Fandom is Full of Terrible People and No Amount of Craft Activities Can Fix This

I wrote this for Den of Geek about the recent racist and sexist responses to the new Amazon Lord of the Rings series. The reason why I'm posting it here is because the draft I sent in had more Doctor Who stuff in it, and I wanted to share it because I think the article is relevant to all fandoms, especially ones where fans like to pretend everything is fine because someone posted a funny gif.

The cuts were made because the involved personal recollections in the first person, which is not part of Den of Geek's house style (take note if you're pitching anything there).

"Who knows if this new adaptation of Lord of the Rings is good? I’m intrigued by what I’ve seen so far but there’s no guarantee that I’ll enjoy it. Having a diverse cast and crew is good but it doesn’t automatically mean the resulting story will be (for example, I’m not a fan of the Chibnall era of Doctor Who). That’s how art works, whether it be sitcoms, comics or Jeff Bezos’ desire to bring prestige television to Amazon Prime with this new adaptation.

This last word is important: this is an adaptation of the written word into a visual medium made in the third decade of the twenty-first century. It is not going to match the books, in the same way as Peter Jackson’s films do not match the books. Adaptations are affected by the change in medium and the context creative decisions are made in. They do not alter the original text, often increasing its availability. Thing is, I understand being annoyed by an adaptation.

I remember being furious leaving the cinema after The Two Towers because I thought it had brought in Arwen too much, and complained to my friends about this on the way back to the bus station. I don’t think I updated my MSN Messenger profile to register my irritation though, which was the nearest thing to Twitter we had at the time.

I can look back on this now and realise that it was based on ignorance (of the Appendices, and of everything I mentioned above about adaptations), unexamined sexism and entitlement (if you look at fan forums during the making of the film you can see more examples of this). If it turns out I dislike this new series, I will probably write about why (on here if you’re lucky), express disappointment, find something else to watch, and maybe write some fanfic. Genuinely, I think writing about your concerns helps a lot: you might start off writing about how much you hate something, but you can’t sustain that forever. Eventually you start getting curious about why the things you hate (and love) ended up the way they did. In other words: it’s easy to say ‘this movie sucked’, but it’s more useful to know why it did.

I started writing for this website around eleven years ago when it was a UK-based site, and have seen fan reactions become more extreme in this time. They started off fairly aggressive too. I wrote something after the TV presenter Fern Britton had been on the BBC show Room 101 – where panellists suggest things they dislike to be entered into the titular room (inspired by 1984) – and she had suggested science-fiction should go in. Her arguments were weak and easily dismissed, but the response online was one of extreme aggression and mocking Britton’s weight. I wrote something naïve about how nice it would be if we could all just enjoy Doctor Who, rather than tweeting Steve Moffat saying he should kill himself and calling Sylvester McCoy a c***, this annoyed people.

The then editor of ‘Doctor Who Magazine’ tweeted me to mention the many great things in fandom (decoupage Bandrils, that sort of thing) and being overawed by this I meekly agreed. I should have said that a papier-mâché Erato doesn’t counteract the negative sides of fandom, and this form of toxic positivity amounts to a suspension of critical faculties and an unwillingness to process difficult truths. There’s a sense of identity being tied up in something make-believe, so a criticism of their favourite stories is a criticism of them. There's a great example of this in the comments of an article I wrote for Cultbox about The Talons of Weng-Chieng (cw/desperate attempts to be perceived as not racist), an episode that frequently gets described as racist because it is. Ignoring these increasingly destructive elements with a kind of toxic positivity amounts to a suspension of critical engagement and an unwillingness to process difficult truths."

'Doctor Who Magazine' later threw its own journalists under the bus when they described 'Talons' as racist but also good in other respects. It was fairly gentle and accurate criticism which instigated a discourse where the racism I mention in the article felt legitimised by the magazine. However, as I said, the article wasn't meant to be in first person and the Doctor Who examples distracted from the central focus of Tolkien.

Realising the Time War

In the latest Doctor Who Magazine comic strip, Scott Gray writes the Twelfth Doctor describing an incident in the Time War.

I've previously mentioned that I've found Big Finish's and BBC Books attempts at portraying the time war to be dissatisfying based on their lack of imagination, that they all tell the same story and at no point does it feel distinctive from non-Time-War Doctor Who.

Gray, on the other hand, writes Doctor Who like he owns it. Also, luckily for him, his medium is comics, which are vastly more suited to the temporal chaos implied by Russell T. Davies' brief descriptions of the war on television. You can simply show an image which tells and implies the story, rather than have to write a paragraph of exposition. You don't have the budgetary limitations of television, and so outlandish visuals are more easily achievable. Thus, Part Four of The Clockwise War is, for me, the most satisfying depiction of the Time War partly for these reasons.

Another - arguably more important - factor is the characterisation and context. Having the events narrated by a future Doctor, using a younger version of the War Doctor than Big Finish were ever able to do, and placing a long established comics character in the companion role allow Gray to bypass the standard 'Old War Doctor meets young female who dies and is sad about war' plot that appeared to have been mandatory previously.

Firstly, the young War Doctor is uncharted territory for licensed fan-fiction. Gray has free reign to characterise him as he wants, and uses this to present a Doctor who is gleeful in the face of war. It isn't til the end we see Gray write something more typical in terms of War Doctor angst, but prior to this we see a Doctor not dissimilar to the one we see in Tooth and Claw - still recognisably the Doctor, but emotionally distant and glib in the face of death.

Secondly, and possibly more importantly: there are absolutely no Daleks in this comic.

Whether that's because of licensing or simply because Terry Nation's estate prohibited it, it makes the story more interesting by virtue of forcing upon us something new. Gray also resists the temptation to realise one of the names RTD came up with for the screen, something that had previously always been tepidly done, and devises entirely new creatures.

The Time Lords are also notable by their absence beyond a group of soldiers - there are no dirty tricks or amoral gambits here, just fighting on a front line. True, Gray brings in the Sisterhood of Karn to tick off a fan-pleasing box, but they were there at the beginning of this incarnation, so it's not such a contortion to fit them in.

Overall it's a take on the Time War that drives home the War Doctor's differences, manages to hint at the chaos of temporal combat without actually involving any time travel, and doesn't outstay its welcome. I was very impressed by it, but the main thing this comic has confirmed for me is this:

I really never want to see another Time War story.

Part of this is simply that it's a story that's impossible to realise in a way that does justice to the idea; a brief interlude in the Time War is about as far as you can dip your toe in. Conceptually, it's not actually meant to be a story we visit on an ongoing basis, and so a spin-off series has to tweak the Time War into something that resembles a story, despite its very essence fighting against this method of depiction.

Mainly, though, it's that I don't watch Doctor Who for the horrors of war. The Time War necessitates a version of the Doctor who not only allows these and is culpable, but can revel in them. Seeing this done reasonably well for the first time is enough to demonstrate to me that it's definitely not what I want from Doctor Who.

The Caves of Androzani is brilliant. Genesis of the Daleks is brilliant. However, if you tried to make Doctor Who like those stories every week, it wouldn't be Doctor Who anymore. Things that aren't Doctor Who aren't intrinsically bad, of course, but this is why delving into New Earth is a much better idea than delving into the Time War will ever be.