Question

[james_davis_nicoll]

From tor.com's discussion of the latest Dr Who program:

One of the core themes of the episode is clearly a reaction to the dismantling of NASA’s space program.

When did that happen?

Comments

[batwrangler.livejournal.com]

Gee, I thought the heart of the episode was the Doctor being cruel, miserable, and misanthropic under the not-very-convincing guise of letting the humans make their own decisions. Also handwaving about not having an effects budget adequate to setting an episode on the moon.

[kithrup.livejournal.com]

I hated this episode. Even I couldn't find anything redeeming about it.

(Hm. Okay, one thing: the scene between Clara and Danny at the end.)

[bunsen-h.livejournal.com]

It was nice to see Clara finally telling the Doctor what an ass he's been.

Apart from that... does it still count as "jumping the shark" if you're moving faster than escape velocity?

[jayblanc.livejournal.com]

A decision has obviously been made that the Doctor needs to have a "deeper, darker, grittier character" this year. And sorry, but that sucks, and if it continues I'm out. It's not even handled very well. Just *bam* he's a jerk now. And without the ground work done to establish real character investment in this Doctor, that leaves a hollow void that is only being defined by negatives.

And then we're approaching the Thomas Covenant threshold of not having *any* positive investment in the characters. And that's bad.

[dreadedcandiru2.livejournal.com]

All he needs now is a cane, stubble and a prescription for Vicodin.....

[dewline.livejournal.com]

For all that he rebels against his upbringing, the Doctor is still governed by it to some extent. Isn't he?

[cmattg.livejournal.com]

Aren't we all?

[dewline.livejournal.com]

I don't think NASA's over and done just yet either. There's all sorts of non-crewed explorations and research still underway, last I checked. And the human-crewed ops are taking place via other means for the next few years.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

Uncrewed exploration goes through boom-and-bust cycles, abetted by the way these missions can take more than a decade in flight alone, so that when development funding falls off a cliff, the end of the Golden Age can be hidden by the variety of missions already in progress. There's a political problem in that the duration of a program is far longer than a typical political election cycle.

Unfortunately, US planetary exploration seems to be falling off the cliff right now, but it won't be noticeable for several more years yet. The last time this happened was in the 1980s, and there was a real drought for a while there, made worse by every plan getting retooled for the Shuttle (which slipped for years and then upset everything again by crashing in 1986).

[ilya187.livejournal.com]

What, in your opinion, caused that 1980's drought to end?

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

A few things that happened around the same time. Post-Challenger, planetary exploration eventually reorganized away from dependence on the Shuttle. NASA also started diversifying away from giant, super-expensive flagship missions to the Discovery-class and similar projects, though some of the flagships already in the pipeline continued development. It took some time getting "faster, better, cheaper" right (the loss of Mars Climate Orbiter and Mars Polar Lander around the same time was really embarrassing), but a lot of great exploration missions resulted from that eventually.

And even after the Gingrich revolution, Congress wasn't as flatly obstructionist and spending-averse as it is today. The greater tolerance for pork-barrel legislation at the time was actually useful.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

...Also, there was a considerable space spin-on effect: advances in consumer electronics technology just made it easier to design a capable probe for less money.

[nelc.livejournal.com]

When NASA cancelled all Apollos after 17?

[brooksmoses]

And when they stopped flying the shuttle.

Unmanned stuff doesn't count as a "space program", you know.

[nelc.livejournal.com]

Oh, I know. ;)

Actually, on second thoughts, it was clearly when Kennedy cancelled Orion.

[nojay.livejournal.com]

Jeb F. Kennedy has a lot to answer for.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

There was clearly some "progress = SPAAAACE!!" cheerleading in there, in the setup and at the end. Unfortunately the episode was not exactly doing its bit for basic scientific literacy.

I have to admit, unlike many commenters here, I like the "jerky Doctor gets told off" angle here, though I'll be upset if they just have the Doctor continue being an asshole and don't go anywhere in particular with it. It's an interesting change from Space Jesus, and has a lot of continuity with character stuff from the original series. (What the Doctor does at the climax here reminded me a lot of the William Hartnell Doctor locking Susan out of the TARDIS on post-Dalek-invasion Earth. He made a stirring speech about it, but it was still a dick move.)

But "Listen" was the really good one this season.

[dreadedcandiru2.livejournal.com]

The leading theory is that he's still undergoing regeneration trauma....or that Missy is the part of his mind that cares.

[nelc.livejournal.com]

To get Doylist about it, I think they're trying to bridge the character from Malcolm Tucker to a less asshole-ish Doctor Who, but they aren't there yet.

[dreadedcandiru2.livejournal.com]

Which means that we're going to end up with the Davison Doctor with attack eyebrows as we head into Series 9.