From the mind of a black woman

I am really becoming a fan of the Doctor Who series that Glenn and I have been watching. Tonight's episode was of particular interest to me because one of the main characters, who had a pivotal role in the final scene, was a journalist.

In tonight's episode (Episode 7, Series 1, "The Long Game") the Time Lord and his sidekick Rose Tyler land 200,000 years into earth's future, specifically on a space station known as "Satellite 5". The Doctor is telling Rose's "boyfriend" (acquired in the previous episode and who doesn't last beyond this episode, by the way) how to find information about places you land through their time travels. He informed them you just have to open your mind and ask questions. He said, "You can't just read the guide book. You've got to throw yourself in, eat the food, use the wrong verbs, get charged double and end up kissing complete strangers..."

They're going along and eventually get themselves caught in the middle of the action as usual. The Doctor is becoming increasingly skeptical and asking a bunch of questions, not necessarily to the people they're with. Something about a group of humans in the year 200,000 who by all appearances look as if they've never made it past the 21st century, is not right and the Doctor and Rose are bound and determined to get to the bottom of this anomaly.

Their guide meanwhile, a black woman named Cathica, is growing increasingly anxious by the Doctor's poking and prodding. She follows them, but it's clear she is torn between obedience to her employer and her own growing curiosity as the Doctor debunks more and more of what she's always accepted as her moral code. At one point the Doctor admonishes her for not using her brain to ask questions. He puts her down for just accepting the status quo and not using her powers as a journalist to get to the bottom of some of the things she may have questioned in the past but has over time just grown to accept.

Eventually the Doctor and Rose make their way to "Floor 500" which, to the inhabitants (read: slaves) below is known as being a room with "walls made of gold". Getting to Floor 500 is only done by means of "promotion" (read: execution), and everybody below knows that once you make it to Floor 500 you never come back. The Doctor was particularly troubled by that bit of news.

Once there it doesn't take long for the Doctor and Rose to get shackled, facing imminent death. It doesn't look good for them at all; me as the viewer, even though I knew very well they would get out of it and live to make episodes for another 4 or 5 seasons, I still had to ask: how will they get out of this one? I had no idea. That's part of the brilliance of this series that I'm growing to love so much, even though I know the main characters are going to get out of whatever pickle they get into, the means by which they escape is never obvious.

Well at one point the Doctor notices Cathica found her way up to Floor 500 on her own. His captor, the "Editor", hasn't noticed her yet. The Doctor uses this bit of knowledge to his advantage to further spur Cathica to action to free them...

Earlier in this episode we are shown how she gathers information to disseminate into "news" - she has a mechanism implanted into her forehead that, with the "click" of her fingers (we say "snap" here stateside) opens a gateway to her actual brain. She is laying in a dentist's office-type chair and at her verbal command, "Spike!", a machine mounted to the ceiling above her sends a laser beam of streaming information directly into her brain through the gate that opened up on her forehead. Other journalists surround her in a circle sitting cross-legged on the floor, and with their hands placed on metallic moldings in front of them which are connected to the machine in the ceiling, they all send information to her brain simultaneously. It's quite a sight to see, quite an idea to comprehend.

Back to Floor 500 - in the room adjacent to where the Doctor and Rose are being held is a room with a chair much like the one we saw Cathica using earlier. But instead of live journalists the seats are filled with decaying bodies, unfortunate souls "promoted" to Floor 500. Inspired to action by the Doctor's words, Cathica flings the corpse off the chair where she would normally sit, sits herself down and gets to work.

There is another bit of trouble going on, which is what got the Doctor and Rose shackled in the first place. Adam, Rose's "boyfriend", wandered off and got himself implanted with the same gateway that Cathica has in her forehead. As the episode progresses he makes his way back to the room where they first saw Cathica do her thing and, moved by a greedy desire to have as much information as he can, and also probably to be the first to launch it back home on 21st-century Earth, he engages the ceiling-mounted machine on himself, and before anyone knows it he is both learning everything about 200,000 year-old Earth and putting his own knowledge into the system. That is what spells disaster for the Doctor and Rose, because that is what enables the Editor and his boss (a giant, gelatinous mass with shark-teeth that hovers from the ceiling above in Floor 500 and speaks in growling utterances) to learn who the Doctor and Rose are. Stupid, greedy Adam; suffice to say he is ejected from the Doctor's and Rose's good graces by the episode's end.

Cathica found the courage to act upon what the Doctor prodded her to do, which was the "right thing". She subverted the flow of information coming from Adam's brain and also began subverting the flow of hot air coming from the top down (that's what was keeping the Editor's boss "Max" cool and therefore alive) ...

The visual significance of this final scene was quite profound for me: I don't know if Doctor Who's producers/writers had any specific intention with using a black woman for that particular role or not (I, of course, would like to think they did), but what it boiled down to for me was this: the black woman opening her mind is essentially what saved not only the time travellers, the Doctor and Rose, but also all of Satellite 5, and by even further extension humanity itself in the year 200,000. Because the toothy, gelatinous mass that the Editor affectionately referred to as Max was apparently in control of all of humanity - not just that which was enslaved on Satellite 5, but all of "The Fourth Great and Bountiful Human Empire ... Planet Earth ... at its height, covered with megacities, five moons, population 96 billion, the centre of a galactic domain that stretches across a million planets and species." (from Episode 7, Series 1, "The Long Game").

And I thought that was cool. It was also so very well done! I am impressed and encouraged by what this show has to offer. The episodes keep getting better and better. I still have to write about Episode 6 which we watched earlier today, which showed the machine-with-personality character ... a Dalek. That deserves a journal entry too; hopefully I'll be able to get to it before my weekend is over.

And yet not a word comes out...

I finally have some time to write. My pre-show chores are done, the thirty-second weather hit is done, I tended to some personnel matters (although I still feel I could have done better), my show is even completely marked, except for the first block of the second half hour. Finally, I can sit here quietly with my thoughts and write ...

... so why does nothing come out? It's the same phenomenon that governs shopping: when you have money nothing appeals to you. You only see things you like when you can't afford to buy them. The perfect dress, the perfect pair of shoes, on sale usually, but still just out of reach. It sucks.

Oh, here's something to talk about: Glenn and I started watching the BBC version of Doctor Who. It is awesome, which was a pleasant surprise. It is also a vast improvement over Sliders which we've been watching through 3 seasons. But this Doctor Who series is really pretty great. Both of us can't wait til the next opportunity to watch the next episode! We watch it on the Xbox 360 via our Netflix subscription. A truly great pairing if ever there was one. It's particularly interesting for me to watch this series, as it is a BBC production; I haven't really sat down to watch any British television since I lived at home with my parents, so in a strange way this has proven to be a bit nostalgiac at times.

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HA! I finally figured out Blogger's code for a horizontal line, which is different than LiveJournal's coding. Hooray, O Happy Day!

Anyway, so I've been talking a lot with some people at work (by no means everyone) about the state of things at work. In a word, it's horrible. Morale is about as low as it gets in a workplace; everybody is backstabbing everybody else, the bosses are always stressed out ... we are all extremely grateful to have our jobs, but yet I can't help wondering if I'd happier flipping burgers? The way people talk about each other when they're not in the room (and I myself am guilty of this) is downright insidious! It's just not enjoyable to come to work.

And the illness that's going around ... there's no sympathy for anyone, because we're so short-handed that if someone gets sick and calls out, SOMEbody is going to be resentful at being called in. Or, as in last night's case, somebody takes on more show responsibilities like with me punching/calling and doing chyron.

Did I mention there's no sympathy for anyone? I might get myself in trouble here, but I'm going to go ahead and say it: right now as I type there is a small group of 3 people who are pretty upset that one member of our crew is getting to go home after only doing 1 show, and what upsets them is that the person going home has a history of calling out (ALWAYS with a doctor note, without fail) and/or showing up late (usually calls). They are sitting there talking and talking and talking, and the only thing coming out of their mouths is how unfair it is that this other person - whom they don't think very much of - gets to go home early. They are judge and jury here, they are smug in their opinion, they even went so far as to throw it in my face that they want to talk my colleague about it - not me. That's probably because I'm friends with the person they are lambasting ...

... and oh by the way, I'd like to see the list of ALL the times they had to work BOTH shows, and line it up next to the person they've spent so much time about. Then I'd like to see how many crew positions they're trained to solo a show on.

More later, if I have time, because I have more to say, MUCH more.