Interesting perspective, and one that I think is much more applicable to Classic Who, which was made very differently than the '05 iteration. RTD's first era shook things up with its "companion first" approach and single-episode stories.
Some of the issues weren't exactly unique to DW, though. Star Trek: The Next Generation started in the late 80s, and its characters are largely cardboard cutouts, especially in the earlier years. Depth of character was very rare before the late 90s.
Just the flexibility to get it done on your own terms, really.
I mean, is it any COINCIDENCE that this episode was set in FLORIDA?
I thought this was a very mild, even gentle depiction of Whovians.
Oh it was, but...Reddit's gonna Reddit, and the internet's gonna internet.
In terms of the “American” accents, I’m not a native English speaker, so a lot of that detail goes by me unnoticed.
Honestly, it's not even the accent. I think the guy's accent was...adequate (full disclosure, I'm Canadian, so I can't judge US accents too harshly). But the dialogue often seems just a little stilted to me, with word choices that don't quite seem to align with what an American would say.
The most egregious DW example to me is from way back in "The Poison Sky"/"The Sontaran Strategem", when the ostensibly American Luke Rattigan kept ranting about how "clever" he was, which is simply not something an American (or Canadian, for that matter) would say. Nothing in this episode rose to that level, but it just seemed a little off.
I'm by no means defending this move (it's dumb and bad, just like...everything else the US government does these days), but they seem to be delegating the inspections to individual states.
I assume at least some states will maintain good standards, and Canada will have to pay close attention to which states those are.
All told, I was in line for about 90(!) minutes yesterday. That was at least partly the luck of the draw, though - my polling place had two polling stations open, and the other one had a line the fraction of the length of mine.
No need for spoiler tags in these threads, people should know what they're getting into!
I don't think I'm quite as high on it as you are, but that was a lot of fun.
I’m getting flashbacks to “Idiot’s lantern”
For sure - I know that's not a terribly well-regarded episode, but this was a good execution of that basic premise. I thought a lot about "Flatline" as well.
I like how the segregation was handled with seriousness, but wasn’t turned into a hamfisted Teaching Opportunity.
I've often thought that there's a core tension with addressing civil rights issues on DW - they're important, and they absolutely should be addressed...but they also run the risk of dominating every single episode in which they're relevant (which, unfortunately, is a lot of them). I think it was handled pretty well in the Whitaker era, and that continues here.
F—, the giggle…!
A blindingly obvious connection that I didn't expect (mainly because I don't spend a lot of time speculating). I'm actually glad RTD continues to lean into these incomprehensible beings that play by their own rules.
The (fictional) fans were lovely, and tragic, and clever
I look forward to the rage of people who feel like they've been attacked. The fans were a lot of fun, and I fully expect to see them again in "Wish World." It just seems like they have a larger role to play, and their whole deal seems to overlap with Mrs. Flood's.
All in all, a really deftly-handled episode. A fun, one-off story that also manages to further the Doctor/Belinda relationship, and continue to seed the season-long arc.
My biggest complaint? Logan, the diner employee. I feel like this show has a long history of trying and failing to write natural-sounding American dialogue, and Logan unfortunately got the worst of it. The time period helps to paper it over to an extent, but it bumped me almost every time he said more than a handful of words.
I'm standing in line at the polls right now, and all I can say is to be prepared for long lines.
Is keep getting wrong the same as lying?
Probably. But no journalistic outlet is going to call it "lying" without proof that the leaders don't sincerely believe what they're saying.
And that sort of proof is hard to get.
The video is 1 hour 14 minutes long.
Absolute madness.
Respect.
From what I'm seeing on Mastodon, there was some kind of altercation between Ezra Levant and other reporters...
SirPatStew has shared the anecdote, but it's reportedly something that Roddenberry said.