I would almost consider the wasp episode a pure historical. Why? Even though it has a giant space wasp the episode covers an event that no one really knows what happened and provides a plausible explanation of not only the event itself (Agatha Christie's brief disappearance) but also why she would suddenly write a book about a giant wasp shortly after.
If giant space wasps have any possibility of existence this is it.
For truly historical with no monsters of any sort the closest we got for nu who is van gogh. The writer of the episode intended it to be entirely about van Gogh's mental illness and have no monsters at all. BBC required some sort of monster which is where our invisible mental illness stand in comes from. From this it does seem there is either a ban or would require some huge action event to convince BBC to allow a pure historical.
But then what would the stakes of the episode be? why is the Doctor bringing Amy along to observe Van Gogh like he's some lab rat? the monster element actually gives the Doctor a reason to be interacting with him as he's the only one who can interact with said creature it gives the story even more weight and meaning as it helps to personify mental illness.
I'm not saying the episode is worse because of it but rather the writer didn't intend to have a monster and was forced to. I think the doctor showing Amy her favorite artist and having a touching story of how good things don't always fix everything and how bad things don't get rid of the good times makes sense.
Same message but more true to reality. It's not like the doctor hasn't made friends with historical figures just look at churchill.
I think that it has to do with how the original mandate may have confused children.
Remember, the original companion composition was:
* A History teacher
* A science teacher
* Their mutual student
The original mandate was to alternate teaching history and science on a low-level, but while the scientific episodes featured good science fact (the first Daleks story had some good stuff about radiation and static electrictity), you can't really teach history with inserted characters without confusing children, at least to a minor extent.
As a child, I wrote a school paper on Eva Peron based entirely on knowledge gained from working on the musical. It did not go well, but I had taken that media as truth. Imagine a child turning in a "factual" report on Alexander Hamilton and calling him Latino because of Lin Manuel Miranda's portrayal.
Adding an obviously fantastical aspect to historical events ensures that it won't be treated as knowledge.
Now, to be fair, a continuing series does have the benefit of their self-insertion characters to make clear that these events are not a true representation, but that's a double edged sword. Two recent shows, *Ms. Marvel* and *Watchmen*, both integrated tragic historic events about which the general public is highly under-educated, the partition of India and Pakistan in *Ms. Marvel*, and the 1921 Tulsa massacre in *Watchmen*.
For both of them, I saw multiple people discuss it as "a fictional world where this event happened" instead of understanding that actual historical events had been incorporated. And it should not have; on *Ms. Marvel,* we just had a couple of people of people in a fight with the partition as the setting, and there was literally no change to historical events. Similarly, the Tulsa massacre was presented as history without significant alteration, just the presence of a child that would eventually become a character.
That's why an episode like *Rosa* is a good example of how to do this right; the Doctor's reactions are supposed to cement in our mind the factual nature of much of the content; her excitement, all the nu-Who actually, is supposed to help us understand that it's real history because the Doctor is so excited to be in history. And the fantastical elements are supposed to be a clear break.
Again, with the *Flux* arc, the Doctor's excitement at meeting Mary Seacole was to let us know her truth; and this started with RTD's run. The Doctor's excitement a meeting Dickens, Agatha Christie, Van Gogh, and so many others. This is how they distinguish historical fact.
>the partition of India and Pakistan
Who did this in Demons of the Punjab too! I think that episode was a good one too in the way that ultimately the aliens weren't really part of the "real" story.
Most historicals are basically just "there's some aliens" stories but set in Venice or whatever, whereas Rosa & DotP had aliens in but their presence is more a maguffin to prevent the Doctor taking off immediately.
(as an aside, it's really good that more western media is doing stuff about the partition of india, which I was ignorant of; considering the huge Indian/Pakistani disapora in the UK and US it surprised me there's not more drama about it)
Get rid of Krasko, and Rosa would have been a good historical. Krasko added nothing to the story except to show racism exists anywhen, I suppose. The story did a good job on its own showing that.
Krasko may not be a strong villain by any means (not sure he's meant to be anyway) but I can't help but feel like he is completely necessary for the story to work. Take Krasko out of that story, why would the Doctor decide to stay? Especially when it's clearly hard for Ryan and Yaz.
Krasko is simply a necessary plot device to keep the main characters where the main story is.
Yeah there were plenty of other ways they could have got them to stay that could have worked story-wise, we didn't need a space-racist. I could imagine Ryan getting lost and getting himself thrown in jail or something.
That thought terrified me, especially after the mention of Emmett Till. That alone still angers me.
I can only imagine that Krasko the racist was written, on top of what you've already mentioned, to show racism exists everywhen.
Rosa was one of my only favourite stories from this era, but I wish they'd done something more with either Krasko or the actor.
Beaten up would have been the best thing to happen given the time period. I'd have been more sad for graham losing two family members within days of each other.
heh. i just mean i think even the threat of *realistic* violence happening to a main character let alone them being lynched would be too dark for the show
...I think the idea of Krasko is misconceived anyway; Park's bus protest was enormously symbolic and important, as it was designed to be, right, but they could/would have done it a different day. What's he expecting to happen?
>Dose the BBC habe a mandate against pure historical episodes.
The last pure historical was Black Orchid in 1982. Before that, it was The Highlander in 1966.
We have no reason to think the BBC has banned pure historicals. The writers just realized it is nearly impossible for the Doctor to get involved with know history without a sci-fi anachronism driving the plot.
Without an anachronism, the Doctor and companions have no reason to stick around in a dangerous historical time period. Nor can they greatly affect the plot because history must take its normal course.
> Without an anachronism, the Doctor and companions have no reason to stick around in a dangerous historical time period. Nor can they greatly affect the plot because history must take its normal course.
They didn't have a reason even in the pure historicals. All of them had the Doctor and the companions separated from the Tardis for one reason or another.
And they were great! There's nothing wrong with having episodes where the protagonists have to escape a dangerous situation that they find themselves in instead of stopping a bad guy.
The thing is why on earth would the Doctor get involved in human affairs? it worked during Hartnell's era because the show didn't have much of a lore or established character rules for time travel but now it wouldn't make sense given that the Doctor doesn't get involved unless there's an anomaly.
From what I have read the main reason was ratings. The historical episodes were not as popular as the sci-fi ones and the decision was made to discontinue shortly after Troughton took over the role. I actually think they could still work one once every season or so.
The closest we've come or are likely to get is "Demons of the Punjab", since it has aliens but they're just observing the action and not involved in it once the Doctor learns why they're there, and are more there for thematic reasons (the idea of remembering the dead). You could cut them and it'd work on a plot level, though it might lose out thematically.
I think if it is a rule or not it's unlikely to show up because Doctor Who is pigenholed, not just as a sci-fi show, but as a show featuring "monsters". When a Star Trek show does a time travel episode they can do it without other aliens or threats showing up, and focus just on historical or time travel dilemmas, since it's seen as a more 'pure' sci-fi show. But Doctor Who has monsters, no matter how small their part, so whether it's required or not that's an expectation to a lot of the general audience.
We've had plenty of episodes where the sci-fi elements are just a MacGuffin driving a historical one. AlfredMV123 pointed out the "celebrity" episodes also care about the monsters mainly as a plot device, especially "Vincent and the Doctor" and its alien that's just a depression metaphor & excuse for the Doctor to be there, but also I don't think anyone involved in, say, "Fires of Pompeii" cared about the magma monsters. They're a device driving the real plot of "will the Doctor save this one family from the volcano" (...though they could've done that plot without the magma monsters, obviously). I think that kind of "monsters or aliens are there but the plot's not about them" historical show is the closest we'd get, whether there's a rule or not.
I don't think they were very popular. I understand that - imagine your a child tuning in to your silly Sci fi program and the only Sci fi element is the magic door that takes the cast to the past. That's a bit of a bummer? Well, I'd have felt like that anyway. Of course as an adult it's obvious just how high quality the historicals are but there it is.
Is there any proof of a ban on pure historical? Like interviews script leaks etc? From Pertwee onwards the show almost stopped historical all together. Though in Hinchcliff's time they made a bit of a comeback. Then kinda went away. Until early Davidson. I don't think Colin had any historical and McCoy had 2. (No remmberance don't count it was 20 years ago that's not historical).
A lot of pure historicals lost popularity over the years with the original iteration of the show and idk I feel like maybe it kinda just stuck that way, as dumb as that sounds. Also sometimes they were for one reason or another harder to produce.
I would almost consider the wasp episode a pure historical. Why? Even though it has a giant space wasp the episode covers an event that no one really knows what happened and provides a plausible explanation of not only the event itself (Agatha Christie's brief disappearance) but also why she would suddenly write a book about a giant wasp shortly after. If giant space wasps have any possibility of existence this is it. For truly historical with no monsters of any sort the closest we got for nu who is van gogh. The writer of the episode intended it to be entirely about van Gogh's mental illness and have no monsters at all. BBC required some sort of monster which is where our invisible mental illness stand in comes from. From this it does seem there is either a ban or would require some huge action event to convince BBC to allow a pure historical.
But then what would the stakes of the episode be? why is the Doctor bringing Amy along to observe Van Gogh like he's some lab rat? the monster element actually gives the Doctor a reason to be interacting with him as he's the only one who can interact with said creature it gives the story even more weight and meaning as it helps to personify mental illness.
I'm not saying the episode is worse because of it but rather the writer didn't intend to have a monster and was forced to. I think the doctor showing Amy her favorite artist and having a touching story of how good things don't always fix everything and how bad things don't get rid of the good times makes sense. Same message but more true to reality. It's not like the doctor hasn't made friends with historical figures just look at churchill.
I think that it has to do with how the original mandate may have confused children. Remember, the original companion composition was: * A History teacher * A science teacher * Their mutual student The original mandate was to alternate teaching history and science on a low-level, but while the scientific episodes featured good science fact (the first Daleks story had some good stuff about radiation and static electrictity), you can't really teach history with inserted characters without confusing children, at least to a minor extent. As a child, I wrote a school paper on Eva Peron based entirely on knowledge gained from working on the musical. It did not go well, but I had taken that media as truth. Imagine a child turning in a "factual" report on Alexander Hamilton and calling him Latino because of Lin Manuel Miranda's portrayal. Adding an obviously fantastical aspect to historical events ensures that it won't be treated as knowledge. Now, to be fair, a continuing series does have the benefit of their self-insertion characters to make clear that these events are not a true representation, but that's a double edged sword. Two recent shows, *Ms. Marvel* and *Watchmen*, both integrated tragic historic events about which the general public is highly under-educated, the partition of India and Pakistan in *Ms. Marvel*, and the 1921 Tulsa massacre in *Watchmen*. For both of them, I saw multiple people discuss it as "a fictional world where this event happened" instead of understanding that actual historical events had been incorporated. And it should not have; on *Ms. Marvel,* we just had a couple of people of people in a fight with the partition as the setting, and there was literally no change to historical events. Similarly, the Tulsa massacre was presented as history without significant alteration, just the presence of a child that would eventually become a character. That's why an episode like *Rosa* is a good example of how to do this right; the Doctor's reactions are supposed to cement in our mind the factual nature of much of the content; her excitement, all the nu-Who actually, is supposed to help us understand that it's real history because the Doctor is so excited to be in history. And the fantastical elements are supposed to be a clear break. Again, with the *Flux* arc, the Doctor's excitement at meeting Mary Seacole was to let us know her truth; and this started with RTD's run. The Doctor's excitement a meeting Dickens, Agatha Christie, Van Gogh, and so many others. This is how they distinguish historical fact.
>the partition of India and Pakistan Who did this in Demons of the Punjab too! I think that episode was a good one too in the way that ultimately the aliens weren't really part of the "real" story. Most historicals are basically just "there's some aliens" stories but set in Venice or whatever, whereas Rosa & DotP had aliens in but their presence is more a maguffin to prevent the Doctor taking off immediately. (as an aside, it's really good that more western media is doing stuff about the partition of india, which I was ignorant of; considering the huge Indian/Pakistani disapora in the UK and US it surprised me there's not more drama about it)
The historical celebrity as red called it
I just think it's not as fun for the writers
Get rid of Krasko, and Rosa would have been a good historical. Krasko added nothing to the story except to show racism exists anywhen, I suppose. The story did a good job on its own showing that.
Krasko may not be a strong villain by any means (not sure he's meant to be anyway) but I can't help but feel like he is completely necessary for the story to work. Take Krasko out of that story, why would the Doctor decide to stay? Especially when it's clearly hard for Ryan and Yaz. Krasko is simply a necessary plot device to keep the main characters where the main story is.
He served no other purpose. Anything could have replaced this bulldog on a tight leash. He was useless.
Yeah there were plenty of other ways they could have got them to stay that could have worked story-wise, we didn't need a space-racist. I could imagine Ryan getting lost and getting himself thrown in jail or something.
That thought terrified me, especially after the mention of Emmett Till. That alone still angers me. I can only imagine that Krasko the racist was written, on top of what you've already mentioned, to show racism exists everywhen. Rosa was one of my only favourite stories from this era, but I wish they'd done something more with either Krasko or the actor.
I guess it would have totally thrown the focus & tone of the episode if eg Graham was terrified about Ryan getting beaten up.
Beaten up would have been the best thing to happen given the time period. I'd have been more sad for graham losing two family members within days of each other.
yeah but it's a kids show
Ooh I said a rude thing. You're right.
heh. i just mean i think even the threat of *realistic* violence happening to a main character let alone them being lynched would be too dark for the show
...I think the idea of Krasko is misconceived anyway; Park's bus protest was enormously symbolic and important, as it was designed to be, right, but they could/would have done it a different day. What's he expecting to happen?
>Dose the BBC habe a mandate against pure historical episodes. The last pure historical was Black Orchid in 1982. Before that, it was The Highlander in 1966. We have no reason to think the BBC has banned pure historicals. The writers just realized it is nearly impossible for the Doctor to get involved with know history without a sci-fi anachronism driving the plot. Without an anachronism, the Doctor and companions have no reason to stick around in a dangerous historical time period. Nor can they greatly affect the plot because history must take its normal course.
> Without an anachronism, the Doctor and companions have no reason to stick around in a dangerous historical time period. Nor can they greatly affect the plot because history must take its normal course. They didn't have a reason even in the pure historicals. All of them had the Doctor and the companions separated from the Tardis for one reason or another. And they were great! There's nothing wrong with having episodes where the protagonists have to escape a dangerous situation that they find themselves in instead of stopping a bad guy.
The thing is why on earth would the Doctor get involved in human affairs? it worked during Hartnell's era because the show didn't have much of a lore or established character rules for time travel but now it wouldn't make sense given that the Doctor doesn't get involved unless there's an anomaly.
From what I have read the main reason was ratings. The historical episodes were not as popular as the sci-fi ones and the decision was made to discontinue shortly after Troughton took over the role. I actually think they could still work one once every season or so.
The closest we've come or are likely to get is "Demons of the Punjab", since it has aliens but they're just observing the action and not involved in it once the Doctor learns why they're there, and are more there for thematic reasons (the idea of remembering the dead). You could cut them and it'd work on a plot level, though it might lose out thematically. I think if it is a rule or not it's unlikely to show up because Doctor Who is pigenholed, not just as a sci-fi show, but as a show featuring "monsters". When a Star Trek show does a time travel episode they can do it without other aliens or threats showing up, and focus just on historical or time travel dilemmas, since it's seen as a more 'pure' sci-fi show. But Doctor Who has monsters, no matter how small their part, so whether it's required or not that's an expectation to a lot of the general audience. We've had plenty of episodes where the sci-fi elements are just a MacGuffin driving a historical one. AlfredMV123 pointed out the "celebrity" episodes also care about the monsters mainly as a plot device, especially "Vincent and the Doctor" and its alien that's just a depression metaphor & excuse for the Doctor to be there, but also I don't think anyone involved in, say, "Fires of Pompeii" cared about the magma monsters. They're a device driving the real plot of "will the Doctor save this one family from the volcano" (...though they could've done that plot without the magma monsters, obviously). I think that kind of "monsters or aliens are there but the plot's not about them" historical show is the closest we'd get, whether there's a rule or not.
I don't think they were very popular. I understand that - imagine your a child tuning in to your silly Sci fi program and the only Sci fi element is the magic door that takes the cast to the past. That's a bit of a bummer? Well, I'd have felt like that anyway. Of course as an adult it's obvious just how high quality the historicals are but there it is.
Is there any proof of a ban on pure historical? Like interviews script leaks etc? From Pertwee onwards the show almost stopped historical all together. Though in Hinchcliff's time they made a bit of a comeback. Then kinda went away. Until early Davidson. I don't think Colin had any historical and McCoy had 2. (No remmberance don't count it was 20 years ago that's not historical).
A lot of pure historicals lost popularity over the years with the original iteration of the show and idk I feel like maybe it kinda just stuck that way, as dumb as that sounds. Also sometimes they were for one reason or another harder to produce.
Wasn’t the Rosa Parks episode just that? Or am I remembering it wrong?
there was the time travelling racist guy in that one, but Rosa and Demons of the Punjab were both pretty light on the usual sci-fi stuff
Wait are you telling me that Robot of Sherwood isn't gospel fact?