Rewatching it last night, I was once again reminded that I find the white-washed future of The Ark in Space much more personally disturbing than either The Talons of Weng-Chiang or the new series' intermittent cluelessness about race issues. One thing I really appreciate about the 2005 series over the original is that it has never subjected us to an image of the future where there are no people of colour. I think it bugs me more than usual in The Ark in Space because the story inadvertently makes it look as though Earth in the 30th century is run by white supremacists and the Doctor is helping them resettle the planet.
This is also the reason I cut Heroes so much slack on this front. I vastly prefer to have a show that has characters of colour and sometimes makes a godawful mess of it than one that pretends they don't exist. (Obviously I would appreciate it if a show had characters of colour and always wrote them well, but I can't just watch The Wire all the time.)
This is also the reason I cut Heroes so much slack on this front. I vastly prefer to have a show that has characters of colour and sometimes makes a godawful mess of it than one that pretends they don't exist. (Obviously I would appreciate it if a show had characters of colour and always wrote them well, but I can't just watch The Wire all the time.)