The Black Doctor

It’s been six months since my last post and I honestly believed that I had covered everything that I wanted to and discussed all of the points that had enticed me into starting a blog in the first place, but recent news has compelled me to post once again.

I have been a fan of Doctor Who ever since I was a boy. It is a quintessentially British programme that I enjoyed immensely growing up.

I won’t say who my favourite Doctor was, as it would show my age, suffice to say he was more of a Grandfatherly figure than the modern Doctors.

It may come as a surprise to some, but I am actually saddened by the news that the new actor replacing David Tennant is black.

Paterson Joseph, who whilst a fine actor, is not what I envisage as Doctor Who, and whilst modernists may claim that such a selection is needed in order to bring the series up to date and in order to make the programme more inclusive – I for one certainly don’t feel it. 

I have covered this topic before and discussed my reasoning at length, but there is more to this instance of political correctness for me than simply random programme’s using black faces. There seems to be a continuing ethnicitising of Doctor Who and I cannot understand why.

I have been an avid viewer of this series almost since its inception, and I have never seen a black Timelord in 45 years. I do remember noticing the absence of black faces, but then I understood from an early age that there the Timelords were a white race.

There were black races, such as the Movellans but it wasn’t until much later that black faces began appearing in Doctor Who and it seemed to me that once the floodgates had been opened it became a veritable torrent.

The new Doctor’s first assistant had a black boyfriend, which didn’t really strike me as odd, more a sign of the times. There were many black actors and actresses through the first and second series playing a myriad of parts, and again understandable, if alien races can have white people, why not black people too? The Doctor’s second assistant was black, this did disturb me slightly and I became concerned with the direction this seemed to be taking.

Next came the Christmas ‘Special’. I distinctly remember after Merlin thinking to myself that the BBC would never add in such historical inaccuracies in a flagship programme like Doctor Who – oh dear.

 

After viewing the promotional trailers I actually found myself trying to justify a Negro in Victorian Britain. After emancipation some did remain in the UK and it is quite conceivable that the Doctor’s assistant would be a Victorian Negro, although it is some stretch. I had many misgivings wondering why the BBC seemed to be stretching reality to the point of breaking in order to get black faces on the screen.

Then I sat down on Christmas Day and watched the episode itself and I cannot accurately convey my utter dismay as I watched the opening scenes without using a modern abbreviation – WTF. Fortunately I did not vocalise that thought as young family members were present but that is what went through my mind during the opening scenes.

Picture the scene, Victorian London, blanketed in snow with many poor Dickensian folk going about their daily business, many of whom were black! I was furious. 400 years of history glossed over and ignored in the name of political correctness and equality point scoring.

It portrayed Britain as always having had Negroes living here, as if slavery and emancipation never happened, William Wilberforce, Ignatius Sancho and others did not ever exist, they did not need to. We’ve always been here, living in perfect harmony.

There is no black culture, no time when black people in Britain were outsiders, immigrants, nothing that black people added to Britishness and Britain that improved it, we were here all along.

As I said, this infuriated me, the BBC seemed to be treating me with utter contempt, I either did not matter or they believed that I was ignorant of my own history. As those feelings slowly subsided over the Christmas period and I had not managed to get around to voicing my anger via an official complaint, I felt that I should just let sleeping dogs lie, until I received a further slap in the face – a black Doctor.

Apparently the BBC feels that it is not enough to simply erase black history, and have black faces throughout every time period, now it has also decided that all the major parts in the series must go to black people too.

You’d be fairly confident that the hierarchy of both the BBC and of Doctor Who were predominantly black and using their position to get more black faces on the screen, contrary to equality guidelines; but nothing could be further from the truth. The only ‘minorities’ making these decisions are women and homosexuals and white ones at that. In fact if you were to head into the production of Doctor Who, or any high level meeting at the BBC, it would be foolish to play spot the Negro, you would be there for quite a while – at least until the cleaner comes in (and now I sound like those whiny equality complainers that I despise).

The real question is why. Perhaps I misjudged Lenny Henry when I lambasted him for making what I believed at the time were inappropriate, unhelpful and inaccurate remarks. Perhaps when he said:

“When I started, I was surrounded by a predominantly white workforce, and 32 years later, not a lot has changed,”

He wasn’t talking about on the screen, but he was referring to what goes on behind the cameras, as in another quote that I used before:

Samir Shah, a member of the BBC’s board of directors, said this had led to a “world of deracinated coloured people flickering across our screens – to the irritation of many viewers and the embarrassment of the very people such actions are meant to appease”

He also said:

instead of dealing with the issues surrounding why greater numbers of people from ethnic minorities had not made it to the executive level of British television, broadcasters had instead put more black and Asian faces on screen, regardless of whether they were cultural fits to the programmes they were in.

The emphasis is mine.

“I don’t think that such over-representation is a brilliant idea. Another thing that’s not real is some of the casting of non-whites in fiction,” he added.

As Mr Shah points out the problem isn’t racism, it is down to the fact that the people at the top like to promote those that they believe are like them, like some sort of old boys network.

“the positions of real creative power in British broadcasting, are still controlled by a metropolitan, largely liberal, white, middle-class, cultural elite – and, until recently, largely male and largely Oxbridge.”

What infuriates me is not that these old Etonian’s, or whatever they are, are sticking together and have implemented some sort of glass ceiling for everyone else, but that they believe they simply need to stick a few black faces on the screen to keep the Negroes and other minorities happy and everything will be fine and dandy.

What’s next? A black Scrooge? A black Robin Hood or Maid Marian? A black Father Christmas? A whole new meaning to Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice?

This must be annoying white people as much as everyone else, if not more, yet you’ll have to work hard to find any criticism in the mainstream press.  It appears that nobody wishes to criticise through fear of being branded racist and ironically it seems to be left to the minorities to raise a hue and cry about this deracinating of television.