Following my post on REBEL REBEL, here’s an unconnected follow up, based on information I curated and created for my class.
The original writers and articles I took inspiration from are linked – I’m not claiming to have written these, but simply creating awareness of the articles and pointing my students towards them. At the very least they can be the starting point for discussion…
DAVROS
Doctor Who is 60 years old. The British science fiction TV series regenerates again this week (BBC iPlayer in the UK and internationally on Disney+) with the return of David Tennant as The Doctor and the return of former show runner Russell T Davies.
During this year’s Children in Need charity campaign they screened a new short episode of Doctor Who “Destination Skaro” that generated much debate.
In the long-running Doctor Who television series, the Daleks are possibly the most recognisable villains. Armoured machines which contain aliens called Kaleds who survived a nuclear Armageddon and now roam the galaxy looking for worlds to conquer.
The Daleks first appeared in 1963 in the second Doctor Who story (now available in a colourised version).
In the 1975 story called “The Genesis of the Daleks”, written by Terry Nation (who
had created the Daleks 12 years previously) audiences were introduced to “Davros”, the evil scientist who created the Dalek machines.
The design is very deliberately reminiscent of fascist dictatorships, with Nazi-like iconograpy. Davros is disabled and scarred because of his experiments, the nuclear war and fallout, and as revealed in other stories, because of an attack on his laboratory. He sits in a life support pod which looks like the lower half of a Dalek and one arm is unusable.
Article on “Why his design is truly iconic”
FACE CHANGE
The Children in Need episode initially plays like it is set before the “Genesis of the Daleks” episode, perhaps before his scarring and disability. But then it becomes clear that this is a different take:
“Do you mean that this is the genesis of the Daleks?” – The Doctor
This Davros is younger, is walking, and has two functioning arms, along with little or no scarring.
Is this some retro-fitting? Has the original been wiped?
Davies has The Doctor suggest why this is possible:
the timelines and the canon are rupturing
This narrative choice is rewriting, replacing or at least giving an alternative version of the genesis.
Russell T Davies explains:
We had long conversations about bringing Davros back because he’s a fantastic character. Time and society and culture and taste has moved on, and there’s a problem with the Davros of old in that he’s a wheelchair user who is evil. And I had problems with that, and a lot of us on the production team had problems with that, of associating disability with evil, and trust me, there’s a very long tradition of this. I’m not blaming people in the past at all, but the world changes and when the world changes, Doctor Who has to change as well.
So we made the choice to bring back Davros without the facial scarring, and without the wheelchair, or his support unit, which functions as a wheelchair. I say this is how we see Davros now. This is what he looks like.This is 2023. This is our lens. This is our eye. Things used to be black and white, they’re not in black and white anymore. And Davros used to look like that, and he looks like this now, and that we are absolutely standing by.
I think, because it’s Children in Need night. It’s a night where issues of disability, or otherness, or being excluded from society come right to the front of the conversation. So of all the nights to make this change, I thought it was absolutely vital to do this, and I’m very, very, very proud of the fact that we have.
As always, there were feelings about this on Twitter X:
CHANGING FACES
I had already encouraged my Media students to watch the two CHANGING FACES video campaigns from a few years ago in my discussion of the representation of disability or visual difference:
And
My earlier blog post explored the overused trope of the scarred or disabled villain:
QUESTIONS
So the questions I left my students with are these:
- Is Russell T Davies right because representation matters?
- Is he over-reacting by viewing an alien character through a contemporary human lens?
- Doctor Who is 60 years old. Davros is 38 years old. Surely a lot has changed in that time. Should the show move with those times?
- Does this mean villains can’t be disabled?
- Does this mean that villains can’t have scars?
- Can you see both sides of the issue?
- Is there one clear answer?
Discuss…
TGEMM blog 