Politics in Media - The Good, the Bad, and the Preachy

This discussion reminds me of Doctor Who S31 E2 "The Beast Below". In a future where the Earth has died, Britain (among other nations) embarks aboard a massive starship to find a new home. Amy discovers that they have enslaved a Space Whale and then wiped their own memories so they keep forgetting about the atrocity they've committed.

Each citizen gets a chance to "vote" for this, and if even a single one votes "no", the whale is released and, allegedly, everyone dies. The Doctor figures out that the whale is perfectly happy to help them and didn't need to be enslaved in the first place.

Edited by Fighteer on Apr 25th 2024 at 9:01:52 AM

Notably,from our recap page..

• The Beast Below volunteered its services to lift all of the UK (except Scotland, which already had its own ship)

typical Bloody scotland!

To be clear, in game everyone is dying regardless. There's no way out of that. A tiny handful of nerds get to die quietly in a bunker (except they don't, as Faro murders them as part of his 'screw it, let's do a full reset, not give humanity of the future any knowledge or guidance [especially about my culpability in all this]' decision-making), but the problem is that humanity created a robot swarm that feeds off organic life and is literally going to eat the planet into being uninhabitable.

It will take a very, very long time (like centuries) for even a massive supercomputer to hack into its command controls and shut it down, far longer than it will take for everything to be eaten. The entire goal of the military action and lies is to hold the swarm back until the project to eventually shut it down, re-terraform the planet and eventually bring back humanity can be constructed.

The story that is told is that it's a superweapon which will let them survive, which is false. But they're dying either way.

Yeah, it's a scenario where everyone is fucked regardless. There's zero chance of humanity surviving on Earth.

Actually, it's only if the current Queen of England votes no that the Space Whale gets released.

If a normal citizen goes into the voting booth and votes no, a trapdoor opens and they're sent to the Space Whale's mouth to be eaten.

The episode doesn't have quite so grim a view of humanity that not a single person had voted to release the whale before now.

Edited by GNinja on Apr 25th 2024 at 4:37:18 PM

Yes, that's correct, but I didn't want to get into the complicated details. Just noting that this sort of situation — an atrocity committed to save humanity that is kept secret from the humans thus saved — is not unheard of in fiction.

As you note, the dissenters get fed to the whale, which isn't exactly a happy idea. The whole thing is quite dystopian.

Edited by Fighteer on Apr 25th 2024 at 12:36:27 PM

Except, to be clear, the intent wasn't to keep it secret, it was exactly the reverse, they were meant to be a cautionary tale.

Somehow I missed or forgot that bit of info while watching the episode. That makes the ruling elite much more unsympathetic and makes you think they should be overthrown for the innocent citizens they killed. I thought only the ruling monarch and few others could vote on the whale's fate.

Isn't there also a bit at the beginning of the episode where some kid who fails a test at school tries to use the elevator to get home, instead of walking a very long distance, and gets dropped into places unknown (later revealed to be the space whale) instead by the supervising creepy robot?

Sure, one of the reveals is that the space whale doesn't eat kids, but it's not a great society.

The whole system is automated. The queen subjected herself to the same amnesia as everyone else, and it is only when Amy and The Doctor intervene that she is able to break out of the moral trap.

Hmm... Victimizing others, turning a blind eye to their suffering then "selectively forget" about them and re-write history to make oneself look good.

This is an .............excellent metaphor for humanity actually.

Edited by jawal on Apr 25th 2024 at 6:07:12 PM

Was it presented that anyone could vote No and authorities allowed it, solely to get that "non conformative" voter killed? Because it's quite scummy, since they specifically allowed many people to be killed, solely to weed out those, who don't like the current status of things, from i see.

Edited by VeryVileVillian on Apr 25th 2024 at 8:16:30 PM

Honestly, it's a rather misanthropic one.

If they stop torturing the Whale, then the ship will disintegrate and everyone will die (or so they thought)

So,it make sense, they won't tolerate decedents.

..............

Interestingly, the doctor's initial solution was to kill the innocent creature mercifully instead of freeing it.

The Doctor is humanity's champion.

Edited by jawal on Apr 25th 2024 at 6:36:31 PM

Iirc, you vote after you turn 16, and then every 5 years after that.

Amy, the Doctor's companion, also gets put into a voting booth after she sees one of the Whale's tentacles in a cordoned off section of the ship. So they might also use the voting process whenever someone independently stumbles across evidence of what's going on.

Edited by GNinja on Apr 25th 2024 at 5:38:46 PM

Also I think the target was to keep the protesters percentage low, under 1—2%, because if enough people voted protest at once, the system break.

I'm looking through a transcript of the episode. I'm trying to find if this "1%" thing is legit or if it's just part of the propoganda told to people when they vote.

Because this is the beginning of the message all voters get when they go into the booth.

And I could easily read that as like, another method of convincing people to vote "forget", by making it look like the number of people who choose to protest is that small.

Edited by GNinja on Apr 25th 2024 at 5:53:04 PM

Obviously, the idea is that enough people will vote 'Forget' to keep the ship going. Whether they would actually carry through with a 'No' vote if that one percent threshold is reached is never revealed, because the Doctor says, "Fuck this shit." As is his wont.

(Also, the Queen has unilateral authority to decide 'No' at any time.)

Doctor Who isn't above presenting this sort of moral dilemma for consideration, but it is also fond of Taking a Third Option, which ends up being that the whale was perfectly happy to carry everyone without being tortured (or lobotomized).

Edited by Fighteer on Apr 25th 2024 at 2:22:29 PM

I guess that humans not even considering they didn't have to be cruel is also a commentary.

its sometimes a bit of a cop out to Take a Third Option, but in this particular case, given that it's roughly a metaphor for environmentalism, i think it's a good point— we really aren't forced to choose between "destroy the earth" and "total primitivism". Doing things at anything less than "maxiumum speed and maximum profit", making an effort to achieve the results we want in a non destructive way, is in fact totally an option we have

maybe a minor sacrifice could've held the message better? the whale is a bit slower or they no longer control it's direction it something (been a while since i watched it, if that doesn't match the details, sorry)

Edited by Tremmor19 on Apr 25th 2024 at 2:08:16 PM

Actually, the whale goes faster after they stop torturing it. Getting along with nature sometimes works out to everyone's favor. In fact, the whale came to Earth specifically because the people were in trouble and literally volunteered its services, but everyone was too busy with their self-loathing confirmation bias to notice.

Edited by Fighteer on Apr 25th 2024 at 2:11:19 PM

yea, i did remember that— so maybe the metaphor is different than i thought

or i should stop viewing everything through metaphor first and just look at it as a space whale in space

Isn't this episode where the term Space Whale Aesop even comes from? Or is that Star Trek?

Doctor Who is not above moralizing. It does that all the freaking time.

It's just that it's at heart a fun Space Opera about a time-travelling alien in a telephone box. There's nearly always a happy ending, at least until it's time to dispose of his companions.

As it says on the trope page, the name comes from Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home.

Edited by Fighteer on Apr 25th 2024 at 2:21:57 PM

What do you mean? Doctor Who being political is a new thing that has never happened before in its 60 year history. You must be mistaken.