Tuesday 10 September 2013

Phil Defends Moffat

Philip Sandifer: Writer: The Definitive Moffat and Feminism Post

Phil Sandifer is currently addressing the RT Davies stuff, but he took a detour on his blog to address those who have criticised Moffat for sexism.

This has generated some fascinating discussion. Anti-Moffat people have made some pretty good criticisms of Phil's apology for Moffat, pointing out that he does not really deal with the arguments and that he unhelpfully builds his case by bringing up the sexism of previous eras.

Phil's persistent support for the Moffat stuff is interesting. In part it reflects his uncomfortable narrative of Doctor Who, in which the New Series is better  than anything that went before and the Wilderness Years material was a sort of warm-up exercise for the BBC Wales show.


4 comments:

  1. That is Sandifer. His typical style is to write a 10 000 word article without ever actually addressing the subject matter, while always having to make accusations of racism and/or sexism. Oh, and telling us that the New Adventures represent a high-point for Doctor Who. The Sandifer style is right there to be satirised...

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    Replies
    1. Thanks for commenting.

      I like a lot of what he says, but often disagree with him.

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    2. I also agree with a lot of what he says. My main concerns are that

      a)he makes outrageous claims, such as" the fans all thought x" or "everyone agrees that story y is rubbish". How does he know? It's the old idea of the mind that thinks because they believe something everyone else must therefore think that way as well.

      b)the so-called "Tardis Eruditorum" is often not at all about Doctor Who, but rather Sandifer pushing his Marxist views. Doctor Who bears only the smallest of connections to get him started, before it's straight into Useful Idiot Ranting.

      Of course, when he does step off his soapbox, and talk about Doctor Who, he has made some very good points. The problem is that an awful lot of the time, it's just some guy pushing his political views, and making bold claims that he can not possibly know to be true. There's a lot of very good stuff in his writings, but it's often an enormous task to sift through the hammer-and-sickle waving and arrogant proclamations to actually find it.

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