planet of the ood

November 18, 2013

12

Jack Graham50th anniversary countdown, capitalism, commodification, consumerism, dialectical materialism, historical materialism, marketing, oppression, planet of the ood, pre-class societies, revolution, slavery0

There’s so much I love about ‘Planet of the Ood’. Picking a moment will be hard.

I love some of the things other people hate.

Unlike Lawrence Miles, I love that Donna ticks the Doctor off for his “Who do you think made your clothes?” crack. Why the hell should Donna put up with smuggery like that from a guy wearing Converse trainers? Who makes your clothes, Doctor? (Apart from anything else, one answer is probably ‘women’.) Okay, he apologises for making her feel uncomfortable, which is problematic… but it isn’t as if the episode lets the matter rest there.

Unlike many people, I love that the Ood thank DoctorDonna for, essentially, doing nothing. I love that they free themselves without any help from the Doctor. I like him better as an ally than as a messiah. The Ood don’t suffer the fate of the N’avi: they don’t get Whitey leading them to freedom. The DoctorDonna doesn’t interfere. DoctorDonna renounces any claim they might think they have to judge the oppressed, to moralise when the oppressed free themselves by any means necessary.

I love that the episode is nevertheless unambiguous about the right of the oppressed to use violence against their oppressors. There are no patronising sermons which hold the oppressed to a higher moral standard of forgiveness and forebearance. Violence is horrible, but the violence of the oppressed in revolt is fundamentally morally different to the violence – individual and structural – of the oppressors.

I love that the Solana doesn’t have a change of heart.

I love the vacuous marketing slime in the PR lounge, tittering at the accessories they can add to their living merchandise. Just as lobotomised, in their way, as their commodity.

I love that Halpen flatters himself by being kind to his personal Ood servant while contemplating genocide against the entire race.

It’s not perfect.

I have a problem with the racial politics. By making so many of the human oppressors into people of colour, the episode effaces the particularity of race as an axis of oppression. It seems to say that capitalism is colour blind and all it cares about is the colour of money. This is true to an extent, and I believe that economic factors are ultimately causal, but race is a specific category of oppression within capitalism, and slavery of all things is a colour issue.

And it is, basically, another orientalist fantasy for assuaging white guilt (though considerably better than most).

But it’s time to pick a moment… so here goes:

The Doctor and Donna, handcuffed, are being harangued by Mr Halpen.

“The Ood were nothing without us,” he blusters, “just animals roaming around on the ice!”

Yes, yes, that’s what they always say. The [insert name of ethnic group being enslaved here] were just slightly-more sophisticated ruminants until the civilised people came along to put them and their land to good use. That’s the essence of the liberal justification for Western colonialism going back to forever. We’re doing them a favour. …

July 12, 2011

The Commodity Strikes Back

Jack Grahamcapitalism, commodity fetishism, planet of the ood, revolution, school reunion, series 42

Thoughts on ‘Planet of the Ood’

A very beautiful episode to look at. A stark pallet of whites and blues and greys, the exterior scenes harshly bathed in cold light… counterpointed by the dark warehouses and the red haze of the Ood rage.

Series 4 continues its apparent intent of readdressing moral lapses on the part of the Doctor/show. The inexcusable laxity of the treatment of slavery in ‘The Satan Pit’ (and the invisibility of the issue in the preceding episode) gets repudiated here. Big time.

Some would rather have had a story about a race that actually did crave servitude… but J. K. Rowling has already given the nation that sort of thing with her innately and happily subservient House Elves. And I don’t believe a sentient life form could evolve that wanted to be a commodity. Indeed, to even suggest such a thing may be to fundamentally misunderstand what consciousness is.

This may be a straightforward polemical tale, but there’s nothing wrong with that. This is about ruthless, corporate capitalism exploiting people that it sees as nothing but a resource to be used. Sentient beings cut and sliced and spliced into shape as customisable toys and then packaged, branded, priced-up and shipped out in boxes. People in pacakaging. The gimmicks with their voices say it all: it’s like changeable novelty mobile-phone covers only with people.

This is a parable about commodification. About people turned into products and merchandise. About how relationships between living people become like relationships between things through the logic of the market. Halpen is, in his way, as much a victim of the commodification syndrome as the Ood. We see glimmers of decency in him, not least when he sends Ood Sigma back to his people. But he’s trapped within the logic of the impersonal system. Like the PR girl who – oh joy, oh bliss – does NOT have a yawnsome “crisis of conscience” but does her job, stays within the psychological confines of the system and stays true to her corporate loyalties. The PR/marketing slime in the hospitality lounge are as lobotomised as the Ood. Sharp suits and empty heads and crippled consciences.

Mr Halpen’s ultimate comeuppance is to become the thing he owned and traded in. That amazing gore moment that also, through the context, manages to be poetic, beautiful and moving. And satisfying. It’s a fantasy, but a pleasing one. Let’s put together a chain-gang starring Warren Buffet, Phil Nike, Rupert Murdoch, etc. See how those bastards like being at the bottom of the pile. Maybe sometimes, empathy must be imposed.

The episode does not flinch from showing the brutality or the necessity or the moral justifiability of violent revolt. No patronising sermons to the oppressed about non-violence.

The Doctor’s remark to Donna – “who do you think made your clothes?” – was quite startling at the time. Under most circumstances, such little eruptions in mainstream drama can be accounted for as mere twinges of liberal guilt… but in a story like this one, which explicitly endorses violent revolution… well, it seems to have a bit more integrity than that.…

January 30, 2011

Empires Toppling

Jack Grahamhappiness patrol, planet of the ood, revolution, sun makers, war games1

There is a long and venerable tradition in Doctor Who of portraying revolutions sympathetically. It does this many times. It isn’t an unbroken run of support… but for every ‘Reign of Terror’, in which the French Revolution is given the full Baroness Orczy treatment, there is a ‘Sun Makers’, in which a full-scale workers’ revolt topples a corporate tyranny. For every ‘Monster of Peladon’, where reform is touted as a solution to chaos created by extremists on both sides (right-wingers in government and looney-left wingers amongst the miners), there is a ‘Happiness Patrol’ in which the Doctor and Ace encourage a united rebellion by factory workers, aboriginal aliens and dissidents. Fantastical, they may be… but these depictions are also surprisingly candid about the amount of mess, pain and trauma involved in popular uprisings, while retaining a forthright sympathy.

As far as I know, this track record is unique amongst television programmes.

In light of interesting and inspiring things going on in the world at the moment, I thought it might be fun to post some of my favourite televised revolutions….

The Ood kick some sorry corporate ass.

Street protests, in which dissidents defy the security forces and trap them in the knots of their own ideology, kicking off a process that will lead to the fall of a brutal, repressive government and the attempted flight of a dictator.

The Doctor confronts a neoliberal hobgoblin and, with the vital help of the “work units”… sorry, I mean “the people”, he foils a plan to put down a rebellion. He confuses his pin-striped capitalist foe into submission by means of a growth tax leading to “negative surplus” (i.e. no profit).

Sadly, the radical message of ‘The War Games’ sputters a little when the Doctor calls upon the Time Lords for help… but still, here we see “the Resistance” (a unified force of soldiers of all nationalities) storming the baddie’s control centre and putting an end to their cynical, fake wars.

Solidarity!…