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Have you ever considered that the Prime Directive is not only not ethical, but also illogical, and perhaps morally indefensible?

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Cake day: June 11th, 2023

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  • Faint praise, but this one’s a lot better than the first part of the story. The “farting” aspect of the farting aliens is significantly downplayed in favour of things that are actually interesting.

    The emotional core of the story is the Doctor and Rose each coming to terms with how dangerous life with the Doctor is, and the effects it can have. I’d forgotten that Harriet Jones, MP for Flydale North comments on how flippant Rose is about death, even at this early stage (too early?) of the series.

    There are plot contrivances all over the place - the UK’s nuclear codes are controlled by the UN! You can hack the Royal Navy’s submarines and launch missiles from your home PC! But I’m pretty forgiving of stuff like that, as long as the emotional core of the episode is solid.





















  • That quote is…really something. RTD has a habit of overexplaining things to the point of incomprehensibility, but that takes it to a new level.

    I do think the basics of what he’s getting at ring true - they certainly struggled a bit with “how much sexism should the Thirteenth Doctor encounter,” and “how much racism should the Fifteenth Doctor encounter?” They both probably should have encountered more than they did, but if the story isn’t about that, you run the risk of derailing the entire story. But if you include it “casually,” as just a fact of the world, as they did in this case…that’s not necessarily better. But maybe it’s still worthwhile?

    I don’t think there’s a right answer, but RTD sure managed to find a wrong one.

    On this topic, I was certainly laughing right along with the show’s depiction of Mickey-as-a-murder-suspect, but that has unsettling racial implications on its own, if you really interrogate the idea.





  • Oh boy, it’s the one with the farting aliens.

    I don’t care for this one at all. It’s a very pure expression of RTD’s “kid-friendly” vision of Doctor Who, but…it makes it kid-friendly by featuring farting aliens. No thanks.

    But there’s still good stuff! Pretty much everything about Rose’s return is pretty great. Jackie’s anger and relief after Rose has been missing for a year, Mickey’s status as a suspected murderer, all good stuff. We get to meet Harriet Jones, MP for Flydale North, who’s always a delight. We get to see UNIT, still with “United Nations” in their name. We also get to meet Toshiko Sato.

    The broad strokes of the plot are interesting. A crashed UFO, faked by aliens not as a diversion, but as a trap for the council of Big Brains that would immediately convene. I like that a lot. I also liked the way the Doctor immediately drops his dismissiveness of Ricky Mickey as soon as he says something intelligent.

    But at the end of the day, those farting aliens are always going to be there.