Doctor Who (2024)

I find it funny y'all seem to be disputing what I see as a tenant of most mainstream SF, since pretty much it's rise to popularly, the subversive nature baked into it and in fact most of the fiction we're talking about here.

For the most part, and often especially the more commercial sort we are most often exposed to, SF has an undercurrent of subversion. Or at least had when began to emerge as part of our fictional library as series like The Twilight Zone and Star Trek gained larger acceptance. A legacy that, from my perspective, series like TNG, Babylon 5, The Tomorrow People, Stargate, Farscape, Fringe and The X-Files and later Dark Matter, 12 Monkeys, The Orville and For All Mankind all continue. Along with drama and speculative discoveries there's usually some trend or trends that are expanded on.

Like when Eleven went to a world where they are perpetually stuck on a highway or when in the 1970s Survivors when every votes to kill the developmentally delayed guy because they think he's a rapists and murderer. But after they do, they find the person who actually did it, is essential personnel thus must compromise their believes to survive. These are all in part morality plays, they are satirizing the world we know by exaggerating something then exploring that exaggeration. It all come together to form the SF soup on which we have come to dine out on.

Andromeda, The 100, Firefly, The Expanse, to name a few, all do this. They challenge perspective, long held ideals, satirize society and encourage diversity... And the most impressive thing about SF is that it can do all this in a safe space. Which is, in no small part, what has always drawn me to SF... since I first read of the Eloi and Morlocks, as a child.

And speaking to my development as a SF fan, the communities I matriculated through held ideals often associated with most of the SF I have mentioned in high esteem, and that is acceptance and inclusion... We are the communities that the weirdos tend to be floating about in wearing capes, kilts and Star Fleet uniforms in everyday life. All thing which, from what it sounds like, many here might labeled as woke.

When I was a kid being taken to SF conventions, by my family, and folks would say things like IDIC they were more than just words, they were aspirational. Just like all the ideals of Federation or of The Doctor or heck even of Dr. Weir and James Holden... as a result, I dare say, all my examples would fall under the definitions of woke... as well they would all likely also be labeled ANTIFA. But whatever we call them or however we each see them, using these hyperbolic terms seems to do nothing more than divide us...

I was under the impression we were all here to celebrate our common appreciation for series!?

Listen if you're not drawn to SF for the same reasons I am, one of which being because I have always seen myself as an outsider, that's cool. You do you. However, it just seems to me, to cry out this is all-of-a-sudden, something it was never... Well that can't help being needlessly divisive and, in some part, disingenuous. Maybe when The Doctor preforms and act of social justice, like when he sabotaged the Company on Pluto, it's not what you came for but it's always been there... Since The Doctor, Ian, Barbara and Susan first meddled in Skaro history, SF has had something to say... Since Lokai and Bele screamed at each other on the bridge of the Enterprise, SF has had something to say.

It may not have been, the gays aren't so bad, but it was something.

Denying it because one does not feel comfortable with what aspects of the status-quo these stories are challenging now when it was right there the whole time seems, to me, to say more about the viewer than the fiction. Tho this is just my opinion.