Doctor Who - "Oxygen"
May. 20th, 2017 05:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkatHmm...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
Date: 2017-05-22 04:39 pm (UTC)Haven't seen Extremis yet, but I noticed that the people are split on it. Which is interesting, and rather amusing.
no subject
Date: 2017-05-23 08:15 am (UTC)