[SPOILER - As if there weren't untouched tribes deep in the depths of the Amazon who hadn't seen this long before I did. . .]

           Some folks think the latest Doctor Who is too politically correct. Others scold those folks for thinking so. As for me, I just wonder when Whitiker will be taking on the Daleks. Honestly, that is my main concern at the moment. But I suppose I can’t ignore that elephant in the room, so here it goes. . .

            In a recent Guardian article (https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2018/dec/03/doctor-who-stars-say-claims-the-show-is-too-politically-correct-are-bizarre) , Mandip Gill (Yaz) said it was “bizarre” to claim things were too “politically correct”.  After all, “how can you be too correct about something?” She’s right of course; but I don’t think “bizarre” is the adjective she really wanted to use. “Wrong-headed”, “misguided”, “mean-spirited” or “mistaken” perhaps, but “bizarre” ? No. That’s a bit disingenuous.

Lets look at the episodes themselves.

Arachnids in the UK is, at first, an old school creature feature – and what creatures! The creepiest crawliest spiders this side of the Royal Ontario Museum’s Arachnology exhibit. https://www.rom.on.ca/en/spiders. Phobics beware! We’ve come a long way since Planet of Spiders. Mad scientists, corporate polluters and copious deadly webbing abound. Great stuff, what could go wrong? Well, the action grinds to a halt on more than one occasion for the benefit of some dubious dialogue.  First, there is the apparently obligatory yammering with the new companions’ parents (“who is she? Where did you meet her?”) which is de rigor in the new series. The Doctor’s confrontation with Yaz’s mum is the sort of pitter-patter ping-pong dialogue that Moffat might have made funny, but here seems a maddening waste of time.  I miss the days when the Doctor travelled with orphans. . .

Then, right as the climax draws nigh, Graham and Ryan decide to have a heart-to-heart. Heart warming I’m sure, but there are deadly spiders on the outside of the door clamouring for my attention. If it’s not quite as harikari-inducing as missing out on the Cyber/Dalek war while watching Rose’s parents moon over each other, it’s of the same ilk. Scenes like this are supposed to reveal the depths of the characters – I suppose – but to my mind show dearth of timing, purpose and plotting. It’s all great they want to have these little chit-chats, but why now? There are spiders/Daleks/Cybermen outside the door people!

Meanwhile, I couldn't help noticing, that even as the sleazy hotel exec was quite rightfully chided for his carelessness, while the mad scientist who started the whole business - by mucking about with spider DNA for financial gain ­- got off without so much as a finger-wag. And while the All-God's-Creatures approach to the arachnids is properly open minded, it does feel a little hollow while they scour the land ensnaring and devouring people (why else ensnare them?).  Am I supposed to feel sorry for a giant killer-spider as it suffocates? Perhaps it would have been easier if it had not spent the previous hour killing people. Methinks the episode’s sympathy is misplaced. Do I detect a Battlestar Gallactica style masochism creeping in here? Ye Gods, I hope not.

All of this leads up to possibly the most anti-climatic ending in the show’s history, which I’m really hoping was the result of clumsy network editing rather than writing or direction. Space is just awful when it comes to cutting important scenes, so it’s not just wistful thinking. Either way, I really hate to think anyone on the creative team thought that would be a good way to end a story.  But if there is some mysterious missing scene out there, it won’t disturb the philosophical elephant in the punchbowl I was left with – (SPOILER ALERT) – why is locking these creatures in a room to slowly starve them to death more “dignified” than shooting them, which the Doctor forbids?  The answer can only be than one involves guns, and the other does not. Again, the audience needs to be reminded that guns are bad. Even against killer spiders.

Now look: I’m not some NRA thug with a fault full of semi-automatic  surrogate penises. I support gun-control, strict background checks, even Toronto’s proposed hand-gun ban. I’m also thrilled that a major entertainment franchise, almost uniquely, seeks to glorify alternative solutions to problems. That’s great, and should continue. But for me, being anti-gun is a guiding principal, not an iron clad law. Context is everything, self-defense is permitted, especially when one is menaced by killer-robots or giant spiders.  The problem here is the inconsistency, bordering on hypocrissy: the Doctor has no problem killing spiders. She locks them all in a room so they can slowly starve to death. It’s just the technology she objects to, the tool. This, to my mind is a bass-ackwards approach.  It’s over-simplistic, self righteous, and rigid. Rigidity doesn’t allow for ethical behaviour – it doesn’t take the complexity of human experience into account. It substitutes a set of rules for principles and dogma for morality, as if repeating a commandment to oneself often enough made for noble behaviour – as if doing the right thing just meant following the same rule. It certainly spares one the burden of thinking about things. If nothing else, it’s lazy writing.

There’s a word for that, but hang onto that thought. . .  

Next we come to The Tsuranga Conundrum. Hospital ship menaced by a alien bent on sabotage. This

little alien doesn’t eat people, but swallows electrical components whole, Tasmanian Devil style, much to the detriment of the ships operating and life-support systems. Conveniently, the thing can’t be killed, so there’s no gun debate here. Isolated-on-a-spaceship-with-alien menace is tried, tested and true, so bravo for that. Trouble is the alien is just so damned adorable, it’s impossible to take seriously. I was also less than thrilled with the maddeningly persistent “supposedly intelligent character gets self killed doing something idiotic because plot requires it” trope which insists on making its appearance. So it goes.

Besides the alien menace, the main drama of the story is concerned with the labour-pains of a pregnant man. It is strongly hinted that this is quite common in the future, though it is not clear whether this is as a result of natural mutation or surgical alteration. Its wider social implications are not explored; allowing Graham and Ryan to have yet another heart to heart on the value (though not the nature) of fatherhood seems its primary plot function, and if that's what we were all hankering for. . . That, and, I suspect, an ideological declaration of principle. Nothing is blatantly stated, but as adults we can read between the lines: it’s  about gender. How can you feature a pregnant man and not make some statement about gender? In this case, its absolute severance from reproduction.

A lot of good science fiction has been written exploring gender identity: think LeGuin’s Left Hand of Darkness or Sturgeon’s Venus Plus X. The key word here is explore – ask questions, examine implications. Speculate. There’s no speculation here: it is firmly established that a man’s pregnancy will have no noticeable effect on his identity.

Yet, it is not a world without gender distinctions – curiously, “boys give birth to boys and girls to birth to girls”. Again, no word on how or why this would actually work. But wouldn’t that actually cement gender differences rather than erase them? After all, what do they need each other for now?  The question is not really explored, nor I think is it intend it to be. Rather, I think what they’re getting at in just throwing it out there is the rather dubious assertion that it would make no difference at all.

This idea may be currently fashionable among good progressives, but doesn’t make for good science fiction. Kind of like most of Russell T. Davies’ scripts, it doesn’t follow through with the full implications of its premise. But Davies was rarely this ideological.

Doctor Who has always been at the forefront of progressive, or at least liberal, thought (yes, even in the early days - it is all relative). But there is such thing as nuance. What people notice when they cry “political correctness” are ideas floated not as food for thought but as assertions of fact, with fictional scenarios constructed specifically to back up these assertions. This isn’t political correctness (a meaningless term I won’t dignify here): what this is, is didactic.  

Didactic fiction is the opposite of speculative fiction (though the former often claims to be the latter). Didactic fiction takes its conclusions for granted. Didactic fiction doesn’t explore implications, but makes assertions and constructs scenarios to justify or “prove” them. Atlas Shrugged is a didactic novel – a fictional world where Ayn Rand’s fantasies make sense. Soviet Socialist Realism was relentlessly didactic – endless fiction, films and plays in which the Soviet System always worked. Didactism doesn’t allow for other interpretations or other possibilities, and most certainly never asks questions. It only ever presents answers. Sometimes writers can’t help being didactic. But good ones will at least allow for the complexity of human nature. Bad ones just preach.

These Doctor Who episodes are rather falling into the former category I’m afraid. The simplistic, inconsistent pacifism of Arachnids and the pantomime role reversal of Tsuranga don’t really give any food to the imagination. I expect to be lectured about eating my vegetables next. . .