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Reposted by Philip Purser-Hallard

Philip Purser-Hallard @purserhallard.com · 14h

It occurs to me that the Doctor's polyethnic identity in recent times recontextualises Peter Davison's casting in quite an interesting way.
(For context, although you'd be unlikely to guess it by looking at him, Davison's paternal family is Guyanese. He has close relatives who are visibly Black.)

Peter Davison, a fair-skinned blond man, as the fifth Doctor, circa 1982.

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Reposted by Philip Purser-Hallard

Spinky’s Mama @spinkysmama.bsky.social · 13h

Great thread. I can add Peter Davison writing about his father:

Extract from Is There Life Outside The Box? An Actor Despairs
Autobiography by Peter Davison

I more like him than I cared to admit while he was alive. I stand like he did, sit like he did, I look at my hands and see his, I look in the mirror and see his features, even though our colouring was so completely different. While I longed to look more like him, I realise I turned out as perfectly as he could have wished.
Here was a man from the Caribbean who wanted nothing more than to be accepted as British, who had a son who had made a name for himself playing the typical Eng-lishman.

Extract from Is There Life Outside The Box? An Actor Despairs
Autobiography by Peter Davison

But of course it did matter. What to us was a taste of the exotic was, to my father a bothersome distraction in his quest to be accepted as an exemplary British citizen.
The fact that his only son was born with blond hair and blue eyes, courtesy of inheriting my mother's dominant Caucasian genes, unlike my sisters, made the transition complete. Over the years however, his West Indian heritage became more than a distraction, and while we never knew of it until later, there's no doubt he suffered discrimination and rejection at the hands of Mother England that he loved. When Enoch Powell gave his 'Rivers of Blood' speech and my father had to stand in line and register as an alien, having been eventually accepted by my mother's extended family and friends, probably did nothing to soften his feelings.

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Horace Dorrington @mrtrellis.bsky.social · 14h

Note also the companions. Tegan is a white settler colonialist. Nyssa is the sole survivor of a dead empire. And Adric along with every other Alzarian is literally an indigene 'passing for white.'

All of which is a coincidence but a really nice one.

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Reposted by Philip Purser-Hallard

Horace Dorrington @mrtrellis.bsky.social · 14h

And Snakedance, in which a decaying colonial empire into which the previous two Doctors would have breezed treats this incarnation as a scaremongering fool with dodgy indigenous sympathies.

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Philip Purser-Hallard @purserhallard.com · 14h

I'm not going anywhere else with this particularly, but it's worth bearing in mind when rewatching these stories.

(I refuse to tie this in with the Master, the Doctor's opposite, greying-up as an Orientalist stereotype in Time-Flight, because it would just make the above sound silly.)

Anthony Ainley as the Master, impersonating a pantomime eastern magician called Kalid, in Time-Flight (1982). As well as a more villainous than usual moustache and exotic robes, his "disguise" involves grey clay slathered over his face and a bald head. No, I have no idea, sorry.

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Philip Purser-Hallard @purserhallard.com · 14h

To some extent this is a retrospectively imposed reading, of course -- the producer, directors and scriptwriters were all assuming Davison was a default white man, and making the programme accordingly -- but the actor knew. That puts a degree of self-awareness in the overall creative collaboration.

The Doctor, and Nerys Hughes as Todd, patronising Lee Comes as the Trickster, one of the Kinda.

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Philip Purser-Hallard @purserhallard.com · 14h

The characters around him often make assumptions about the Doctor's sympathies in stories like this. These expectations are usually confounded (the stories are broadly against colonialism, though they're not always very good at it), but this context could give those moments extra resonance.

The fifth Doctor sitting in a deck chair, with cricket bat and ball, looking very civilised.

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Philip Purser-Hallard @purserhallard.com · 14h

In Black Orchid particularly, far from being in his element with the 1920s aristocrats, the Doctor would be just as much an outsider as the Native American, Latoni, if only they knew. In a story about the corruption of empire, where everyone's hiding something behind a facade, the hero is too.

The fifth Doctor in Black Orchid (1982), preparing for a spot of cricket with Lord Cranleigh.

Dittar Latoni, an Amazonian native American character, in Black Orchid. He is played by an actor called Ahmed Khalil, suggesting that somebody at the BBC has been confused by the use of the word "Indian".

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Philip Purser-Hallard @purserhallard.com · 14h

There's a shedload of colonialism in Davison's early stories. Aliens who've captured humans from historical cultures and make them eternally reenact their cultural rituals. Human colonists try to civilise a tribal culture that long ago outgrew its vastly sophisticated technologies.

Ilario Bisi-Pedro as Kurkutji, an Indigenous Australian, and Burt Kwouk as Lin Futu, a Chinese mandarin, in Four to Doomsday (1982).

Simon Rouse as Hindle, addressing two of the tribal Kinda who he's dressed like him in tropical fatigues and pith helmets, in Kinda (1982).

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Philip Purser-Hallard @purserhallard.com · 14h

But now that the Doctor has been Black, we can read his incarnation with this knowledge as a mixed-race (or, in some sense, partially Black) man passing as white, which potentially gives the cricket obsession and the Edwardian costume a very different significance.

Ncuti Gatwa, a Black man, as the 15th Doctor, circa 2023.

Jo Martin, a Black woman, as the Fugitive Doctor, circa 2020.

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Philip Purser-Hallard @purserhallard.com · 14h

In 1981, Davison was a mixed-race actor who had the necessary looks to pass as white. His heritage was never a notable factor in his casting as the Doctor, as it undoubtedly would have been if he'd inherited a darker skin.

Peter Davison being interviewed on the BBC magazine programme Pebble Mill at One in 1980.

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Philip Purser-Hallard @purserhallard.com · 14h

It occurs to me that the Doctor's polyethnic identity in recent times recontextualises Peter Davison's casting in quite an interesting way.
(For context, although you'd be unlikely to guess it by looking at him, Davison's paternal family is Guyanese. He has close relatives who are visibly Black.)

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Philip Purser-Hallard @purserhallard.com · 20h

Episode 1 is amazing, like an alternative version of the show where the Doctor and the Master are rival mages. Later the Doctor gets a bit boring on the subject.

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Philip Purser-Hallard @purserhallard.com · 21h

The M-W entry for "primer" lists these as two separate words, but why would they be? Surely they're different uses of the same agentive noun, created from the verb 'to prime' in a totally standard way. Nobody pronounces the verb as "prim". I'm baffled.

Merriam-Webster @merriam-webster.com · 1d

Here’s a primer on ‘primer.’

It’s pronounced ‘PRIMM-er’ if you mean “a small book” or “a short informative piece of writing.”

It’s pronounced ‘PRY-mer’ if you mean “an initial coat of paint.”

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Philip Purser-Hallard @purserhallard.com · 22h

I think it can be both.

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Reposted by Philip Purser-Hallard

Jonathan Healey @jonathanhealey.bsky.social · 22h

It was two OUP books.

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Philip Purser-Hallard @purserhallard.com · 1d

I am 54 in three weeks' time, and I have just twigged that the title of the 1988 film Married to the Mob is playing on the phrase "married to the job".

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Philip Purser-Hallard @purserhallard.com · 2d

#2 there dressing like the seventh Doctor while looking like the Chief Caretaker.

Stephen Graves @stephengraves.co.uk · 2d

A surprisingly large number of them think the way to connect with Gen Z is "dress like Sylvester McCoy's Doctor Who."

A screen grab of a Times article. The photograph depicts three men and a woman - according to the caption these are Charles Amos, Rhys Benjamin, Daniel Campbell and Glesni Reece.

Charles is in tweeds and a fedora, Rhys sports a combover and a question mark pullover as worn by the seventh Doctor Who. Daniel wears a blue "Make Britain Great Again" baseball cap. Glesni, unlike the others, is not wearing an outlandish costume, just a black tailored jacket over a white blouse.

Text reads:

Meet the young Tories dreaming of a bright blue future
The Conservatives know they have a problem with Gen Z voters. At the party conference, The Times met a new breed of activists who are embracing the challenge

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Philip Purser-Hallard @purserhallard.com · 2d

I haven't seen the last episode yet, but is it established that the Ocellus absorbs knowledge from its hosts, rather than just using them as a vehicle? If so, then knowing pi isn't surprising either -- either way, the comprehension seems more of a demonstration of intelligence.

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Kenny Smith @finishedzine.bsky.social · 2d

🎶NEW EPISODE!🎶

We're delighted to welcome back our pal @dalesmithonline.com to discuss his latest #DoctorWho Black Archive on The Devil's Chord.

@obversebooks.co.uk

on.soundcloud.com/CQGDuZFPm4o5...

440: The Black Archive - The Devil's Chord

We take a look at the latest release in the Black Archive series from Obverse Books in our latest episode. Their first book to feature the Fifteenth Doctor is The Devil's Chord, from season 1/series 1

soundcloud.com

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Philip Purser-Hallard @purserhallard.com · 2d

I mean, the scene makes sense if it just understands English, as well. But to even know what Kavalier's asking it has to recognise the first three digits as numbers and the number system they belong to. Isn't either of those a bit more remarkable, in an alien organism, than knowing about pi?

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Philip Purser-Hallard @purserhallard.com · 2d

In Alien: Earth, where everyone's excited because T Ocellus knows the digits of pi and it's treated as a clever feat of interspecies communication... aren't they missing the fact that to follow the request it must, at a minimum, also understand Arabic numerals and that humans use a base 10 system?

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Reposted by Philip Purser-Hallard

Tom Cox @dj-acid-reflux.bsky.social · 2d

I'm giving away this signed 1st edition h/b of my new novel (it has a tiny jacket rip which means I wouldn't sell it) to one person who reposts this.

You might like it if you like:
Folkloric creatures
Old records
Intricate psychedelic stories
The idea of circular time

All shares much-appreciated.

Joe McLaren's fabulous cover for Everything Will Swallow You

A close up of the small tear on this first edition of Everything Will Swallow You

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Reposted by Philip Purser-Hallard

HTFB @htfb.bsky.social · 2d

A pair of pyjamas includes a pair of pyjama trousers, as well as one pyjama shirt, which actually makes three pyjamas.

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Reposted by Philip Purser-Hallard

Russell Smith @rswings.bsky.social · 2d

Never take advice on an English degree from someone who won't spell check their own merch.

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