anyways, i'm still really annoyed that my master post about how badly race was handled in series 3 is gone, so i'm going to remind you all again. martha jones. black medical student who definitely would have been dealing with medical racism as well as general microaggressions. her family. the biggest in the rtd era and the most underutilised. making francine the angry black woman with little to no build up, making her antagonistic to the point of violence with barely any plot. no mention of the impact a father who ran off with a younger white woman would have.
shakespearean london. 1599. two years after the queen tried to expell black people from the town and ship them off as chattel, making martha's concern worryingly accurate. having the doctor dismiss these concerns making him sound like an idiot. shakespeare's fetishisation of martha. the doctor's unnecessarily aggresive, dismissive and simultaneously suggestive attitude with her. manhattan, 1930. excused away having to deal with the inevitable racism by throwing in a line by a black actor to show the writers didn't feel like dealing with it, despite race relation getting worse during the depression. still keeping at the needlessly suggestive scenes and lines aimed at martha - it is not funny or endearing for the doctor to pick up her knickers. i admit his "busy doing stuff" line with francine WAS funny, but overall, i'm not impressed with the borderline inappropriate innuendos levied at martha her season. right down to john smith asking martha what she 'does' for the doctor. and speaking of 1913. the only two parter to actively treat racism as if it exists...until it decides to reward joan (and john for the matter) with narrative sympathy. then we get 1969, another racially unstable era, especially as it's london. any black brit who was around in that era will tell you. and then the master and his jibes about ticking boxes off in demographics which is definitely supposed to be a jab at actual critique of the show but just makes him seem prejudiced also. which isn't exactly helped by him enslaving the jones', maid outfits and all.
not to mention subverting the first female black companion in the tv show's onscreen history into the doctor's. the first and only time they've done this thank god. to sideline her in her own story and constantly and negatively comparing her to the white predecessor was such a huge and avoidable error. not to mention completely forgetting her in 'the doctor's daughter,' seperating her from everyone for the majority of the s4 finale and pairing her off with the only other black male in the cast.
come on.