Episode 3: Second Chances

For our third episode, we’re digging into the politics of monsters and the themes of sacrifice in Doctor Who through the lens of discussing specific episodes. We discuss the Ood as spiritual monsters, selective empathy and fatphobia.

• The ood as a Sufi sect 
• The episode Father’s Day as a moralistic conundrum and an exploration of the paradox of time travel. If you could go back in time and stop personal trauma from happening, would you?
• Death as a running theme of Doctor Who, and avoidance of death as a moral issue as explored through the characters of Cassandra and Lazarus. 
• Steven Moffat’s episodes are probably the scariest. You have two shadows. 
• Doctor Who as an exploration of the anxieties and limitations of technology, the anxiety of not being ‘pure’. 
• If you wear AirPods, you’re definitely being converted into a cyberman in the invasion
• Doctor Who was worrying about fake news even back in 2005
• Russel T Davies was excellent at hiding easter eggs in plain site
• Soof and Flo are going to fight over the episode Love and Monsters, a rare view at those left behind by the companions.
• Fatness is used as a lazy shorthand to signify someone bad - the Abzorbaloff, the Slitheen - but the medicalisation of fat loss is also condemned through the Adipose. JK Rowling uses the same shorthand.
• Doctor Who usually tries to give his enemies a chance but also selective empathy is definitely at play.
• The ways we both relate to Vincent and the Doctor as artists (essentially, we both want to be able to time-travel and see the retrospectives they do about our work). Steven Moffat loved his one-liners.
• Florence remembers hating Journey's End. Soof had a lovely fact about being given a piece of TARDIS coral but Florence is just too mad about it all.
• Themes of female sacrifice crop up again and again in Series 1 - Jabe, Gwyneth, Rose on multiple occasions, Lynda with a Y. A lot of women die who don’t need to die.
• The Sontaran depiction as ableist. The Emojibots were great.
• Theme music was Blur and Coalesce by Podington Bear, from Free Music Archive.
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