, is supposed to be an  advanced intelligent and technologically superior alien, from Gallifrey, whose people  call themselves 'Time Lords' who can regenerate whenever they are injured or whose bodies become old, therefore they can live for thousands and thousands of years (the Doctor, being a rouge whose exploring the universe gets through his regenerations quicker). It's never been mentioned, but one suspects that a result of living so long is a low sex drive or some form of 'having the snip', otherwise Gallifrey would be grossly overpopulated, even with trans dimensional technology and during the entire show the Doctor has never really had a love interest in the way humans do. Even River Song seems more like an extremely close companion, rather than a sexual lover: Rose did love the Doctor in a lovers sense,  but this was never, never returned by the Doctor. During the original series the Doctor did have as a companion  who was also a Time Lord, Romana, but even then they didn't seem to  have a romantic or sexual relationship. In fact Time Lord society seems extremely desexualised, which I'm guessing wouldn't be surprising for being who are thousands of years old.

Out of universe, the actor who may be the next Doctor who is gay, but why would or should he be forced or want to make the Doctor into an overtly sexual character, wherein previously he has never been so? The actor may be gay, but he's there to play the Doctor as he's always been. For example the actor who played Sulu in Star Trek, was gay, but Sulu the Star Trek character was straight. Two of the great British actors, Derek Jacobi and Ian Mckellen are gay men, but who haven't ever limited themselves by sexuality, playing a diverse range of characters throughout their careers. 

Why then do we have to talk about the 'first gay doctor who'? In actual fact we are talking about the first gay actor to play Dr Who, the time travelling alien. I hope it doesn't mean they are going to make Doctor Who into a gay time lord, given that in universe the Time Lords seem to be practically desexualised, rather than emphasising sexuality. 

open thread

Hi All,

Open Friday thread as usual.