The recent Christmas special (which I haven't watched) apparently referenced 'The Caves of Androzani'.
Let's just ponder 'The Caves of Androzani' for a moment.
What's it about? It's about a commodity that, though it promises eternal life, kills everyone it touches. It's about a commodity that, though it promises beauty, transforms the world into an ugly hellhole of war, competition, disfigurement, hatred, betrayal and murder. It's about a commodity that, though it promises eternal youth, brings on the decline and fall of an entire society. The commodity's hollow promises are echoed in the vanity and narcissism of the people who compete for it - especially in the tragic story of a man who, though not essentially evil, is driven to do vile things by his own wounded vanity. It's about capitalism as a catastrophic moral, intellectual and social failure... one which we will be lucky to escape from alive.
So... let me ask those who have watched the recent special... did those 'Androzani' references seem thematically appropriate?
I won't insult you by pretending that this isn't a rhetorical question. You may say the assumptions underlying it are based on prejudice. I'd prefer to call it precedent.
Happy New Year, Jack! Looking forward to more ShabGraf in 2012.
ReplyDeleteCheers! HNY to yourself too, and all the other masochists who come here to read my increasingly deluded ravings.
ReplyDeleteThe workers from Androzani here were treated as reliable old workers whose actions in and of themselves aren't bad. They try to kill a bunch of "Androzani trees," which are sentient organisms, and the name of "Androzani trees" implies they didn't just happen upon a random planet with sentient trees, but that they know full well they are conscious beings who can communicate, but are executed regularly for fuel or something like that, but the Doctor isn't concerned with this at all, only magically saving the "souls" of the trees inside a giant golf ball.
ReplyDeleteSo yes, the horrors and wastefulness of capitalism is irrelevant, so long as the magic man best friend saves your souls.
To be scrupulously fair, what you describe sounds edgier than anything else of Moffat's (that I've seen) for quite a while. Everything being relative.
ReplyDelete