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scifinal · 5 years ago

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DW s12e03 "Orphan 55" or The Importance of Not Conveying a Message

I swear this is not a Doctor Who fan blog - there's simply no denying that what DW has become as of now is a major and highly influential sci-fi franchise, and there's also no denying that last week I, regrettably, dedicated two days of my life to binging its, as of now, most recent season (and to think I could've been re-watching series D of Blake's 7 instead!), which, in turn, led me to doing what I've had in mind for quite some time now – creating this blog (and returning to tumblr, which I wasn't planning on doing). I wrote my review on the season's finale just yesterday, but there are plenty more things in this season that, I feel, need to be touched upon.

So, here I am, doing just that.

Part One: The Idea

Now, I ask you to imagine a story. Imagine a story in which a neglectful mother leaves her child and, as years go by, gets so overwhelmed with guilt she decides to give said child a gift hoping that maybe, just maybe, this gift will make up for that horrible thing she did years ago. The mother wants to give her child a literal world as a gift. So she picks a planet that nobody will ever claim, an orphan planet, and tries to raise money to afford terraforming it. She becomes a mother to an orphan planet in an attempt to become a mother to her orphan child.

This sounds like a beautiful story. It is a beautiful story.

Part Two: The Science

Doctor Who, which started out as an educational show for schoolkids, is, as of now, at heart, a space opera. There is nothing inherently bad in space operas: they are merely a subgenre of science fiction that focuses on relationships between its characters and social issues, with little to no regard or often at the expense of the "sci" in "sci-fi". Space operas can be beautiful. "Dark They Were, and Golden-Eyed", one of my favourite stories by Ray Bradbury, and one of my favourite short stories period is a space opera. "The Stainless Steel Rat" series by Harry Harrison is a space opera. "Ensign Flandry" by Poul Anderson is a space opera. I love them all.

The surprisingly hard thing with writing space operas is that you have to be careful with science. What I mean by that is that a writer behind a space opera project has to be careful with inventing his technobabble in case they face the necessity to explain something. The writer has to be careful and make his technobabble so illegible yet science-y that his audience has no choice but to roll with it, regardless of whether they have the faintest idea what the words the writer has used mean or not. The space opera technobabble has to sound science-y but otherwise has no business using scientific terms that might happen to make some sense to an audience member that happens to be slightly more educated than average and thus more perceptive of your nonsense (bonus points if what the writer has created is not as good as they themselves think it is and that slightly more educated audience member has already gotten so tired of The Work that they unintentionally begin to catch more factual mistakes than they would had the author not oversuspended their disbelief), because at that point...

...Science Says "Hello, I'm Still Here!" (Part Three)

The third episode of the twelfth season of Doctor Who gave its seemingly made-up term "orphan planet" a very clear definition: a previously habitable world that, through processes which may vary in nature, has become unable of supporting sentient, if any at all, life. Here's an excerpt from the Doctor Who fan wiki:

Again, a fairly clear definition.

Except...

"Orphan planet" is an actual scientific term. There are many synonymous terms used to describe it, but, basically, an orphan planet is a planet that doesn't belong to a star system and travels on its own. Here's an excerpt from Wikipedia (I do realise that it isn't a reliable source, but in this case this actually is the correct definition):

And this isn't a rare term, either. In fact, the concept of a rogue, or orphan, planet is fairly common in science fiction – a strange cold, inhospitable world, incapable of supporting life, travelling through the vast cosmos all on its own, fearsome and unpredictable.

Now, why the difference between two definitions of an otherwise well-known occurrence?

Because the story I asked you to imagine in the beginning of this post wasn't enough.

Part Four: The Need for Relevance

There's no arguing that, in some way or another, every piece of media captures the time its creator lives in through the lense of their worldview. It might be obvious in things like clothing, technology, or societal constructs they, the author, perceive as normal or abnormal. There is no arguing that every piece of media ages, and no arguing that most media produced for mass audiences has to be relevant. And science fiction set in the future, surprisingly enough for some, is not an exception; more than that, it may even age worse than other genres as technology develops beyond what creators of science fiction of the past could possibly imagine.

One way of compensating for that aging is creating an ever-relevant story. The reason the original trilogy of Star Wars still stands despite its dated effects and tech is not only that it's set in an alien world, but also that it tells a fairly simple story that is bound to be relatable for years to come: it's a journey a hero sets on to right the wrongs. The reason the original Star Trek is good after all these years despite its dated, er, everything technical is that its themes are relatable, its morals are clear, its characters – well-defined. Blake's 7 is wonderful (I mean, this is the third or fourth time I'm mentioning this fairly little-known show in two posts, it should be clear that I love it) not only because of its cheesy British-TV-sci-fi-show-shoestring-budget effects, late-70s-future-fashion outfits charm and well-done models, but because of its clear idea that's bound to last for ages: there will always be an oppressor, there will always be the oppressed, there will always be those who resist the existing regime.

But creating a story with a long-lasting theme is not the only way to being appreciated. We live in an era of information, and we live in an era of that information being at our fingertips, and we also live in an era in which, as always, people want to make profit. Fast profit.

And a much easier way of making profit is not making a story that will last forever, but a relevant story, a story with which its intended audience will resonate right now and not over a prolonged period of time.

This is the time for us to again return to the story I asked you to imagine in the beginning. That story is timeless. Its themes will last as long as there are orphans in the world, and as long as there are neglectful parents, and as long as guilt exists. It's a good story.

But people want more profit than a story that is merely good can make. People want a good story that is also currently relevant.

And so they add a currently relevant theme to it.

Part 4: Additions Have Got to Be Made

There's nothing inherently wrong with adding a new theme to your already existing storyline: it may lead to exploring new depths you didn't expect would open up. The problem arises when said theme is nothing but pandering and is there only to admit the existence of something so the audience can say "I know about this thing that they've mentioned", as if that gives them a figurative gold star, and get back to their business, satisfied that some story they connected with acknowledged a problem that they feel something about. This is pandering.

Now, what does this have to do with the two different definitions of one term and that story?

Part Five: Here's What I Think Is the Problem

I don't think that at the early stages of writing the screenplay for "Orphan 55" DW's definition of the term "orphan planet" was all that different from what an orphan planet actually is. On the contrary, I think the person who first pitched the story did have in mind actual interstellar objects – otherwise they would've devised a new term for uninhabitable planets; besides, almost everything in the episode makes sense without an orphan planet being a once inhabitable world. I also believe that this change was thrown in towards the end of writing the actual script, because then it would probably be written in a way that allows the idea of their version of an orphan planet to be more developed. So why did they, in my opinion, even add that?

You guessed it. Pandering. My best guess is that the higher-ups wanted to throw something "hip" into the story, to add something "relevant", because they wanted a bigger resonance and thus a more profitable episode. And what could be more relevant that the fact that we, the humanity, have kind of screwed our planet up and now everybody's talking about this?

This is the reason they've changed the definition of a pre-existing term. It's not that they wanted to make a statement: they wanted to make money. It's not that they wanted to raise awareness: they wanted to raise their profits. The message wasn't intended as a warning directed towards people who may not know or do not care about the subject: it was a corporation pandering towards those who already agree with it.

It hurts me to write this; I genuinely want to believe this isn't the case. I genuinely want to believe that the addition was made by some well-meaning script editor – but I can't. We live in a world in which corporations can and do use important messages as a means to profit off of people's beliefs. The optimistic option just isn't that probable.

And in the End...

Imagine a flower. Imagine a tender flower on a small flowerbed; a beautiful flower, carefully tended to, lovingly grown, a flower that will bloom for a long time. And next to it, a bigger, more colourful one, a flower that grabs your attention, but only for a short moment – and for no other reason that its life is so short. The big flower will wither, and it will wither soon, and the small one will go unnoticed simply because it's not as bright, and not as big... but it is beautiful when you notice it, and it will bring a smile to your face when you notice it again.

That story about a mother, her child, and a planet was a good story, but its theme about being an orphan wasn't what grabbed the viewer's attention: it was the blunt message about saving our habitat, and it distracted from the actual plot and its own underlying theme.

Your story is your flowerbed. A bright and resonating theme will live on for only as long as it stays popular, for as long as the public is interested in it, and the second that interest is lost, your flowerbed of a story dies with it. If that was your intent – you did well. But if you tend to your garden for the future generations to see, don't make it about here and now, make it about everywhere. Make it about always. Make it so the bright and eye-catching, and short-lived isn't what people know your garden for.

#doctor who #doctor who review #thirteenth doctor #critique #review #spilled thoughts #long reads #long post #sci fi #sci fi review

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