Uniocular
Both sound pretty shitty to me.
"It's so hard to be humble, knowing how great I am."
Writer, Artist, Ignored
I'm just mystified by the double standard here. There's no overt attempt to play the Celestial Toymaker as Chinese, yet he's somehow horribly racist. Patrick Troughton plays Salamander as a clearly ethnic character, but Sandifer (rightly) loves that story. It seems to me that if he and others are going to dig deep and find racism in Toymaker that it would be much more overt and easier to find in Enemy of the World. Or look at Derrin Nesbitt playing the Mongol Tegana in Marco Polo. Or Walter Randall playing El Akir in the Crusades.
There are many instances of white actors playing villains of other ethnicities in Doctor Who. Why single out one or two examples and ignore the others? That's my question. And if it's a question of treating other cultures and ethnic groups with respect, tell me where the Celestial Toymaker mocks the Chinese, or claims that western culture is superior?
edited 21st Oct '14 6:13:41 AM by andersonh1
Writer, Artist, Ignored
Uniocular
Classic Who is almost always really uncomfortably racist.
"It's so hard to be humble, knowing how great I am."
Seen from our perspective, or for the times it was written for?
Towers of Hanoi was invented in France.
Heart of Stone
Mad Scientist Wannabe
And Hanoi is in Vietnam. So that's one point disqualified.
Of course, don't you know anything about ALCHEMY?!- Twin clones of Ivan the Great
Sorry, work, office hours, lunch break, not much time.
...I mean, the character being stupid is kinda relevant to the racism. I mean, non-white people being inferior in some way is kind of a thing in racist rhetoric.
It does however reflect what he thought he was making at the time though.
Well, for starters there's the fact that the only point where Troughton does a bad Mexican accent is when he's the Doctor badly pretending to be Salamander. Salamander's actual accent is a lot more subdued. And the story treats him with dignity. The only stereotypes he engages in are Bond villain narrative stereotypes, and not racial or ethnic stereotypes.
...And I'd ordinarily say that it would have been better to cast an actually Mexican actor, but part of the point of the story is the Doctor and Salamander looking and sounding mostly the same. I mean, I do know that mixed race siblings can look mostly similar except skin-tone. It happens with twins sometimes. But I don't think Troughton had a half-hispanic brother.
Not that that is a defense of the story, actually. They could have written it differently.
I mean, for most of the story Salamander is treated with a sort of dignity. Wheras the Toymaker is all-out Fu Manchu.
The lovely Doctor Who and Race
book talks about that a bit.
But the mythology of the game is that it was invented in. Well. Hanoi.
...I've not known many racists that were that good at geography.
Except for the costume, the title, and the affected accent. And the chairs and the desk, which were in the serial, if not described in a sentence that used the word "Chinese" like two or three times.
...Sorry, but no. Just no. I've never liked this line of thinking.
Sorry. Gonna quote. I have food to eat. Not much time to eat it in.
I mean, for God's sake, the American Civil Rights movement is international news by now. The word is an American slur. The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes establishes conclusively that any UK usage of that version is picking up on the American version. To use that version is explicitly a reference to American culture, and in 1966, shortly after the heyday of Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights movement in America, there's no sympathetic reading here. There's no way to pick that version of the rhyme without making a conscious decision that you're perfectly fine with calling Martin Luther King the same thing.
Nor can it be chalked up to it being the UK, where the race issues weren't as bad. It was, after all, during this story that enoch Powell made his famed "Rivers of Blood" speech, a viciously racist anti-immigrant speech that was widely condemmned while also, inevitably, attracting a sizable, "Powell was right" contingent. If you're going to pick a week where racism was clearly an issue in the UK, it's the one between part three and four of The Celestial Toymaker. And perhaps more to the point, Martin Luther King won the Nobel Peace Prize two years earlier. The idea that Europe's eyes weren't firmly on the Civil Rights Movement is absurd.
And yet there are still people who insist on defending it. So let's try one more observation. The bulk of racism was not performed my mustache-twirling villains. The bulk of racism in the 1960s was performed by ordinary people who were on the wrong side of history. Enoch Powell was not particularly unusual in his viewpoints. He was unusual in being stupid enough to blurt them out in a major speech. But millions of people quietly agreed with him. Millions more didn't think about it too much, but weren't above using a racist slur in their conversation. This is the real face of racism in the 1960s, and if we reduce the racism of the 1960s to the white supremacists we lose sight of what was so horrible about race in that time period. The ordinary, banal racism of deciding to use the word "nigger" instead of "tiger" is what racism in the 1960s was, most of the time. Giving it a pass as not being as bad or being typical of the era is, in effect, saying that racism in the 1960s was limited to a handful of bad eggs. In truth, it was a massive, endemic problem.
So it's not "a product of its times" or anything like that. Nor was The Ark. Or, rather, they are a product of their times, but they're a product of the worst and most reprehensible instincts of the times. I mean, I'm OK with sympathetic readings of racist texts of the past that acknowledge the failings even as they celebrate what's good about them. Hell - I freely admit that The Ark, and the entire John Wiles era, is gripping television, even if it is largely ethically bankrupt. And it certainly doesn't help that The Celestial Toymaker is crap to start. But there's also no excuse for this. Or for The Ark.
Yes, there were more unrepentant racists in 1966, and so in that sense racism was "part of the culture." But so was the idea of racial equality, and the sense that maybe colonizing people and oppressing them wasn't a very nice thing to do. I mean, the entire Rhodesian conflict we've been talking about puts the lie to the idea that racism and colonialism was unambiguously accepted. Frankly, the ideas that are needed to label this story and The Ark as reactionary bullshit were just as present in 1966 as the racism they embody. Possibly moreso, in that this was an explicit debate going on at the time, and these stories unashamedly associate themselves with the wrong side of that debate.
Anyway.
edited 21st Oct '14 9:06:52 AM by unnoun
I really do hope Capaldi stays as the Doctor for a long time. Hey, he could do what Colin Baker wanted to do and beat Baker the First's record. Capaldi doesn't really need to be afraid of typecasting in the way that younger actors like Smith and Tennant do.
The Toymaker's accent: that clipped tone he uses when ordering the Trilogic game to move ahead, and at no other time? That's supposed to be a Chinese accent? Seriously?
Regarding Capaldi... still making my mind up about him, which probably isn't a good thing five episodes into the season (I've watched as far as Time Heist). He may have taken Peter Davison's place as my least favorite Doctor, though I suppose I'll wait until the end of the season to really make that call. He's not bad, he's just sort of... there. Doing stuff. He's neither offensive nor terribly compelling as the Doctor, not so far anyway.
And he's already been typecast anyway.
He orders the Trilogic game to move ahead a lot.
edited 21st Oct '14 9:11:02 AM by unnoun
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
Exactly. Might as well get typecast as two characters instead of just one.
Does the serial explicitly spell out that Salamander is Mexican? I could hardly tell when I watched it.
Maybe you'd be less disappointed if you stopped expecting things to be Carmen Sandiego movies.
Writer, Artist, Ignored
I still haven't seen it but my research tells me that he was supposed to be Spanish or something. But I haven't looked this stuff up in a while.
@Anderson, But Capaldi Doctor is so... so... Basically He's really amazing and trying to compare him to Davison Doctor is.... A mite odd from my perspective. I mean 5 is among my least favorite, but Capaldi is in like, my top five-ish.
The Blog The Art
Uniocular
Salamander is explicitly confirmed to be Mexican. The Doctor works it out by analyzing his accent, and Giles Kent confirms his birthplace.
I'm largely playing devil's advocate by bringing up Troughton's performance. It's not racist. I applaud Doctor Who in the 60s for so often attempting to depict other cultures, both in history and in the future, with the limited resources and acting pool available to them. But it does seem to me that if someone is going to point at the Celestial Toymaker and accuse the character of being a racist caricature that there are some far more blatant examples that could be cited.
@mousa the 14: I'm not comparing the two performances, because they're very different, I'm just saying that so far the two of them are my least favorites. I like them both. I like everyone who has played the Doctor so far, but someone has to be my least favorite, and right now Capaldi's down there with Davison and Mc Coy.
I think it's relevant to ask how many Chinese, Mongol or Middle-Eastern actors were available for roles in Doctor Who in the 1960s. I think the options were often either cast a European to play the part, or avoid stories that depict China or the Middle East or Mexican dictators.
edited 21st Oct '14 10:57:34 AM by andersonh1
Writer, Artist, Ignored
Pertwee is probably my least favourite too.
Pertwee is tied for my second favorite with Troughton and Hartnell, so we may be looking for very different things in Doctor Who's lead actor. 
I can't see anyone displacing Tom Baker as my favorite though.
Capaldi still has time to make a better impression on me. As I mentioned, I've only seen the first five episodes of the season, so there's plenty of the season left. And if he plays the part a few years, I'm sure that will affect my opinion of him as well.
edited 21st Oct '14 11:02:53 AM by andersonh1
Writer, Artist, Ignored
I guess so. I mean I've watched quite a few stories from 3's era. I may need to see them again but I just know that I always enjoyed the supporting cast overall or for the particular story far more than 3 himself.
My numero Uno, however, is 2. Followed by 11. Then it's a sort of a toss up among Six, 7, 12, 8. 1, War, and 9 come after them. Then somewhere in the extremely middling range I have like, 4 and 5 in the lower middle there somewhere. And 3 at the bottom.
The Blog The Art
...I'm not sure I'd call Salamander a dictator.
In the process of becoming one, sure, but. I dunno.
I mean, Asians are currently one of Britain's largest minorities, making up 7% of the population as of 2001. I doubt that happened overnight.
I think the smart move would've been to just make Salamander a white guy, because neither the story nor his characterization change at all if he is. The same can't really be said for the Toymaker.
edited 21st Oct '14 11:24:24 AM by Wackd
Maybe you'd be less disappointed if you stopped expecting things to be Carmen Sandiego movies.
I started a chronological marathon back in January, and I've reached "The Monster of Peladon", so I've just gone through all of Pertwee's stories in the last few months. In my opinion, Pertwee definitely changes and mellows over time. He can be pretty arrogant and unlikeable at first, though he has moments of charm. The ratio reverses over time in my opinion, and by the time you get to his last season, there's a lot more reason and charm and a lot less being a jerk. Probably because he's out in space with Sarah or Jo and not butting heads with the Brigadier or some other annoying authority figure.
It's definitely speculation on my part. I suspect the numbers were low, but I don't know what they were. It might be worth looking into.
The Toymaker isn't really Chinese, other than his clothing, so they could have put him in a business suit or whatever and the story would have played out exactly the same. I tend to look at him in retrospect as someone like Q from Star Trek, playing dress up and toying with the humans he encounters.
edited 21st Oct '14 11:32:38 AM by andersonh1
A lot of those Target books deviate from what was on screen, some in pretty big ways. Try listening to "The Massacre" and then go read the book. It's almost two different stories. The fact that Gerry Davis put "chinese everything" in the novelisation doesn't mean that accurately reflects the television serial.
I have the Target novelization of Celestial Toymaker. I haven't read it in years, but you've inspired me to go re-read it and see what I think.
And again, why is it just fine for Patrick Troughton to get browned up and play a Mexican with a bad accent, but it's horrible for Michael Gough to play an all-powerful alien who happens to wear Mandarin robes and a hat? Someone explain the difference to me. And don't tell me it's because one story is good and the other isn't. That wouldn't excuse it.
edited 21st Oct '14 5:58:51 AM by andersonh1