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Doctor Who - "Oxygen"
Hmm...so I finally saw this episode and liked more than I thought I would.
There's some good character development. A rather interesting take on racism...and how two people, who normally struggle with racism or being treated as different, both make verbal faux pas when addressing a blue space alien. I rather liked that and thought it funny and thought-provoking.
And some interesting themes. See below. Cut for spoilers.
1.
Borrowing heavily from various sci-fi films and serials, the villain of the week is an incompetent corporation. Note the corporation isn't necessarily evil, just incompetent in that they have put value in the wrong things. Successful corporations -- history and experience have shown, value their employees, don't award bullying behavior, and are willing to find ways to work with customers. Unsuccessful corporations that bleed money and attract multiple lawsuits, don't value their employees, reward bullying behavior, and are not willing to mediate issues or listen to customers or employees.
Examples?
* Google is a highly successful corporation -- it provides its employees with massages, stress management, team building, and pays them high salaries and benefits. It has a campus or collegiate atmosphere.
* HW Wilson bullied its employees, did not listen to them, didn't manage stress, was in an old building with dust, and a printing shop, with barbed wire around it. It didn't know how to mediate relationships between people. This company was 100 years old, but went out of business, and was gutted by a competitor, who bought it for half of what it was worth and laid off all the employees.
While it is admittedly tempting to think, oh tech is a career I should go in and not publishing. This isn't necessarily true. Nor is it necessarily true that all nasty companies are unsuccessful, from what I understand, Apple is a bear to work for and highly successful, while my cousin loves working for Scholastic...she jumped out of a tech career into publishing...so there you go.
I've worked in a lot of organizations in my lifetime, across multiple organizations. My father was an organizational and compensation consultant...who worked with even more and talked about it. So, I know a lot about this. And I worked in the legal and financial end...so even more than most.
What I can tell you is you can't really generalize. Are there evil corporations? Yes. I worked for them. So I know they exist. Are all corporations evil? No. But unfortunately haven't worked for those...luck of the draw. Does the size of the corporation matter? Not really. Would socialism or communism change this? Probably not. May make it worse. Public/Government run agencies can be just as nasty, just ask the people working for various Federal Agencies at the moment. Not happy campers. It all depends on who is running the show. If you have a good, kind, and smart leadership and management in place, life is good. If you have stupid, egotistical, greedy, evil leadership in place -- life is not. With a lot of room in between. And you can have nasty leaders in government run organizations, they aren't immune.
I will state from all the crazy organizations I've been -- and I've been in practically everything, the government run one was the nicest overall in some respects (more protections for employees), and it has massive problems. And I do mean massive. And it's getting progressively worse.
Whether we like it or not, there are a lot of corporations who are putting their own profit above all else. Apple makes disposable products that don't last so you will keep buying new ones. Samsung made defective phones that had to be pulled, and almost exploded because they didn't follow safety protocols and rushed them out. Amtrack has had derailments and problems, because of poor management and safety practices and they are government run and funded. Monsanto makes products that pollute the environment. Starbucks uses palm kernal oil which hurts rainforests.
Doctor Who is reflecting that somewhat. But it always has to a degree. And it's not the first to do so. Alien did it in the 1970s - a rather frightening tale about a corporation that sends a team of miners to a planet, with a hidden agenda. The Agenda? To grab some dangerous biological specimens to turn into biological weapons that they can develop and sell. Frak the poor miners. Bladerunner. And Terminator, of course, about a corporation that creates intelligent machines that destroy humanity. This by the way is a problem -- not regulating science, or ethics, because if you let science do whatever they want...you end up with the Terminator universe.
At least this theme didn't overwhelm the episode. But it did seem to be a repeat of The Smile episode, making me wonder if they are trying to make a point about agency...ie. the control people have over others, and themselves? Actually that was the interesting theme that I saw.
Which brings me to what I think is actually one of the overarching themes of this season. And a far more interesting one than the above. Because frankly, I'm bored of the evil corporation theme. It's been a tad overdone.
Yet another episode about agency or being stuck or trapped. And there's bits and pieces about this scattered throughout.
1. Pilot -- the water takes over Bill's friend and turns her into a ship. Bill's friend loses her agency, and Bill almost loses hers as well. The Doctor has to stay on Earth for some reason and isn't allowed to travel. Until the water finds Bill's friend, it is captive on Earth.
2. Smile -- The robot slaves of the people who came to the planet, develop agency and kill the people. They have power, the people don't. And they make up all the walls of the structures on the planet and grow all the food. The people find themselves at the mercy of their former helpers/slaves.
3. Thin Ice -- a big fish is held captive beneath the ice of 1800s England. At the mercy of a nobleman/aristocrat who is using it to create fuel that he can sell at a healthy profit. The big fish eats people and the waste product is the fuel.
4. Knock Knock -- a group of students are held prisoner in a house, and seemingly devoured by its walls. Trapped. We learn that this is because the landlord and his "mother" are trapped in the house, because he is keeping her alive by killing the students. The mother doesn't have agency until she kills her son and releases them both, along with all the students, and destroying the house.
At the end of the episode we learn that the Doctor is holding someone captive in the Vault below his rooms. And he in turn should not and cannot leave earth, because that risks what is in the vault escaping or being found.
5. Oxygen -- Bill is held Captive by her suit, she can't escape it, and it almost kills her. The inhabitants of the station are held captive by the suits. The Doctor saves the day, but now is blind.
So, agency is definitely a recurring theme here. The idea of what it is, what it means, and how it feels.
There's some good character development. A rather interesting take on racism...and how two people, who normally struggle with racism or being treated as different, both make verbal faux pas when addressing a blue space alien. I rather liked that and thought it funny and thought-provoking.
And some interesting themes. See below. Cut for spoilers.
1.
Borrowing heavily from various sci-fi films and serials, the villain of the week is an incompetent corporation. Note the corporation isn't necessarily evil, just incompetent in that they have put value in the wrong things. Successful corporations -- history and experience have shown, value their employees, don't award bullying behavior, and are willing to find ways to work with customers. Unsuccessful corporations that bleed money and attract multiple lawsuits, don't value their employees, reward bullying behavior, and are not willing to mediate issues or listen to customers or employees.
Examples?
* Google is a highly successful corporation -- it provides its employees with massages, stress management, team building, and pays them high salaries and benefits. It has a campus or collegiate atmosphere.
* HW Wilson bullied its employees, did not listen to them, didn't manage stress, was in an old building with dust, and a printing shop, with barbed wire around it. It didn't know how to mediate relationships between people. This company was 100 years old, but went out of business, and was gutted by a competitor, who bought it for half of what it was worth and laid off all the employees.
While it is admittedly tempting to think, oh tech is a career I should go in and not publishing. This isn't necessarily true. Nor is it necessarily true that all nasty companies are unsuccessful, from what I understand, Apple is a bear to work for and highly successful, while my cousin loves working for Scholastic...she jumped out of a tech career into publishing...so there you go.
I've worked in a lot of organizations in my lifetime, across multiple organizations. My father was an organizational and compensation consultant...who worked with even more and talked about it. So, I know a lot about this. And I worked in the legal and financial end...so even more than most.
What I can tell you is you can't really generalize. Are there evil corporations? Yes. I worked for them. So I know they exist. Are all corporations evil? No. But unfortunately haven't worked for those...luck of the draw. Does the size of the corporation matter? Not really. Would socialism or communism change this? Probably not. May make it worse. Public/Government run agencies can be just as nasty, just ask the people working for various Federal Agencies at the moment. Not happy campers. It all depends on who is running the show. If you have a good, kind, and smart leadership and management in place, life is good. If you have stupid, egotistical, greedy, evil leadership in place -- life is not. With a lot of room in between. And you can have nasty leaders in government run organizations, they aren't immune.
I will state from all the crazy organizations I've been -- and I've been in practically everything, the government run one was the nicest overall in some respects (more protections for employees), and it has massive problems. And I do mean massive. And it's getting progressively worse.
Whether we like it or not, there are a lot of corporations who are putting their own profit above all else. Apple makes disposable products that don't last so you will keep buying new ones. Samsung made defective phones that had to be pulled, and almost exploded because they didn't follow safety protocols and rushed them out. Amtrack has had derailments and problems, because of poor management and safety practices and they are government run and funded. Monsanto makes products that pollute the environment. Starbucks uses palm kernal oil which hurts rainforests.
Doctor Who is reflecting that somewhat. But it always has to a degree. And it's not the first to do so. Alien did it in the 1970s - a rather frightening tale about a corporation that sends a team of miners to a planet, with a hidden agenda. The Agenda? To grab some dangerous biological specimens to turn into biological weapons that they can develop and sell. Frak the poor miners. Bladerunner. And Terminator, of course, about a corporation that creates intelligent machines that destroy humanity. This by the way is a problem -- not regulating science, or ethics, because if you let science do whatever they want...you end up with the Terminator universe.
At least this theme didn't overwhelm the episode. But it did seem to be a repeat of The Smile episode, making me wonder if they are trying to make a point about agency...ie. the control people have over others, and themselves? Actually that was the interesting theme that I saw.
Which brings me to what I think is actually one of the overarching themes of this season. And a far more interesting one than the above. Because frankly, I'm bored of the evil corporation theme. It's been a tad overdone.
Yet another episode about agency or being stuck or trapped. And there's bits and pieces about this scattered throughout.
1. Pilot -- the water takes over Bill's friend and turns her into a ship. Bill's friend loses her agency, and Bill almost loses hers as well. The Doctor has to stay on Earth for some reason and isn't allowed to travel. Until the water finds Bill's friend, it is captive on Earth.
2. Smile -- The robot slaves of the people who came to the planet, develop agency and kill the people. They have power, the people don't. And they make up all the walls of the structures on the planet and grow all the food. The people find themselves at the mercy of their former helpers/slaves.
3. Thin Ice -- a big fish is held captive beneath the ice of 1800s England. At the mercy of a nobleman/aristocrat who is using it to create fuel that he can sell at a healthy profit. The big fish eats people and the waste product is the fuel.
4. Knock Knock -- a group of students are held prisoner in a house, and seemingly devoured by its walls. Trapped. We learn that this is because the landlord and his "mother" are trapped in the house, because he is keeping her alive by killing the students. The mother doesn't have agency until she kills her son and releases them both, along with all the students, and destroying the house.
At the end of the episode we learn that the Doctor is holding someone captive in the Vault below his rooms. And he in turn should not and cannot leave earth, because that risks what is in the vault escaping or being found.
5. Oxygen -- Bill is held Captive by her suit, she can't escape it, and it almost kills her. The inhabitants of the station are held captive by the suits. The Doctor saves the day, but now is blind.
So, agency is definitely a recurring theme here. The idea of what it is, what it means, and how it feels.
no subject
Two people? Bill and... the Doctor? I've never noticed he struggled with racism. Since most people don't realise he is an alien it is hard for them to be racist. I liked the way they handled the blue man though. The racial theme was handled so appallingly badly in Thin Ice it was good to see them doing it better.
No, and at times I could ignore it and keep hoping that it would be a hacking issue not 'evil capitalism' - but maybe that hope was why I got so cross because the ending felt like being hit over an already sore spot with a hammer.
Interesting ideas about agency and being trapped! And if they carry that through now that the Doctor is blind (I haven't seen this week's episode yet) then that could play well with the disability theme since so many disability issues centre around agency.
Looking back at all the episodes we have had so far Knock Knock feels to me like it carries the most meta information. This one felt like filler - an isolated space-ship incident with no real relevance to what happens before or after. As if Moffat just tossed the idea 'zombies on a spaceship' at the writer and left them to get on with it.
no subject
No Bill and the robot (Matt Lucas) character, whose name I forget. The robot is awkward, doesn't fit in, stands out, a minority, and is treated differently and apart.
The Doctor on the other hand blends in, and didn't have that interaction with the blue alien. Just Bill and the robot, which was rather funny.
no subject
no subject
Agree for the most part.
No, and at times I could ignore it and keep hoping that it would be a hacking issue not 'evil capitalism' - but maybe that hope was why I got so cross because the ending felt like being hit over an already sore spot with a hammer.
I don't know, hacking has been overdone too.
I have to admit, I didn't pay that much attention to the plot. My attention kept wandering. It sort of bored me - zombies and evil corporation behind them? Overdone. I mean honestly everyone has done it from Joss Whedon to Walking Dead. Apparently you can't have zombies without an evil corporation involved. I don't know why, I managed to come up with an alternative for a sci-fi novel that I'm writing. No, wait, I guess you could say that a corporation was sort of involved in that instance as well. Oh well. It wasn't deliberate.
Interesting ideas about agency and being trapped! And if they carry that through now that the Doctor is blind (I haven't seen this week's episode yet) then that could play well with the disability theme since so many disability issues centre around agency.
I'm wondering if this is playing into the Doctor's blindness. Because there's forced dependency theme going on as well. Where people are dependent on someone else but not by choice. I honestly think Oxygen -- was in part about that, the astronauts were dependent on their suits, so the suits had power. The Pilot was dependent on Bill's friend becoming it's pilot, or it was trapped on Earth. The suits in Oxygen were dependent on the humans getting them somewhere and maintaining the ship. The bad guy in Thin Ice was dependent on the fish providing the fuel and the fish, trapped, became dependent on the bad guy providing it with food. Smile and Knock Knock are a bit more obvious I think regarding this theme.
So agency or lack of it, and dependency.
Looking back at all the episodes we have had so far Knock Knock feels to me like it carries the most meta information.
I'd have to agree. I liked Knock Knock better. We appear to be alone in this. I don't understand the love for Thin Ice and Oxygen. I found both sort of boring.
no subject
(I found it irritating in her meta, and I'm largely ambivalent on the topic. Mainly because I think people are rather uninformed and naive when it comes to economics. I work with former economics majors, you should hear them rant on the topic.)
I think Marx is appealing to academics, sci-fi writers and philosophers, who have never worked in the financial, procurement and legal departments of government agencies. And don't understand how economics works. They appear to think that our system is pure capitalism, it's not. We'd be dead - sort of require regs or folks would blow us up. Yes, various CEO's are that stupid. And that pure communism would work -- no. Been there, tried that. Did not work. Ended up becoming capitalism.
Unfortunately human beings and power don't go well together and Marx forgot that. But hey he was a philosopher not a pragmaticist. Orwell made fun of Marx with Animal Farm and 1984. Ayn Rand also went after Marx with Anthem, Night of January 16th, Fountainhead, and Atlas Shrugged (want to talk about preachy, Ayn Rand.) So the other side has had it's say too. I think Huxley took the middle ground. Crichton also took the middle ground.
What I know is -- every time someone attempts to go Marx's route we end up with capitalism in the end. (See the Soviet Union and China). I think Sweden did it -- but that's not communism, it's a socialist/capitalist hybrid that swings heavily towards socialism, but Sweden is also a much smaller country and a much smaller and controlled population influx (ie. it's hard to immigrate there, unlike UK and US.)
no subject
This does appear to be true. When things escape from government research labs they cause suer-heroes, but for zombies it is always the private sector. Presumably zombies look better in the quarterlies.
Yes. These themes of agency, dependency, care and family are coming through so strongly, it seems remarkable that the whole blindness thing was apparently added on a whim when the Oxygen writer wrote it in expecting to to be cured at the end of the episode and then Moffat decided to keep it. I guess it shows that much as we love to mine these shows for themes they are more likely to arise organically than be planned.
Definitely agree. And I really don't understand the dislike of Extremis I am seeing in some places. At least everyone seems to agree that Smile was dull.
no subject
Haven't seen Extremis yet, but I noticed that the people are split on it. Which is interesting, and rather amusing.
no subject
no subject
When things escape from government research labs they cause suer-heroes, but for zombies it is always the private sector. Presumably zombies look better in the quarterlies.
That's what I did differently in my own work in progress, I made the alien government in collusion with earth governments inadvertently create a pseudo-zombie plague.
See, I work for the government, I think they are more likely to accidentally create a zombie plague than a corporation.
no subject
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The best in-depth exploration of these themes in a sci-fi setting that I know of is Charlie Jade, which is a brilliant series in so many ways and deserves a far wider audience than it ever achieved. That faces up to corporatism head on and explores both the good and bad sides of it by contrasting our own world with a parallel universe where corporatism is utterly unrestrained. (It is admittedly rather hand-wavy about the nature of the third universe, which is the opposite of corporatism, but you can't have everything.)