On the eighty-first edition of Reality Bomb, with sensible people still in lockdown during the global pandemic, we returned once more to do offer a super-sized episode of Reality Bomb live on Zoom. This time, we bring our true confessions revealing our deepest, darkest secret shames, embarrassments and wrongs we have committed regarding Doctor Who to the confession dial. We also play (courtesy of Head Over Feels) This or That! Plus The Tsuranga Conundrum is in the Gallery of the Underrated and we have Listener’s Q and A! And… an ode to a t-shirt.
Resources related to Joy’s editorial:
- Nicole’s essay about World Enough and Time/The Doctor Falls
- Nicole’s recap of the #DoctorWhoBlackout
- Organizations supported by fans during the #DoctorWhoBlackout
- For those who have no idea what Intersectionality is: The Urgency of Intersectionality — TED Talk by Kimberle Crenshaw
- What does BIPOC mean?
We also have a video of the whole episode (minus clips for Gallery of the Underrated, thanks YouTube) if you want to watch!
(And if you want to see the video with the clips, you can download it from here!)
Hey Joy, Hey Graeme, long time Whovian making first contact with Reality Bomb.
About 15 minutes or so into Episode 81 – The Shelter In Place Live Edition 3, Graeme shares his opinion of reconstructed missing episodes, in particular, those made with telesnaps.
I’m on record deriding telesnap recons with a Doctor Who podcast based in Australia because I would rather listen to the cleaned up soundtrack of a missing episode in audiobook form than watch a telesnap recon, or so I thought.
‘Missing episodes of Doctor Who found in the past 10 years’ could well be added as a definition for ‘The law of diminishing returns’ which is why I had a rethink about recons because each year that an episode remains missing is one year less I have to experience it one way or another.
I don’t recall my turning point and while I still believe a recon can never replace the original, I’m glad I decided to view a few made by Loose Cannon Productions, one of which, ‘The Smugglers’ dispelled a long held belief that Rick James who played Cotton in ‘The Mutants’ was the first black actor to have a speaking role in Doctor Who when it turns out that Elroy Josephs was the first in ‘The Smugglers’ as Jamaica.
Early Doctor Who is an easy target for diversity shaming, primarily because it is a product of its time, a fading reflection of a bygone era. While we effortlessly superimpose our collective cultural values of 2020 onto television programs made 60 years ago, can we point to others made back then which embody our current sensibilities? Moreover, how many of those shows are still in production today?
Until just over a week ago this 60+ fan of a TV show that’s nearly as old believed what was said about Rick James on another Doctor Who podcast and it turns out what was said was inaccurate.
Funny how all these years later revelations like these remind me of a line spoken by the Doctor in The Mysterious Planet’ ‘Never believe what is said, Balazar, only what you know.’
The truth is, we really don’t know what we don’t know and what we do know isn’t necessarily all there is to know which is to say Doctor Who’s cultural missteps half a century removed don’t interest me, but learning about what makes it enduring and endearing, now that’s worth talking about.
Keep up the good work with Reality Bomb. What sets it apart are its production values and variety.
Happy Travels,
Blue Box Bill