#Jo Martin I feel like would’ve done so much better and not have just been ‘the doctor but girl’ and instead would have been her own doctor

[blodeuweddschild]

Me thinking about what the 13th doctor could’ve been if she had been played by Jo Martin and not Jodie Whittaker

[galacticlamps]

I guess I’m gonna make a post about Halloween Apocalypse? I have some thoughts, and since Flux is one big story it could actually be fun to go back and see how they change over time with new information.

Spoiler-free version above the cut:

I enjoyed that ep! Proportionally, it probably had more exposition in it than anything else, but since this is only the first 1/6 of the full arc, I guess that’s to be expected. It certainly introduced a lot of interesting threads, more than you could follow thru on in any fulfilling way in just one episode, so hopefully when we see more of the context the fact that they were all included so early on will feel more rewarding. I do hope the middle installments have slightly more self-contained plots though, if only because it’s nice to have something you can have a decent understanding of & strong feelings about without having to wait six weeks, but I’ve also binged more seasons of dr who than I’ve ever watched live, so I’m probably predisposed to being impatient lol

Right! Now for the specifics:

Dan seems cool so far! I was so down with a companion who worked in a museum I was a tiny bit sad when he turned out to just be a guy deciding to lead his own tour, but “history buff who’s also enough of a people person to just do that kind of thing” is also a fun direction for a companion to take, so I’m excited to see more of him. Plus, chill-but-opinionated always helps introduce a new character when there’s a lot of other stuff going on, which seems like will be the case with Flux.

I also quite like Vinder already - even though all his lines were basically reports from a space observation station, they had so much character to them, I’d really like to learn more about him and how he wound up there. The fact that his actor was at a con this summer gives me hope that he’ll be one of the arcs we follow more closely rather than just dropping in on once or twice an episode, which is nice.

I’ve only been half-paying attention to recent announcements, and I watched most of this episode thinking it was the one with “Sontarans” in the title so while I kept expecting to see more of them, I was still glad they were there! It looks like these Sontarans are gonna bridge being comical and creepy, which feels like the best option given the different directions they’ve gone in in the past, and I didn’t have anything against their previous design but I still think this one’s an improvement - honestly, all the monster/alien costume designs in this were great.

I’m gonna have to think about the dog people genetically linked to the human race thing for a sec longer because that’s so wild, it’s hilarious - but also once they explained that context, the whole situation had such vibes of dragging an unwilling pet to the vet (but with the human race & space), I had to admit it was cleverly done, and even if it might be strange for something like that to exist in-universe without ever coming up before, who cares?

Presumably the Time Lords (or at least an organization they founded? is that what the Division is? also “division” vs “swarm” - that’s gotta be something, right?) were the ones keeping the alien with the very cool prosthetics prisoner, since they had the same gun as Gat & Ruth, and it’s possible we might even get some more Ruth backstory this season since I’m pretty sure the implication is that she’s the one who got the swarm guy locked up in the first place? It would be great to see Jo Martin’s Doctor again, but even though Thirteen sought out the dog guy with the intention of learning more about the Division, I’m not sure if I expect that to be explored fully this season, or if Flux will just be one big adventure that interrupts her trying to solve that one. Personally, I’ve always felt Timeless Children would’ve been a better season opener than closer, so I think I’d prefer that plot with the Division to be pretty heavily involved in (and dare I say, wrapped up in?) this season, and then have the specials after Season 13 feature some more episodic stuff, but we’ll see.

Speaking of episodic, I really liked Thirteen & Yaz as the Tardis team, and since Dan only joined them at the end, I’m glad we basically got a full episode with that duo as the Doctor/companion setup. Of course, I would’ve loved to have had a full adventure with them like that, but I’m still gonna take the one episode as a victory because it’s given us a sense of what their time traveling alone together looked like, and that opening (and its Nitro-9 reference!) made me very excited for the EU stories I’m sure will eventually be set in the gap between Revolution of the Daleks & Season 13.

Actually, now that I think about it, I wonder if there’s any chance of Flux still being a Thirteen & Yaz adventure, in spirit? At this point, Dan feels more like a person they happen across than someone who’s going to travel permanently in the Tardis, and even though he’s listed as a companion for the season, if this season is one big story I suppose it’s technically possible he might stay that way? Like a Sara Kingdom type person maybe, (hopefully without the dying) who travels with the Dr & co for a specific reason, with the intention of stopping once that’s taken care of? I like Dan so far, so I’m not sure what I’d prefer, but at this stage there’s still a chance of it going either way, I think, and even with the limited information we have about him now, we know he’s pretty rooted to his home so it’s possible he’ll just return there as soon as this is all sorted out, which just happens to take six episodes. Unless they’ve already mentioned his actor being in any of the specials?

Idk but it’s an interesting possibility to consider. I know we’ve all taken issue with Chibnall juggling too many characters and shortchanging them here and there on the relationship development front, but I think this series being one big story will help in that respect, just like how it’s not strange we haven’t had Dan interact with the Doctor much at all yet even though we finished his first episode. I also liked the fact that he’s meeting her through Yaz, who was introduced to him as a space savvy human (and is this the first time Yaz has specifically referred to her job with the police as past-tense?), it reminds me of the 60′s when companions overlapped and helped each other get accustomed to the Tardis while the Doctor was busy being eccentric.

Next week looks historical and sontaran-y, and hopefully like the kind of thing that has a main plot with the series arc happening around it, but even if that’s just me projecting what I want on it, I’m still super excited for it. I think that will be the episode that tells us if Flux is more like Trial of a Time Lord (where, although things are related, it’s more or less a frame narrative for relatively stand-alone adventures) or if it’s more similar to something like The Daleks’ Masterplan or, dare I say, The War Games (where it’s all one big story and individual episodes’ plots are just the next step of the same story unfolding - escape the prison, find x person, destroy this weapon, etc.). Either way though, I really appreciate how much this cliffhanger seems like such a middle ground between the classic and new series - it’s got the high stakes and drama of two- or three- parters in the revival but with the same sense of ‘this is just the beginning’ and lack of understanding that went with many first-episode-in-a-serial cliffhangers in the classic series, where that last scene is also often the first time the Doctor & co come up against the real danger after being introduced to the new place they’ve landed.

I’d also like to say that I was watching it live on bbc america, and that station has so many commercial breaks it could make the most well-constructed story feel disjointed, so even though I think it’s fine for different plot threads to feel unconnected at this stage, it’s also possible that those scenes flow even more fluidly when watched properly, which I’ll probably do eventually

[glittergummicandypeach]

White Evangelical Leaders Still Too Preoccupied With ‘Order’ to Listen to Black Truth | Religion Dispatches

Yesterday, President Donald Trump stood in front of St. John’s Episcopal Church in Washington, DC, holding a Bible aloft as a nod to his white Christian nationalist base as he condemned those who damaged the church during the protests the night before. Minutes earlier, police had cleared the way from the White House to the church, which has a historic association with American presidents, with tear gas and physical force.

White evangelicals, many of whom regard mainliners like Episcopalians as dubiously Christian at best, have been quick to praise the president for what the Republican Party’s official Twitter account called the “truly touching and powerful moment.” Never mind that the diocese was not informed about the visit and that Episcopal clergy who were present are livid about the use of violence to clear the space.

Today President Trump made a strong statement by holding up the Bible in front of a burned out historic church. Joe Biden went to church too…and talked about shooting criminals in the leg. Imagine if @realDonaldTrump had said that inside a church! @JoeBiden

— David Brody (@DavidBrodyCBN) June 2, 2020

Yesterday @POTUS Trump made a statement by walking to @StJohnLafayette that had been vandalized & set on fire in Sunday night’s rioting. God & His Word are the only hope for our nation. https://t.co/DNsTr12TTh

— Franklin Graham (@Franklin_Graham) June 2, 2020

Of course, more insidious than the direct praise of Trump’s show of Christian nationalist force, which came on the heels of his threat to use the military to restore order in the face of days of demonstrations against anti-Black violence and police brutality, is the gaslighting that white evangelicals employ in such moments to deflect from their obvious support for white supremacism.

According to David Brody of Pat Robertson’s Christian Broadcasting Network, for example, Pastor Robert Jeffress of megachurch First Baptist Dallas declared today that “holding up that Bible is a reminder that God’s Word denounces both racism and lawlessness.” This is the same Robert Jeffress whose church choir infamously performed a quasi-hymn unoriginally titled “Make America Great Again” in July 2017, and who, after Trump declared that there were “very fine people” among the white supremacists who descended on Charlottesville in August 2017, took to CBN to declare of Trump, “there is not a racist bone in his body.” 

(In an unexpected exception to the general pattern, on June 1, Pat Robertson himself called for first degree murder charges against Derek Chauvin, the Minneapolis police officer who kneeled on George Floyd’s neck for more than eight minutes, and suggested that Trump should have called for justice against Chauvin and the other officers, adding that it might have calmed the riots.)

To those attuned to evangelical doublespeak, Jeffress’s invocation of lawlessness alongside racism calls to mind the slaveholding Christian’s favorite Bible passage, Romans 13:1-6, which in the NRSV begins, “Let every person be subject to the governing authorities; for there is no authority except from God, and those authorities that exist have been instituted by God.” In 2018, then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions famously used the verse to defend the Trump administration’s indefensible policy of separating children from their parents at the border, an interpretation that scholar Wil Gafney characterized, here on RD, as “white, patriarchal, confederate Christianity.”

In a video speech posted on Facebook, evangelical superstar Pastor Rick Warren similarly condemned both racism and rioting, invoking the authority of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to do so while bragging that he’s the first white pastor ever to have been invited to speak in Dr. King’s pulpit. Perhaps Warren hasn’t read the entirety of King’s Letter from Birmingham Jail, since he fails to recognize himself in King’s denunciation of “the white moderate who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice.

But even those white evangelicals who seem more well-intentioned are in most cases proving quite tone-deaf in their responses to the current crisis. Southern Baptist author Beth Moore, for example, tweeted, “Jesus, come get us,” prompting ex-evangelical author and women’s rights advocate Asha Dahya to respond, “Or how about, instead of trying to escape the situation, do the work of undoing generations of systemic racism and oppression perpetrated by the white Christian American church? As a leader you should be leading. This is the wrong take. Jesus would’ve stayed & turned the tables!”

Or how about, instead of trying to escape the situation, do the work of undoing generations of systemic racism and oppression perpetrated by the white Christian American church? As a leader you should be leading. This is the wrong take. Jesus would’ve stayed & turned the tables! https://t.co/h8I5qIpxZV

— #TodaysWonderWomen OUT NOW! // Asha Dahya (@Ashadahya) June 2, 2020

Meanwhile, Jo Luehmann called out prominent evangelical pastor and author Andy Stanley for deleting a take comparing George Floyd to Samson after he was criticized for the comparison, with many pointing out that black lives shouldn’t have to be lost for white Americans to turn away from racism.

Let’s talk about another way white supremacy shows up with Christian pastors:@AndyStanley you posted a problematic post, I called you out on it, as did many others. And then you just deleted it. Deleting with it our work of educating you and your followers. (1) pic.twitter.com/GS197Cggv3

— Jo Luehmann (@JoLuehmann) May 31, 2020

Similar sentiments from white evangelicals prompted Andre E. Johnson, associate professor of communication studies at the University of Memphis and senior pastor at Gifts of Life Ministries, to tweet:

Why does it seem like it takes Black death to redeem us?

— Andre E. Johnson (@aejohnsonphd) June 1, 2020

While he is currently busy supporting local activists and his congregation in addition to his other commitments, Dr. Johnson generously agreed to comment for this article. Responding to a question about Andy Stanley, he expanded on his lament about the need for black bodies to provide American redemption. “Whenever we talk about how God is going to use something evil for good, why does it have to take black bodies being strangled out, to be strangled and killed, on camera?” Regarding the necessary presence of the camera, Johnson also minced no words. “We don’t get this response if there’s no video. And I’m not only talking about white evangelicals, but I’m talking to white liberals too. You would not be feeling what you are feeling right now without video, and I want you to own that.” He added, “I’m lamenting the fact that Breonna Taylor’s name is not mentioned as much as George Floyd’s, but one of the reasons why is that we don’t have video.”

“It’s easy to imagine that Breonna Taylor and her boyfriend must have done something wrong,” Johnson continued, “the police wouldn’t just break into a house. But of course they would! They do it all the time.” The fundamental problem, in his view, is that “Black truth still does not matter. If black truth mattered, we could really begin to put a dent in this issue.” And one of the reasons that black truth doesn’t matter, Johnson stresses, is that white conservative Christians’ theology is fear-based and “and rooted in the hatred of black people, and all people of color and all people who are not white men, as well as the belief that they are superior, that they are God’s chosen.”

Today, when many white evangelicals have pretensions to respectability despite their support for Donald Trump, most would surely deny Johnson’s claim. But, as Johnson says, “There is no conversation to be had” with those who do not see or accept his full humanity; no middle ground with those whose tradition is grounded in slaveholder Christianity, no matter how much white evangelicals have worked to superficially scrub their record on these matters. It’s hard to see how white evangelical subculture can possibly change for the better unless white evangelicals start facing hard truths like those Johnson lays bare—unless black truth begins to matter.

This content was originally published here.