Episode 143: Transcript

Episode: 143: How Doctor Who Stood the Test of Time

Transcription by Keffy

Charlie Jane: [00:00:00] It's weird how many of my favorite things nowadays are things that I was into when I was a little kid. Like, I was hugely into Doctor Who as a kid and I still love Doctor Who, and Star Trek, and comics, and, bouncy funk music. I feel like a lot of my core interests were formed at a pretty young age.

  [00:00:17] Annalee, do you have any childhood interests that still captivate you today? 

Annalee: [00:00:21] I mean, same. I often think about how weird it is that I turned my childhood obsessions into a job because I loved science fiction when I was a kid. My life was completely transformed by watching Star Trek: The Motion Picture, which, I mean, I watched that when I was like seven. So, I know that, people don't like that movie as much, but I'd never seen anything like it when I was a kid, and I just was blown away, and I was like, wow! V'ger! V'ger is the spaceship! Oh my God! It was like a total revelation. And I love Godzilla movies. I still love those. I still love to write. I was a writer when I was a little kid, and I still am. So yeah, I'd say, Yeah, I’m pretty much still roughly 10 years old in terms of my interests. Well, I should say more like 13 because I like D&D and kind of scary horror movies and stuff like that. More like gross horror movies.

[00:01:28] So I'm still, yeah, I'm still into all that stuff. So, yeah, never grow up, kids. 

Charlie Jane: [00:01:33] I mean, I feel like it's probably more common than we realized. I mean, I was hugely into Smurfs for a year or so when I was a kid, when I was like 10 or 11 or 12 and those are gone. I'm not into Smurfs anymore. Sesame Street was major for me at one point and I don't watch Sesame Street anymore. So, it's not like a hundred percent. 

Annalee: [00:01:55] Yeah. I was really into Piers Anthony novels and I can throw those in the trash now. So that's fine. 

Charlie Jane: [00:02:01] Yeah, I mean, there are certain specific authors or specific things that I'm like now, like, why did I ever like that? But the genres I generally still like.

Annalee: [00:02:09] Same.

Charlie Jane: [00:02:09] I think it's just some things kind of drop away as you get older. But a lot of stuff sticks around. 

Annalee: [00:02:17] Yeah. A lot of things stand the test of time, and I think that's not just true for things that you love as a kid, but also things that your parents loved as a kid. There’s stories that I watched as a kid… I should say movies that I watched as a kid, like Jason and the Argonauts and a lot of the Ray Harryhausen movies that my dad showed to me because he loved them when he was a kid. And so I think there's a whole kind of subset of stories that stand the test of time over generations.

Charlie Jane: [00:02:50] Yeah. And you know, obviously, there's the suck fairy. Like there's the thing where sometimes you go back and you're like, this was the greatest, I love this so much. It's the greatest thing. And you're like, wow, I didn't remember how terrible and cheesy and borderline offensive this is. Oh my God, how did I not notice all of this terrible stuff in this thing that I loved as a kid. Or that I loved like 20 years ago, even, or even sometimes 10 years ago. It's just like, oh, wow. Okay. I totally was just oblivious to a whole bunch of problems with this thing. 

Annalee: [00:03:26] Yeah. 

Charlie Jane: [00:03:26] And so I think that actually the suck fairy is kind of what we're going to talk about today a little bit.

[00:03:31] I mean, we're talking about specifically Doctor Who I think is the starting point for this episode because as you all know, I always wanna talk about Doctor Who in every episode, and right now is a good moment to talk about Doctor Who because it's the 60th anniversary and Doctor Who is still going strong. And we just watched some new Doctor Who that has been blowing our minds. 

[00:03:54] But just in general, how do things manage to stay cool and relevant. How do they avoid the suck fairy? How do they dodge the suck fairy? And how do you keep updating a classic piece of entertainment without losing sight of what made it cool originally?

[00:04:07] So, you're listening to Our Opinions Are Correct. I'm Charlie Jane Anders. I write science fiction. My latest book is Promises Stronger Than Darkness. 

Annalee: [00:04:17] And I'm Annalee Newitz. I'm a science journalist who writes science fiction and my latest novel is The Terraformers.

Charlie Jane: [00:04:24] Yeah. And in our mini episode next week, we're going to be talking about what kind of vehicle we would turn into if we could turn into any mode of transportation at all. Just any type of vehicle.

Annalee: [00:04:36] Wow, I actually hadn't looked at that yet in the script. I'm really excited now. 

Charlie Jane: [00:04:41] Yeah. It's going to be a good conversation. I have a feeling Annalee will have thoughts. 

Annalee: [00:04:44] I do. 

Charlie Jane: [00:04:44] And that reminds me our podcast depends on you. You are the linchpin. You are the crucial piece of infrastructure that keeps this podcast going. We're entirely listener-supported. our Patreon is how we get to keep doing this and it's our community. It's our beloved family of listeners and friends. And we have a Discord where we hang out and talk to y'all all the time. We post mini episodes every other week when we're not doing a main episode. And it's just sort of a part of a way to have a better relationship with the podcast and help keep us making more episodes.

[00:05:21] And it can all be yours for just a few bucks a month. Anything you give us just makes our opinions even more correct. And find us at www.patreon.com/ouropinionsarecorrect. 

Annalee: [00:05:34] Yay! 

Charlie Jane: [00:05:34] Okay, let's get into it.

[00:05:36] [OOAC theme plays. Science fictiony synth noises over an energetic, jazzy drum line.]

Charlie Jane: [00:06:09] Okay, so just a heads up. We are recording this episode right after watching the first new Doctor Who episode of 2023, “The Star Beast.” So, A: there's going to be some spoilers for that episode. So, if you haven't seen it yet, you should probably just skip ahead about five minutes. And also, we haven't seen the other new episodes yet, so we won't be discussing those.

[00:06:30] Annalee, what did you think of “The Star Beast”? 

Annalee: [00:06:34] Oh, my God. I loved it. I think that David Tennant is kind of like the Doctor Who that I most fell in love with. I started watching Doctor Who regularly around the time that he was the main doctor. I mean, so he's my doctor. You know how everyone has their special doctor. Well, he's my special doctor. So, it was lovely to see him again. It was amazing to see the the incredibly awesome gender politics in the show, which I'm sure we'll talk about more, and it was also just really cute. It was cozy and fun and happy. It was everything I needed. It was cozy return to Doctor Who with a lot of fanfare and running around and being silly.

Charlie Jane: [00:07:24] Yeah, it was it was definitely everything I needed, too. It was like a balm to my freaking soul. It was so great to see Catherine Tate back as Donna Noble.

Doctor Who Clip: [00:07:31] Sometimes I think there's something missing like I had something lovely and it’s gone. I lie in bed thinking, what have I lost?

Charlie Jane: [00:07:48] And you know, they finally fixed the way that she was left back in like 2008 where she had to have her memory of the Doctor wiped and if she ever remembered the Doctor, she would die. And you know, that felt like something that they needed to address. And now they have, and they addressed it in a way that just kind of tied it into this very kind of like optimistic, happy kind of vibe of the episode. And they got to have all the feels of like, oh my gosh, the Doctor has to risk sacrificing this person he loves or they love in order to save London from like being destroyed by this nasty fuzzy creature. 

[00:08:28] But at the same time, it kind of also tied into like the overall pureness of the episode because they made it… with the solution to Donna's like exploding head problem was more queerness. Your head won't explode if there's queerness.

Annalee: [00:08:43] Your head won't explode if gender isn't binary, which is like…

Charlie Jane: [00:08:47] Exactly.

Annalee: [00:08:46] Piss off J.K. Rowling. 

Charlie Jane: Which is true in real life. That's true in real life!

Annalee: [00:08:52] It is! It was scientifically accurate.

Charlie Jane: [00:08:53] Many people I know have had their heads not explode because of gender not being binary, like…

Annalee: [00:08:59] Saved many a person from scanners.

Charlie Jane: [00:09:02] There's many heads that I really love and care about that are still intact because of gender being complex and multi-layered. Yasmin Finney, who I already love from Heartstopper, is so great as Donna's daughter Rose.

Annalee: [00:09:18] And she's going to be the new companion, right? 

Charlie Jane: [00:09:21] Well, it's unclear. Okay. I think she's going to turn up again and there are hints that we will see her interact with the next Doctor, Ncuti Gatwa. She's not going to be an official companion, but I think she's going to keep coming back. 

Annalee: [00:09:34] Oh, I thought she was. Okay, dang. I was totally like they're passing the torch to the next generation of companion. 

Charlie Jane: [00:09:42] There's a new companion who's coming along in December called Ruby Sunday, and that's like a different character. But yeah, I mean, it was just, it's a whole new level of queerness. And this is, I feel like the first time—

Annalee: [00:09:53] I love that. Doctor Who: A Whole New Level of Queerness.

Charlie Jane: [00:09:58] Yeah. I mean, you know, you look back to like when Russell T. Davies brought Doctor Who back in 2005 and one of the first things he did was sort of gently ease us into like the idea of like everything being kind of queer. Like with the first episode with Captain Jack Harkness. The Doctor is just like, yeah in the 56th century, everybody's basically pansexual. Or the way he puts it is they're not as picky about who they dance with in the 56th century.

Annalee: [00:10:24] Yeah, and it kind of became canon that the Doctor is kind of bisexual. I mean, he's kind of asexual, or they…

Charlie Jane: [00:10:31] They’re kind of… yes, both and neither. But this is the first time I feel like that they just say on screen, the Doctor is neither male nor female. The Doctor is both and the Doctor transcends gender which is really how it should always have been. 

Annalee: [00:10:48] Yeah.

Charlie Jane: [00:10:49] But now it's official and the Doctor is officially a queer icon now and that feels new and different. That feels like a sea change in how we kind of think of Doctor Who.

Annalee: [00:11:03] I also think that it makes Doctor Who feel radical again in a way that it probably hasn't been in a really long time because…

Charlie Jane: [00:11:10] I mean, it's had its moments. We got a Black female doctor a few years ago. 

Annalee: [00:11:15] Yeah. 

Charlie Jane: [00:11:15] You know, it's had its moments

Annalee: [00:11:16] I guess what I meant was that specifically right now in the UK, there's a lot of anti-trans legislation and sort of culture wars over trans people. And so having—

Charlie Jane: [00:11:29] It’s really horrific.

Annalee: [00:11:29] Having this cultural mainstay, which is like so heavily associated with Britain as a nation, have the hero be like, trans people are awesome. The Doctor is kind of trans, in a way. That's big. That's really big.

Charlie Jane: [00:11:46] And again, balm to my freaking soul. Like I really needed that. The same way that I needed like She-Ra and Steven Universe. This feels like it's just, it's so medicinal. 

Annalee: [00:11:57] So, okay. This is where I want to call on your extreme Doctor Who expertise, because you are a super fan. I feel like you've watched every Doctor Who episode that's possible to watch.

[00:12:10] So, why do you think that this show has managed to last for 60 years?

Charlie Jane: [00:12:17] Yeah, I mean there's a whole bunch of reasons, but really I think what it boils down to is that Doctor Who is like this unique combination of, on the one hand, the Doctor is a timeless archetype, sort of like the Pied Piper or Robin Hood. The Doctor is this figure who is just sort of timeless and transcends whatever mode of history the Doctor finds themself in. 

[00:12:39] But at the same time, the show is just endlessly flexible and has this very open-ended format. Doctor Who has just always reinvented itself and not just like the whole cast and crew change like there's different companions, there's different actors playing the Doctor, there's different people working behind the scenes. But also the format of the show has changed with the times, the touchstones, there's almost nothing about Doctor Who that's completely set in stone.

[00:13:04] Okay, you've got the Doctor, the Doctor has to be part of Doctor Who. 

Annalee: [00:13:07] Sure. 

Charlie Jane: [00:13:07] There's the TARDIS, but actually they've gotten rid of the TARDIS for periods of time. Like in the early ‘70s, the Doctor didn't have the TARDIS. For a while there, the Doctor was just stranded on Earth. Tom Baker's first season, the TARDIS doesn't really show up. You could actually have Doctor Who where there's no TARDIS. There were some of the books, the Doctor loses the TARDIS for like 10 books in a row and has to get the TARDIS back. And it's just like, yeah. Almost nothing about the show is necessary for it to be Doctor Who, except for this person who can drastically change.

[00:13:40] And you know, for my newsletter, I interviewed our friend of the podcast, friend of us, Javier Grillo-Marxuach. And he was saying that Star Trek is very versatile because you just need a starship and a crew and the crew can be whoever, but there's always a starship. There's always Starfleet. There's always uniforms and the Prime Directive and stuff. 

[00:13:59] Doctor Who is even more open-ended. The other thing I think that's important for like something like Doctor Who or Star Trek to survive as long as it has is having a core kind of message or ethos. Like Star Trek always is about humanism and using your mind and trying to understand things instead of just shooting at whatever you don't understand.

[00:14:24] And Doctor Who similarly has this core message of hope and courage and what I would call whimsical kindness, and that never changes no matter how much other stuff changes. 

Annalee: [00:14:34] Yeah, while you were talking about Star Trek versus Doctor Who, I was thinking about how the continuity in Doctor Who is the Doctor, whereas in Star Trek, it's the world. And that's why Star Trek: Discovery was such an interesting revelation, because we got to see that world like in fast forward. Oh, like, let's jump ahead. I think it's 800 years or something that they jump ahead. 

Charlie Jane: [00:14:58] Something like that, yeah. 

Annalee: [00:14:59] Yeah. And it's like, oh, the world has completely unraveled and now we're trying to rebuild that familiar world. Which, was kind of a unique take on the series. And I think that's also in some ways why that series has been so… Like, fans have been so picky about it. Like, oh, it doesn't give us the thing that we want. It's like, because it's much more character-driven.

[00:15:19] But yeah, I would say that the message in Doctor Who that endures is, like you said, that you can use your mind to solve problems. And also, the thing I was thinking about the Doctor, and I'm not sure how you feel about this, but he and he/she/they are kind of sneaky. They're a bit of a rogue.

Charlie Jane: [00:15:47] Yeah.

Annalee: [00:15:47] I mean, I think it's not, controversial to say that the Doctor is a trickster. And it's interesting because so much science fiction, especially in the ‘60s, when the show started was based around these kind of military or semi-military organizations like the Federation, or like Starfleet, I should say.

Charlie Jane: [00:16:10] Yeah, they had UNIT. 

Annalee: [00:16:13] Yeah, they had UNIT, but UNIT was a thing that the Doctor always had a very tangential relationship to. I know there was that phase in the ‘70s where the Doctor was kind of like a real, like, member of UNIT or whatever. 

Charlie Jane: [00:16:24] It's, yeah. It's very weird. Like, it’s complicated. 

Annalee: [00:16:27] But he's always kind of a pirate, you know, he's more of a privateer relationship with UNIT than actually being a kind of, you know, he never obeys authority. And I love that, that he's kind of an anti-authoritarian. 

Charlie Jane: [00:16:45] That is a very core part of the character as well, I think, is like anti-authoritarian, kind of nonconformist. When they brought Doctor Who to America in the late ‘70s, there were articles about it in TV Guide, where they were like, this is a show about nonconformism and that's how it was packaged for American viewers, which was an interesting way to think about it.

[00:17:00] And the Doctor… yeah, the Doctor defeats enemies. The Doctor generally won't destroy the bad guys. Instead the Doctor will trick them into destroying themselves or will give them a chance to like do better. But then will be like, well, I've sabotaged your thing so if you turn on your super weapon, it'll destroy you rather than anybody else.

[00:17:21] But yeah, that core message. My theory that I've been thinking about a lot lately is that anything that lasts decades has to have like a core ethos or a core message that people kind of believe in and that they're invested in as much as they're invested in any character or any idea.

[00:17:38] And with Doctor Who, it is that kind of sense of creativity and optimism and nonconformity. It doesn't have to be a coherent ideology. It could just be a vibe.

[00:17:49] For example, like, Transformers. You look at Transformers and you're like, oh, it’s a cartoon about toys or it's just a toy-based cartoon that then got turned into live-action films.

[00:18:00] But Transformers, I think what people keep finding compelling about it is this thing of our cars and other forms of technology that we associate with have personalities and we can have relationships with them and they can be Autobots or they can be Decepticons. The technology that we deal with all the time can be friendly or it can be unfriendly. And that's the thing that I feel like that's the kind of thing that people respond to emotionally about Transformers. 

Annalee: [00:18:26] Yeah. It’s all about dual use technology and also the fantasy that the relationship that we have with our technology is a relationship that the technology has with us, right? Because I think we all, at different points, have like really developed emotional relationships with a car or a phone or a little robot or any number of other things, right? A KitchenAid… I have a very emotional relationship with my KitchenAid. My mixer, my KitchenAid mixer, I should say. I don't know if people know the brand of my mixer. So, I think that's part of the fantasy, too, is that, no, your car loves you. And if you're in trouble, your car will transform into a hero that saves you. 

Charlie Jane: [00:19:12] Yeah. And it's just, the word that comes to mind is nourishing. There's something nourishing about a fantasy that speaks to something in our lives or something that's aspirational or something that we care about.

[00:19:25] I feel like that's the kind of secret sauce and you could change anything about. a show or a series or a story. But if you lose that, if you lose the core kind of thing that people connect to emotionally, that is just gone. And I feel like we've seen plenty of examples. Like Star Trek at times has turned into just like pew, pew, pew, shoot them up, where it’s just a show about militarism. Actually, the first season of Discovery, to some extent, was that. 

Annalee: [00:19:52] Yeah. 

Charlie Jane: [00:19:52] And it had some great moments in the first season of Discovery about, like, we're studying giant tardigrades and understanding the mycelial network. But then it had moments of just like, we're at war and we're just going to war, war, war, fighting, fighting, fighting. 

Annalee: [00:20:05] Mirror universe, blah, blah, blah.

Charlie Jane: [00:20:07] Yeah.

Annalee: [00:20:06] So it sounds like what you're saying is that, I mean, it kind of flies in the face of a little bit of what we're told as writers, which is that we're often encouraged by editors and other writers to have readers develop an emotional relationship with characters. But you're saying that the characters can be important, but it can also be just a vibe or a fantasy or a setting.

[00:20:32] So that we can actually develop these long-term relationships with settings rather than like, a figure like the Doctor. 

Charlie Jane: [00:20:41] That's kind of what I think. And like, again, the Doctor is a unique case. It's because the Doctor can… Since the beginning, the Doctor has changed. Has had radically different personalities and different… One thing, God, watching Russell T. Davies’s Doctor Who, again, it just reminds me how the Doctor has gone from being this very kind of detached figure who's eccentric but doesn't really express emotions most of the time to just being openly emotional and being like I've been watching Tumblr and like all the fans on Tumblr. The moment in “The Star Beast” that the fans on Tumblr are really obsessing about is the moment where the doctor says to Donna, after Donna has been saved from like having her brain melt, the Doctor says to her, when I thought I had lost you, it killed me. And then he says three more times, it killed me. It killed me. It killed me. And he's just like, this moment extreme vulnerability and extreme emotionality. 

Annalee: [00:21:41] He also says, earlier in the episode, and I think this is maybe a callback to the special where all of the Doctors are kind of working through their feelings, but he says earlier in the episode something about how he loves Donna, or something like that. And he said, oh, I'm saying that. I guess I'm saying things like that, now. And I was like, yeah I guess we are now having some feelings.

Charlie Jane: [00:22:04] Yeah. And again, like even when Russell T. Davies was first making Doctor Who, there was this whole thing of like, is the Doctor going to say that they love Rose. There’s that whole, like, can the Doctor just say, you know, I love you. And in the end the Doctor never quite says it. The Doctor kind of tries to, but it doesn't quite happen. And now the Doctor's like, nope, I love Donna. That's just how it is. 

Annalee: [00:22:27] Yeah. 

Charlie Jane: [00:22:27] I’m like, yeah! That's progress, I feel like. I feel like there's something that's… for something that's not Doctor Who, for something where there's characters. Patrick Stewart can only play Jean Luc Picard for so long, and maybe eventually some other actor will try to play Jean Luc Picard the same way that now Captain Kirk is being played by multiple actors.

Annalee: [00:22:50] And Spock, Spock is also.

Charlie Jane: [00:22:51] Yeah, Spock. There’s been like, multiple Spocks. There's just Spocks everywhere, just like, Spock all over the place. But I think you have to transcend specific characters at a certain point, especially if they're so associated with a particular actor. I don't know if anybody else can play Jean Luc Picard. I'm really curious to see eventually when somebody tries. But, you know, I think that—

Annalee: [00:23:16] Wasn’t, like, Tom Hardy his clone or something? 

Charlie Jane: [00:23:19] Oh, God. Oh, God. No, please don’t. 

Annalee: [00:23:21] Sorry to remind you of that, but.

Charlie Jane: [00:23:24] Oh, no. Yeah, I just… sidebar—

Annalee: [00:23:25] So, Tom Hardy, future Picard. 

Charlie Jane: [00:23:28] Sidebar, I just read an interview with Patrick Stewart, where he said that when they were making that movie, everybody in the Next Generation cast was like, yeah, we're never going to hear from this Tom Hardy guy again. He's just, he's going nowhere. They thought that was the end of Tom Hardy's career.

Annalee: [00:23:42] I mean, that was a terrible role. 

Charlie Jane: [00:23:47] It was not Tom Hardy’s finest hour.

Annalee: [00:23:48] Tom Hardy got really lucky. I don't know what his breakout role was, but it was definitely not that.

Charlie Jane: [00:23:52] It was some British thing. I don't know. But anyway, yeah. I feel like beyond a certain point, yeah, we bond with characters. Characters are what draw us in, but then I think what keeps us coming is this sense of something that’s more emotional, more just a vibe that we really like. 

[00:24:12] And when something becomes like the Marvel cinematic universe or something becomes huge, like a huge universe that people just love that universe. That's usually because there's something about it that transcends any specific character. That's the ultimate kind of victory condition for if you're creating a fictional setting is that people just really love that fictional setting. And there's something about it that's just really aspirational or that we love the vibe of it.

[00:24:37] And I have a rant that I'm just going to do really quickly about like Stretch Armstrong. 

Annalee: [00:24:42] Stretch Armstrong was one of my favorite toys when I was a kid. 

Charlie Jane: [00:24:47] Okay, well, good, because so now you can explain what Stretch Armstrong is, and then I’ll give my little rant. 

Annalee: [00:24:54] All I know is that there was this Stretch Armstrong doll that I bought as a kid, and the whole thing was that it was made of this novel kind of polymer where you could stretch its arms really long and then snap them back. But is Stretch, I guess Stretch Armstrong is more than just a stretchy doll, so tell me more.

Charlie Jane: [00:25:11] No, actually, that's all there is to Stretch Armstrong. 

Annalee: [00:25:13] Really? 

Charlie Jane: [00:25:14] You’ve completely summed up the character. 

Annalee: [00:25:14] Wow. It was really fun, but like—

Charlie Jane: [00:25:17] That's the entire Stretch Armstrong mythos is that his arms stretch.

Annalee: [00:25:20] The thing about the Stretch Armstrong doll was that you get it for Hanukkah and you play with it for that night. And then the next day you're done, because what else can you do? It's like, all you can do is stretch him. I don't know. Anyway, I'm just being a little autobiographical. 

Charlie Jane: So, back in the day, you and I worked on this website where we wrote about science fiction news and I feel like every year like clockwork, I would have to write an article about like, here's the latest attempt to make a Stretch Armstrong movie.

[00:25:48] And for a while, Taylor Lautner from the Twilight movies was going to play Stretch Armstrong in the Stretch Armstrong movie. And like, there were all these different plans to make a stretch Armstrong movie. It's like, this is a toy that nobody under the age of, I'm going to say 30, remembers or cares about.

Annalee: [00:26:05] I would say under the age of maybe 45.

Charlie Jane: [00:26:10] Yeah, like even people our age are just like…

Annalee: [00:26:13] What was that? 

Charlie Jane: [00:26:13] It's a guy whose arms stretch, which is literally he has the same superpower. 

Annalee: [00:26:19] I thought it was based on a wrestler or something, or maybe it’s…

Charlie Jane: [00:26:21] I think it was literally just they had this material that they could use to make stretchy arms and they were like, it's Stretch Armstrong! And that's his whole personality is his arms could get really stretchy. And it's the same personality, it's the same power set as like The Elongated Man, and Plastic Man and Mr. Fantastic. 

Annalee: [00:26:38] Sure. 

Charlie Jane: [00:26:38] It's not even a very unique power set. 

Annalee: [00:26:42] And it was only his arms. 

Charlie Jane: [00:26:43] It was only his arms. He's Stretch Armstrong. He's not Stretch Legstrong. And so—

Annalee: [00:26:48] Or Neckstrong.

Charlie Jane: [00:26:48] I promise this is going somewhere. The point is there's nothing, there's no mythos about Stretch Armstrong. But there's also no emotional hook to Stretch Armstrong. There's not like, I really believe in Stretch Armstrong because it's a story about the human ability to stretch ourselves in response to difficult situations. There's nothing about Stretch Armstrong that kind of needs to be a story. It's just really, play with it for an hour.

Annalee: [00:27:17] He doesn’t have a world or a setting. Like he's not from like Stretch World or he's not part of a team where one person can stretch their neck and another person can stretch their fingers. He’s just a guy. A stretchy guy.

Charlie Jane: [00:27:34] Yeah. And so, I always thought that this kind of encapsulated Hollywood's determination to monetize every single piece of IP. Like if it's an asset on the books, we've got to turn it into like a money-making thing somehow. And nobody stops to think. Do we actually, does anybody care about Stretch Armstrong? 

[00:27:51] But also my point, my larger point is that Stretch Armstrong is the opposite of Doctor Who. Doctor Who has not just a rich mythos and a lot of moments and things that people come back to. And you can bring back a character from like 20 years ago and people are like, ooh, that character, I love that character.

[00:28:08] But Doctor Who has an ethos. There's an idea behind Doctor Who that's really compelling. There's something that when you see Doctor Who you kind of know what kind of story it's going to be even if it can go in lots of different directions and can be a pirate story or a horror story. There’s just something that's very quintessentially Doctor Who and like, I have no idea what a Stretch Armstrong story would be about. There's just, you know, so I feel like that's my example of something that doesn't have this thing that I'm talking about that makes stories have longevity, have legs. Stretch Armstrong does not have legs, is what I’m saying.

Annalee: [00:28:47] Yeah. I mean, it's also fun to contrast Stretch Armstrong with something like Transformers, which is a much more apples to apples comparison.

Charlie Jane: [00:28:53] Also a toy, yeah. 

Annalee: [00:28:54] Yeah, also a toy that was kind of like, okay, it's a toy, but it had, built into that toy, all of these fantasies about a world, right? It wasn't just a stretchy guy. I mean, stretchy guy doesn't imply any kind of world or fantasy other than, already existing Marvel and DC properties, right? 

Charlie Jane: [00:29:16] Sure. We don't want to stretch this metaphor too far, but, you know.

Annalee: [00:29:19] Yeah, we could really get bent out of shape here. But, yeah, I think that's a great contrast. Although to be fair, before we go to break, I will point out that there have been some toys and games and things that have been made into movies, like Battleship or Emoji Movie where you're like, again, question mark, question mark, question mark. But the Emoji Movie was huge and that was literally based on emoji. So I think you have to, you have to be kind of open minded about well, this object to me might feel like it doesn't imply a world but clearly emoji implied a whole world. And, in fact, emoji are literally the embodiment of emotion so maybe I'm kind of talking myself out of that comparison because they—

Charlie Jane: [00:30:03] Yeah.

Annalee: [00:30:03] I mean everything we connect on to like I have feelings about certain emoji. There's some emoji that I use all the time to like represent my frame of mind. None of which are actually in the emoji movie, but that's fine.

Charlie Jane: [00:30:16] This is literally the first time I've ever thought that I might want to watch the Emoji Movie. So, you know, congrats for that.

Annalee: [00:30:20] Yeah, thanks!

Charlie Jane: [00:30:21] Okay. We're gonna take a quick break and when we come back we're gonna talk about the Davros controversy. 

Annalee: [00:30:27] Whoo.

[00:30:29] OOAC session break music, a quick little synth bwoop bwoo.

Charlie Jane: [00:30:34] So as we kind of discussed at the start of the episode, Doctor Who is kind of once again making waves with its queer and feminist themes and pissing off transphobic people, which I'm super happy about. But there's also another controversy about Doctor Who. 

Annalee: [00:30:47] Oh yeah? 

Charlie Jane: [00:30:47] And basically, so, the Daleks, who are the Doctor's main kind of adversary, they're these…

Annalee: [00:30:56] Exterminate! Exterminate!

Charlie Jane: [00:30:57] Yeah. They're these kind of pepper pots, is how they're usually described. They're like little salt shakers that zoom around trying to kill everybody and there's like mutated creatures inside them. And the creator of the Daleks, who was introduced back in like 1975, is a guy named Davros, who is in a wheelchair and also has some facial scarring from like an accident and the bottom half of Davros looks like a Dalek. So it's sort of like, oh, he created this assistive technology for himself. And then that led to him creating the Dalek. So, you can kind of see how they got there back in 1975. 

[00:31:37] But, in a recent, in actually a five minute kind of skit slash mini episode that aired recently, Davros came back and he was still played by the same actor as he'd had been for a long time, Julian Bleach, but now he's not on a wheelchair anymore and he doesn't have the facial scarring anymore.

[00:31:55] And this is how a current Doctor Who showrunner Russell T. Davies explained what had happened. 

Russell T. Davies: [00:32:01] Time and society and culture and taste has moved on and there's a problem with the Davros of old in that he's a wheelchair user who is evil. And I had problems with that and a lot of us on the production team had problems with associating disability with evil. And trust me, there's a very long tradition of this. I'm not blaming people in the past at all, but the world changes, and when the world changes, Doctor Who has to change as well.

Annalee: [00:32:27] Yeah, it's so interesting because also in the episode of Doctor Who that we were just talking about, there is a character who is in a wheelchair, and she's the opposite of Davros. She's super badass. She's played by Ruth Madeley, who is herself disabled. And she's with UNIT and she’s just like, kicking ass and taking names.

Charlie Jane: [00:32:53] She's the scientific advisor. Yeah. Ruth Madeley was incredible in the TV show Years and Years. Russell T. Davies’ dystopian TV show. There’s a whole subplot with her and a sex robot that's like, it's bonkers. And you should just watch it. 

[00:33:08] And we've already had a whole episode about disability in science fiction, which we'll link to in the show notes. So, we're not going to get too deep into the issues here, but this is an example of Doctor Who making a fairly striking change to move with the times.

[00:33:23] And as Russell T. Davies says, you have to keep changing in order to stay relevant. And there’s also another thing that's coming up, actually, in one of the later episodes featuring David Tennant. They're bringing back a character from 1966 called the Toymaker. And in 1966, he was a white guy who wore Chinese robes—

Annalee: [00:33:45] Oh no.

Charlie Jane: [00:33:45] And he was called the Celestial Toymaker, which Celestial is kind of a term for Chinese people.

Annalee: [00:33:49] Yeah, I’m aware.

Charlie Jane: [00:33:49] And he was sort of like a bit of a sinister.

Annalee: [00:33:54] Like a Fu Manchu kind of character?

Charlie Jane: [00:33:58] A little bit. He didn't talk with an accent. They didn't like put makeup on him, but he did kind of seem a sinister kind of Chinese guy. And now he's still a white guy, but he's just wearing European clothes and they’ve kind of gotten rid of the whole looks Chinese thing, aspect of the character. And we’re going to see how that plays out, but it feels like they're trying to kind of take old stuff from the show and just kind of make it a little bit less problematic.

Annalee: [00:34:27] Yeah, and I think that's part of what we were talking about earlier with the ability of this show to stay relevant and to have longevity is that the Doctor is always transforming and the social context around the Doctor also transforms and that makes the show feel like it's relevant and like it's set in the present day and like it's not just rehashing the same old stuff. 

Charlie Jane: [00:34:59] Yeah, and I feel like that is part of Doctor Who always tries to be sort of cutting edge even in the ‘70s it was trying to be bleeding edge and whatever was the new hip thing, Doctor Who would try to do it, but also talk about whatever were the relevant issues at the time. That's always the thing that's happened. 

[00:35:18] And so this sort of thing has come up lately with a lot of things in culture. Like the culture war keeps coming back to this thing of like how we're changing classic stuff. There was a controversy recently where some of Roald Dahl's books were being kind of… like the new editions had slightly different language to get rid of some of the offensive language that Roald Dahl used. 

[00:35:41] A couple of Dr. Seuss books that were, very obscure Dr. Seuss books that nobody really reads anyway, were being kind of phased out. So, they just were not gonna be sold anymore. And I've noticed Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is kind of updating things very gently like Nurse Chapel who was kind of a damp squib back in the ‘60s, she just sat around mooning after Spock. She's suddenly this really awesome character who's got all this cool stuff going on.

[00:36:07] So, Annalee.

Annalee: [00:36:10] Yes. 

Charlie Jane: [00:36:10] When we were talking about this before recording, you mentioned that you felt like there were three different ways of approaching this question depending on the situation and can you expand on that?

Annalee: [00:36:21] Yes. Well, you know, I love to categorize things. And so we were talking about how do shows or stories remain relevant or how do they kind of, in a sense, reboot themselves. So I was saying that I think there's a big difference between a reboot or a reimagining of a show, as you see in Doctor Who or Star Trek, where it's the same universe, but it's completely different characters or a different approach to old characters like we saw with Davros. Or something like Star Wars, where you get things like, you know, The Mandalorian versus Andor, and you get these kind of new modern takes on a story that's really old. So there's that way to do it. There's the way of just modernizing a story. 

[00:37:11] Then there's what you're talking about with Roald Dahl where what you do is you take the same old story and you just do some clever edits on it to take out the antisemitism or to take out the sexism or whatever it is. So it's the same text but expurgated.

[00:37:28] And, then, I think there's a third way that you can do it, which is what happens with some like old Disney films that also have a lot of racist content, a lot of anti-Black racism, especially, where the property owner, whatever company owns the film, releases it with some front matter. Like an explanation saying this film came out in 1932, and it contains racist representation. Usually they don't say racist representations, but they'll say something like, this contains racial imagery that may be offensive to some viewers. So, they contextualize it. So they preserve the original text, but they provide, almost like a museum would provide, context for you to understand this historical document. 

[00:38:13] And so I was, as I was bloviating about this to you, I was saying that I vastly prefer the museum method, kind of providing context because I think it's really important as someone who looks at the history of media, I'd like to see the original and then have, you know, some kind of explanation for why it's like that.

[00:38:33] And then of course, I love the idea of retelling a story again and again. So, I think it's really cool when we see multiple versions of Dracula, for example, or we see multiple versions of King Kong. Actually I kind of feel like King Kong is not… you can't really rescue it. People keep trying to, but I feel like there's just something kind of too racist about that narrative to ever fully be rehabilitated. But people are trying and good for them. 

[00:39:01] And so, I think those are the two ways that I prefer. I think that the editing and expurgating is really dishonest and fucked up. And that's an opinion. I totally get that other people prefer that method, but I think that erases history and it's kind of a form of like, I don't know what you'd call it. It’s like history washing. It’s just expurgating history. It's pretending like these narratives were always modern in their sensibility. 

Charlie Jane: [00:39:32] Yeah, I can see that. And I can understand that you want to preserve like the historical record and have young people who read this stuff now understand the way things used to be. I get that. I'm kind of have two minds about it.

[00:39:45] So, okay. Would you say that King Kong, we should just drop trying to stop trying to make King Kong movies like we should just let King Kong go. 

Annalee: [00:39:54] I think so. And I mean when Peter Jackson kind of reanimated King Kong. He recreated it in a way that I thought was really racist in exactly the same way the original was where there's these kind of fictionalized native people on some island somewhere. They're just like quote unquote “islanders.” I couldn't even tell if they were… I think they're supposed to be like Polynesian or something. And they are the classic, colonial stereotype of quote unquote, “savage primitives”, right? They're not, they are almost themselves monsters. They're certainly fictional. They’re as realistic as King Kong, shall we say? 

[00:40:37] And, of course, King Kong. himself is this racist icon who, you know, kind of embodies white people's fear of Black power. Straight up. There’s no… you watch the original King Kong and it's like it's about a big ape creature stealing a white woman and that’s really hard for me to look at that and not think, wow, this is kind of like Birth of a Nation but with a little bit of monster movie thrown in. And I think a lot of other viewers would agree. 

[00:41:15] And so, I was just like, how do you retell this story in a way that doesn't call on these really racist colonial stereotypes? And I think that you know, the, the newer King Kong movies that like relocate King Kong to this, again, I think it's supposed to be a Polynesian island, the—

Charlie Jane: [00:41:32] Skull Island.

Annalee: [00:41:33] Skull Island, but it's supposed to be kind of like an Asian-ish culture. Anyway, in the new films. And in the new films, not that I've thought about this a lot, sorry. The newer films, portray the islanders as being kind of, I would say, kind of a noble savage stereotype. Like they’re kind of portrayed in this new-age-y way. They're definitely glorified. They’re not portrayed as savage. They're portrayed as kind of enlightened and wise. But they're still not really people. They're still very stereotypical, like none of them ever becomes a character who we get to know who's three dimensional. And again, I know, it's a monster movie, looking for three dimensional characters is like obviously gonna be maybe a failed mission, but like all of the white characters and all of the non-Islander characters have personalities and goals and stuff like that.

[00:42:40] So. I get why people keep wanting to go back to it because it's so iconic, but I actually do think that it's not… I still don't really think it's been successfully rebooted in a way that doesn't feel creepy and doesn't feel like it's still calling on those same stereotypes. So that is my King Kong rant. 

[00:42:58] I totally get that the newer films are not participating in quite the same way in these colonial tropes. But I think it's to me it felt, like, why not just invent a new monster, or a new context for the monster or something. I feel like, just let it go.

Charlie Jane: [00:43:17] Sure. I mean, we already have Rampage, which is like basically has elements of King Kong, but without any of the baggage.

Annalee: [00:43:26] 

Charlie Jane: [00:43:26] I mean, this is kind of what I'm talking about is that, I feel like certain things, it's okay to just let them go. It’s okay to just be like, we don't have to update it, or we can't update it because the core idea of it is kind of messed up. And let’s just let it go, create new stuff. And I feel like that's the flip side of this thing of how do things stand the test of time? How do we update things to make them less problematic? Sometimes you can't and you shouldn't. Sometimes you should just be like, nope, we're just going to move on. We're going to, instead of King Kong, we're just going to have a giant otter who like… I don’t know. Lothar the Otter. I don't know.

Annalee: [00:44:04] Yeah. I mean, like you said with Rampage. Rampage has a giant ape who is portrayed… and it's a silly movie, just like King Kong, but it has a totally different vibe.

Charlie Jane: [00:44:16] It's not a giant ape from the jungle who's like… there’s not all this baggage.

Annalee: [00:44:21] No, it's like a giant ape who's like buddies with Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. And there’s a whole—

Charlie Jane: [00:44:26] Genetically engineered. 

Annalee: [00:44:30] No, well, it’s been transformed by CRISPR, but the ape in Rampage knows some sign language and stuff, so it's like already kind of been kind of domesticated by… I forget what Dwayne Johnson's character's name is in the film, but anyway.

Charlie Jane: [00:44:50] It's just The Rock.

Annalee: [00:44:50] The Rock is, anyway.

Charlie Jane: [00:44:54] He’s always just playing The Rock.

Annalee: [00:44:53] He's friends with this ape and it's actually kind of cool. It humanizes the ape in a way that is really, really different than in King Kong. Also, they brought back King Kong in order to bring King Kong into connection with Godzilla, right?

Charlie Jane: [00:45:16] Mm hmm. 

Annalee: [00:45:16] There's so many Godzilla monsters. Like just pick a different fucking Godzilla monster. I mean, they brought back Ghidorah? Great, you know, bring back Hedorah, the smog monster.

Charlie Jane: [00:45:28] The smog monster!

Annalee: [00:45:29] I love that. Why don't we have the smog monster? Smog monsters totally relevant to today and is a great monster and I just yeah, fucking let it go, people. We don't need it. 

[00:45:43] It's just like you wouldn’t reboot Birth of a Nation as a narrative and be like, well, we figured out how to make this a completely palatable narrative in the modern world. It's like, no, just, no.

Charlie Jane: [00:45:53] I think some things should just be buried. What I always say, and I've said this a billion times, so I apologize if anybody's already heard me say this. But if all we had of James Bond is Ian Fleming's novels, which I read all of as a kid, I like, I actually went on a James Bond kick and read every James Bond book. And those are super. 

Annalee: [00:46:12] You are such a weirdo, Charlie. 

Charlie Jane: [00:46:13] Super racist and super messed up. 

Annalee: [00:46:17] Yeah.

Charlie Jane: [00:46:17] And just like, I think stylistically, nobody would be able to get into them now, anyway. If all we had were the James Bond novels, nobody would be into James Bond, but we have the films and like every 10 years or so they come up with a new James Bond and James Bond has a different kind of flavor and they keep the core thing, but they keep updating it.

[00:46:36] And that’s a good relationship with like James Bond to have. 

[00:46:40] And another example that came to mind R.U.R. was a really important stage play that kind of gave us a lot of the tropes we have around robots and around artificial people and our uprisings. 

Annalee: [00:46:49] Robot uprisings. Yeah. Yeah.

Charlie Jane: [00:46:51] Yeah. But there's no hit Broadway production of R.U.R. There’s a million things that are super popular now that are drawing on R.U.R. that are like taking the ideas of R.U.R. and bringing them forward, but— 

Annalee: [00:47:05] Actually, Westworld is a really good example. 

Charlie Jane: [00:47:07] Yeah. Westworld. But nobody. Like, there’s been one or two productions of R.U.R., but this hasn't been like a giant hit version of R.U.R. There's no R.U.R. movie. 

Annalee: [00:47:17] There actually should be, though. I actually… well, anyway, I think R.U.R. kind of stands the test of time. I mean, it's, I mean, I’m not saying like it should be a movie, but I would welcome it. That would be amazing. Like, if somebody actually wanted to go back and… 

[00:47:36] But again they would need to update it, they would need to modernize it in some ways. But in some ways it's still pretty relevant it's very much about how capitalism is turning us into little robots, and like…

Charlie Jane: [00:47:48] Doesn’t it have like the well-meaning ladies who mess everything up because they just don't understand?

Annalee: [00:47:53] There’s a female research scientist who is trying to make the… The robots, of course, are not technology. They're more like—

Charlie Jane: [00:48:03] They're biological.

Charlie Jane: [00:48:03] Yeah, they're more like replicants from Blade Runner. They're like synthetic. Or, like Murderbot. They're kind of like Murderbot. She implants them with feelings and that's why they revolt. So yeah, I mean, it's kind of like…

Charlie Jane: [00:48:17] Those ladies, giving people feelings.

Annalee: [00:48:19] But here’s the thing. It depends on whose side you're on, right? Because kind of the point of the play is like, maybe the robots have a point, you know? Like, it's not a super anti-robot play. So, it's kind of like, in a weird way, the play is on the side of this scientist, this woman scientist, who's kind of the smartest scientist that they have. And so, yeah. It’s kind of… I could see it being rebooted in a way that was like pretty awesome. But it is true also that that Westworld actually kind of deals with a lot of the same issues. It's just, you know.

Charlie Jane: [00:48:59] Yeah, I mean [crosstalk].

Annalee: [00:49:02] Westworld is a reboot of a previous movie from the early ‘70s. 

Charlie Jane: [00:49:07] We could have the theme tune “R.U.R. or R. U. ain't my robot.” Anyway. yeah, I mean, so my final thought, I want to bring it back to this idea that we talked about earlier in the episode of there's a core thing that you connect to that's as much about the ethos or the vibe or the kind of ideology as of any particular character or any particular like piece of scenery or whatever. Doctor Who, it's like nonconformity and hope and intellect and all that stuff. And I feel like part of the project of getting rid of offensive stuff, getting rid of the stereotypes and the misogyny and racism and homophobia that's like embedded in a lot of these older pop culture things, you clear away the crud.

[00:49:57] You kind of clear away all the just junk that's like stuck to the outside and then you can get to that core thing that's what we love about it more easily because we don't have all this clutter in the way. And that's kind of part of why I think it's so important to do that, to keep updating stuff so that it's not just fucked up and like loyal to some older version.

Annalee: [00:50:16] Yeah, I think that's right. And I feel like people become attached to the crud as opposed to the heart of the story. 

Charlie Jane: [00:50:26] They do.

Annalee: [00:50:26] And they start confusing pieces of the story that are actually not essential with what is essential to the tale. And I think that happened a lot with Star Wars. And that's one of the reason why Star Wars fans have gotten so angry about, you know, wokeness in the newer versions. Is because they got attached to things that aren't what Star Wars is about. Star Wars is about rebelling against fascists. Like, that's why we love that is because it's anti-authoritarian. It's anti-fascist. It's about the little guy rising up and using magic to like save the day and 

Charlie Jane: [00:51:01] Yeah, and spirituality and how spirituality can help you fight fascism.

Annalee: [00:51:07] Mm hmm. Yeah.

Charlie Jane: [00:51:08] Which is a great message. 

Annalee: [00:51:09] It is a great message. And we don't need like the same old white dude to have that message.

Charlie Jane: [00:51:15] No.

Annalee: [00:51:15] A lot of different characters can be part of that message. And of course luckily we are getting lots of different characters who are giving us that message, but at the same time, there's all this pushback and reluctance to embrace the actual message of the show.

Charlie Jane: [00:51:32] Yeah. And I love the way you put it, that people get attached to the crud rather than to the core. And I think that's a thing with fandom, that sometimes people just have to take a step back. 

[00:51:44] Okay, thank you so much for listening. If you just randomly stumbled on us, this is Our Opinions Are Correct. You can find us wherever you find your podcasts. If you like us, please leave a review because it helps a lot. You can find us on Mastodon, Patreon, Instagram, and some other places, but mostly those three places, and also on Bluesky.

[00:52:05] Thank you so much to our intrepid and brilliant audio producer, Veronica Simonetti. 

Annalee: [00:52:11] Thanks, Veronica! 

Charlie Jane: [00:52:11] Thanks Veronica, we love you! Thanks to Chris Palmer and Katia Lopez Nichols for the amazing music. And thanks again to all of you who support this show. We'll be back in two weeks with another episode or next week we'll have a mini episode if you're a Patreon supporter. And if you're a Patreon supporter, we'll be seeing you in Discord.

Together: [00:52:11] Bye!

[00:52:11] [OOAC theme plays. Science fictiony synth noises over an energetic, jazzy drum line.]