Man, Doctor Who and Paul Cornell really wanted us to feel bad for racist, classist Joan Redfern, didn’t they. Really wanted us to mourn the loss of John Smith’s racist, classist “Ordinary Life” with his racist, classist wife and their racist, classist 2.5 kids. Really didn’t want to acknowledge that that “Ordinary Life” could only ever apply to a small select few of the world’s population, and that that “Ordinary Life” was built on the backs of people like Martha and Jenny the school maid.
And then Doctor Who and Russell T Davies really wanted us to know that things turned out a-ok for racist, classist Joan in the end. Really thought it was necessary to give her story a special little bit at the end of the Tenth Doctor’s story, really thought he should care that much. And really wanted to show us how her eerily lookalike granddaughter was profiting off the story of that time the Doctor put Martha Jones through Hell for two months all because he wanted to be “kind” to some alien mass-murderers.
For all that this era and these writers are celebrated, they could really be completely tone deaf sometimes.
