Eruditorum Press

Temporarily embarrassed proletarians

power of kroll

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Having devoured Harg, giant green squid monster Kroll is off to the settlement of the People of the Lakes, known to Harg’s compatriots by the derogatory name of ‘Swampies’. 

Constructed from tropes and white liberal guilt, these green space Indians are still better than the blue ones in Avatar.  They don’t get their world back in the end (neither did the Cherokee) and don’t get a white man as a leader.

“The Swampies most certainly do have some problems,” chuckles Thawn – Company man, racist and boss of the Refinery.

“You know,” muses his second-in-command Fenner, a cynical and cowardly man, “I don’t particularly like the Swampies… but I can’t say that I really hate them.”  He is just decent enough to be faintly disturbed by Thawn’s open callousness.

Suddenly serious, Thawn says “Oh, I don’t hate them Fenner.  I just want them permanently removed.  I spent many years persuading the Company to back this project, and now that we’re on the verge of success I’m not going to be stopped by lily-livered sentimentalists wailing about the fate of a few primitive savages.”

Thawn is lying, of course.  He hates them.  He thinks they’re inferior, worthless… but he never mentions the fact that they’re skin is a different colour to his.  In many ways, this story downplays race too much as an axis of oppression… and then, on the subject of axes of oppression being downplayed, there’s the fact that there seem to be no women on the planet at all apart from Romana. 

To Thawn, the worst thing about the Swampies is that they’re in his way.  They’re bad for business.  They sit on resources that Thawn claims, but which happen – irritatingly – to be buried in someone else’s land.  So, for the sake of Progress, you have to get rid of the ‘savages’.

Thawn and Fenner hold these truths to be self-evident.…

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Great Disguiser

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It’s been bad lately.  Loads of great actors have passed away.  Freddy Treves, Peter Halliday, Dennis Chinnery.  In non-Who-actor news, Nicol Williamson.

And now… Philip Madoc.

This is genuinely hard for me to take in.

Philip Madoc was a great actor.  An actor who could bend his whole shape into the character he was playing.  An actor who could move like an entirely different person from role to role… and watch the way he moves.  Solon moves in an entirely different manner to Fenner, who moves in an entirely different manner to the War Lord.  And he was a great vocal actor, able to give every character his own vocal rhythm and tone.

His performance as Solon in ‘The Brain of Morbius’ is burned into my memories of childhood.  I imagine that’s true of many of us Who fans who grew up in the VHS years.

And there’s the slimey, posh, ruthless spiv Brockley in the film version of Dalek Invasion.

Later, of course, (later for me, I mean) there was the War Lord.  A totally different entity to Solon.

Solon is flamboyant, jittery, vain, pompous, self-consciously machiavellian (to his own immature delight) and deeply inadequate as a person.  Madoc’s performance always dances just on the knife edge of comedy without ever quite tipping over.  Solon is the quintessential jumped-up and zealous servant.

The War Lord, by contrast, is cold, introverted, calculating, quick, almost feline.  The mask of control occasionally slips, showing glimpses of the sociopath beneath.  The quintessential tyrant.  And yet, he is human.  Look at the way he shows quiet outrage over the murder of his incompetent compatriot, the Security Chief.  Look at the little moment, after the Time Lords have tortured him into compliance with their court, when he regains his dignity by straightening his tunic before he turns back to face them.

And then there’s the weary, doubtful, morally-queasy yet cowardly Fenner.  Madoc’s performance radiates lip-chewing ambivalence and tired timidity masked by the persona of the cynical old pro.  I, personally, am glad he didn’t get the role of Thawn.  His Fenner is more interesting.  He gets to spar with Tom Baker over the word “progress”.  He gets to look embarrassed when he’s left at the mercy of the natives that, quite understandably, hate him.

These are, undoubtedly, among the finest guest performances in Doctor Who.  Including Fenner.  (We’ll just gloss over Eelek in ‘The Krotons’.  It’s fine.  He does what needs to be done with what he’s got.  The essence of professionalism.)

But he’s also burned into my memories in another way.

In the early 90s he toured with the RSC in Trevor Nunn’s legendary production of Measure for Measure, alternating with a stage production of The Blue Angel, based on the 1930 von Sternberg movie which starred Marlene Dietrich.  Madoc played the Duke in the Shakespeare and Professor Raat in The Blue Angel.

I won’t go into the details of the productions.  The point here is that the Measure for Measure was the first live Shakespeare I ever saw.…

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Going Native

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Avatar is progressive in many ways.  It represents racism towards native people as stemming from imperialism.  It notices that imperialism is about capital accumulation, indicting a corporation along the way.  It shows an ‘economy’ in which spines can be repaired, but only if you have the dosh.  It metaphorically revisits the violent imperialist foundations of America – and any such settler colonial state – in a forthrightly disapproving way.  It supports the right of native people to violently resist conquest, even when Americans are doing the conquering.

Fair enough.

However, it is also deeply patronising towards native people.  To quote David Brooks’ article in the New York Times:

It rests on the stereotype that white people are rationalist and technocratic while colonial victims are spiritual and athletic. It rests on the assumption that nonwhites need the White Messiah to lead their crusades. It rests on the assumption that illiteracy is the path to grace. It also creates a sort of two-edged cultural imperialism. Natives can either have their history shaped by cruel imperialists or benevolent ones, but either way, they are going to be supporting actors in our journey to self-admiration.

And, even better, here‘s Annalee Newitz at io9.com, on the subject of Avatar and movies like it:

These are movies about white guilt. Our main white characters realize that they are complicit in a system which is destroying aliens, AKA people of color – their cultures, their habitats, and their populations. The whites realize this when they begin to assimilate into the “alien” cultures and see things from a new perspective. To purge their overwhelming sense of guilt, they switch sides, become “race traitors,” and fight against their old comrades. But then they go beyond assimilation and become leaders of the people they once oppressed. This is the essence of the white guilt fantasy, laid bare. It’s not just a wish to be absolved of the crimes whites have committed against people of color; it’s not just a wish to join the side of moral justice in battle. It’s a wish to lead people of color from the inside rather than from the (oppressive, white) outside.

Think of it this way. Avatar is a fantasy about ceasing to be white, giving up the old human meatsack to join the blue people, but never losing white privilege.

All true, if old news.

My interest here is in the fact that ‘The Power of Kroll’, a Doctor Who serial from 1978-9 that could only have dreamt of having a hundredth of the budget of Avatar (and that not even many Doctor Who fans like) did much, much better.

It covers much of the same ground as Avatar politically.  It represents racism towards native people as stemming from imperialism.  It notices that imperialism is about capital accumulation, indicting a corporation along the way.  It metaphorically revisits the violent imperialist foundations of America – and any such settler colonial state – in a forthrightly disapproving way.  It supports the right of native people to violently resist conquest, even when Brits are doing the conquering.…

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Economic Miracles

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This is my Timelash II stuff on the subject of Graham Williams’ tenure as producer… it’s a bit thin because I’ve either posted about several stories from this era elsewhere or because I’m planning to.  Also, to be honest, some of the stories simply don’t yield much grist for my mill.  That isn’t to knock the Williams era, which contains some of the most politically interesting Who stories ever made (which is partly why they needed – or need – posts all to themselves).  Notice, for instance, how the stories glanced at below seem obsessed with fuel, economics and questions of prosperity vs. austerity… s’what comes of making Doctor Who in the context of the late 70s I guess…

I’ve written about ‘Horror of Fang Rock’ here and ‘Image of the Fendahl’ here.

‘The Sun Makers’

This is from elsewhere on this blog, but it’s part of a wider article.  I thought it could tolerate repeating… especially since ‘Sun Makers’ is a favourite of mine, for reasons which should be obvious.  I don’t think, by the way, that this story has ever been more relevant than it is now.

Some idiot once wrote that, in this story, the rebels are worse than the baddies. I dunno what story he was watching, but it ain’t the one I know as ‘The Sun Makers’. The Others might be a motley and even unsavoury lot but they’re hardly as bad as the planet-enslaving Collector and his pet Gatherer. Mandrel makes nasty threats that he doesn’t try very hard to make good on. The Doctor, ever a keen judge of character, doesn’t seen worried by Mandrel even when he’s waving a red hot poker in his face. Leela has some choice words for them that are very pertinent. She calls them cowards and that, essentially, is the trouble with them. Mind you, you can’t blame them for running away from life in Megropolis 1.

Some other idiots have occasionally argued that ‘The Sun Makers’ is a right-wing allegory because it depicts a tyrannical state and rails against taxes. Well, that’s fine if you’re dumb enough to buy the bullshit lie that conservative politics really is all about defending personal liberty from big government and punitive taxation. In fact, ‘The Sun Makers’ couldn’t be clearer about its political sympathies (even if you stick your fingers in your ears during the playful misquoting of Marx). The tyrannical state in this story is the Company. They are effectively one, or the Company exercises such control that they might as well be. This isn’t a big state stifling the liberty of free enterprise and free consumers. This is a big state as a vehicle for corporate domination. The Company is a private concern, engaged in “commercial imperialism”. The Company has, essentially, carried out a hostile takeover of the government. This is one big state that’s been privatised.

The icons of modern conservatism (i.e. Reagan, Thatcher, Bush, Bush II) are usually, for all their populist anti-government rhetoric, ultra-statists. They might reduce bureaucracy here and there (usually by cutting public services, etc.)

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