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Subj: Doctor Who: A black Doctor? A long overdue move, as long as it's done right Posted: Thu Nov 13, 2008 at 04:42:30 pm EST (Viewed 645 times) | |||
Say hello to Paterson Joseph:  Aside from David Morrissey, who's appearing this Christmas in the title role of "The Next Doctor," Mr. Joseph is the current odds-making favorite to be cast as the Eleventh Doctor in 2010. NuWho viewers might remember his brief role in the Season 1 finale as Rodrick, but aside from assorted snippets of his other work, non-UK Whovians like myself have probably not seen a lot of the rest of his work, not that it would make much difference in being able to accurately anticipate what sort of Doctor he'd make. After all, before he became the Ninth Doctor, the only two roles I really remembered Christopher Eccleston in were the ones he played in Shallow Grave and 28 Days Later, and while both were well-acted, nothing about them made me think that he would have fit as any incarnation of the Doctor. I'd imagine that those who knew of David Tennant only from his roles on Blackpool or Casanova might have said the same, and yet, both Tennant and Eccleston have been great Doctors, so in many ways, it's probably simply not possible to predict what type of Doctor any actor would be. From the little I've seen of him, Joseph seems to me like a capable actor, who would be able to spout extended strings of techno-babble with credible authority, and while it's hardly a scientific assessment, he strikes me as having a performance style that might lend itself better to a harder-edged Doctor, closer to Eccleston's anxious seething than Tennant's contemplative brooding, but really, if he is cast as Eleven, a lot of it is just going to come down to how his incarnation of the Doctor is written. Which brings us to the elephant in the room. As an old-school Whovian, I remember well when certain traditionalists balked at the idea of a black Doctor almost by reflex, and while I'm glad to see that such reactions are almost nonexistent within fandom now, the casting of a black actor in the role of the Doctor does bring with it at least a bit of baggage, so let's not patronize one another by pretending that it doesn't. Is there, then, any real reason why there shouldn't be a black Doctor? If we're talking about the present or the future, then the answer is an emphatic "no." No, there's no real reason at all, and the funny thing is, a lot of the credit for this can be laid at the feet of Russell T. Davies, whose significantly problematic portrayals of race have deservedly come under quite a bit of critical scrutiny from fandom, because while we might object to the insensitivities he's shown in his handling of characters such as Mickey Smith and Martha Jones, the fact remains that he's rendered the Whoniverse a much more genuinely multicultural - and, in some ways, arguably even post-racial - universe. One of the positive legacies of Davies' era as show-runner is that "white" is no longer nearly as much the presumed "default setting" for characters in the Whoniverse, whether major or minor, and perhaps more importantly, interpersonal relationships no longer come as "color-coded" as they did decades ago, since friendships, families and romances have frequently been shown to cross racial and ethnic dividing lines with almost casual ease. While Davies has certainly made some serious stumbles in his execution, his intent has clearly always been to show that, for the residents of both the modern day and all the years ahead in the Whoniverse, the color of one's skin is simply Not That Big Of A Deal anymore, and while we can debate how far we've actually come in achieving this admirable goal in the real world, within the context of the show's reality, it means that the average denizen of the NuWhoniverse's present or future wouldn't react to the Doctor any differently if he was black or white. So, as long as he's traveling through time and space within the present or the future, a black Doctor is unlikely to require any extra considerations, in terms of how he's written, when compared to any of the 10 white guys who have preceded him in the role. Once he starts traveling to the past, though ... yeah, that's when you're gonna start hitting some speed bumps, and while this shouldn't discourage the show from casting Joseph, or any other qualified black actor, as the Doctor, it does mean that the writers are going to have to give some extra thought to how the skin color of the alien stranger is going to cause other characters to react to him. Pretty much anyone who's ever opened a history book should know that there are a lot of times and places in human history in which being black would make a person Not Welcome, and as we saw in the three Season 3 stories in which Martha traveled back (as opposed to forward) in time, the overwhelming temptation on the part of many writers is to respond to this reality in one of two ways - either find a way to hand-wave it away, or else really hammer it home. In "The Shakespeare Code," the hand-wave might not have been entirely historically accurate (I'm no expert on the Elizabethan era, so I couldn't say for sure), but it was done deftly and breezily enough that I was willing to buy off on it, especially since the Doctor and Martha's manners and appearances were so obviously out of sync with the era anyway that Martha's race almost seemed like the least of the things that made her stand out. In "Daleks in Manhattan" and "Evolution of the Daleks," the hand-wave felt much more telegraphed and stilted, not only because the story was trying to acknowledge the harsh inequities of the Depression era while simultaneously insisting that there wouldn't be any racial tensions within the Hooverville community, but also because it made the egregious error of trotting out a Magical Negro in the form of the Hooverville community's leader. In "Human Nature" and "The Family of Blood," the fact that, hey, you know, white people have indeed been racists in the past was finally confronted head on, but when presented within the context of Martha's unrequited love for the Doctor, it felt ... I don't know, but just wrong. So, even in a story which attempted to own up to the unfortunate realities of racial relations in the past, the preexisting natures of the characters, as people, resulted in some arguably unintentional, but no less uncomfortable, subtext. I said all of that so that you'll see where I'm coming from when I say this; when a character like the Doctor - a complete stranger who simply wanders into other people's lives and often behaves in ways that are bound to raise suspicions - happens to look like a black guy, and happens to travel to certain points in the past when people weren't necessarily cool about the mere presence of non-subservient black people just in general, the writers are going to have to execute a tricky balance. After all, if they go too far in the direction of constantly coming up with contrivances as to why the Doctor wouldn't encounter any racism at all, they run the risk of presenting the view that Racism Wasn't So Bad After All in the past (not a good message to send), and if they overcompensate in the opposite direction, then every episode that's set in the past could wind up amounting to a sledgehammer-subtle refrain of White People Suck (which, hey, is arguably true of plenty of points in human history, except that it does a disservice to the main character, who's not even human, to reduce him to "the black Doctor" in such a way, even if it is motivated by earnestly progressive intentions). To my mind, the solution is simpler than one might think, and it involves retreating from one of Davies' favorite ways of portraying the Doctor. Yes, the Doctor is a Time Lord, and yes, he's Looking back on Baker's tenure as Four, it strikes me that, except for when UNIT called ahead to let folks know that The Crazy Grinning Ranting Man With The White-Boy Afro, Bugged-Out Eyes And Insanely Long Scarf would be paying them a visit, almost all of Four's adventures began with him stumbling onto the scene of a murder, or some other crime or mystery, and acting like an insulting asshole to everyone around him, while simultaneously insisting to people who had no rational reason whatsoever to trust him that they should do so implicitly (the NuWho Season 4 episode "Midnight" was, in many ways, arguably a deconstruction of that plot template). If the show were to return the Doctor to his former role as Who The Hell Is This Intruder And Why Shouldn't We Just Kill Him Now, it could simultaneously accommodate and sidestep the impact that his racial appearance as a black man would have in certain points in human history, and moreover, in my opinion, it would also be much more consistent with his original series characterization than the latter-day excesses of Davies' Emo Doctor have become. I always identified with the Doctor for the fact that he never really fit in anywhere, and regardless of whether the next actor to play him is black, white or whatever, if they bring that trait back to the character, I'll identify with him just as much all over again. | |||
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