Amy Pond really over-egged the explanation. We get it, Moffat, move on. My daughter would have had no problem killing every human on board in favour of saving the star whale and I tend to agree. Once again, I was confused about how they were vomited up but didn’t float off into space. I woke up in the middle of the night deciding that final shot must have been after all the scaffolding and cage were removed so the whale could go free. I really enjoyed the rewatch of this episode. My daughter didn’t speak until the reveal with the whale torture, which is a sign it’s a good one.
At about the 4 minute mark, the Doctor says: "This is the United Kingdom of Britain and Northern Ireland. All of it, bolted together and floating in the sky." What the inhabitants of, say, Derry and Donegal felt about such a permanent separation from their neighbours is not explored.
I think this is slightly looking for the sort of literalism that a story about an entire nation on the back of a spacewhale is perhaps not going to provide, but...
...worth remembering that 2010 was quite a different time. Presumably, pre-brexit, the assumption was that - under the terms of the GFA, the population of Ulster could choose to travel on Starship UK *OR* Starship Ireland, as they preferred. It's only now the union looks on its last legs that this seems silly.
As a Doctor Who fan, I have a high tolerance for silliness. But this hardest of hard borders (hardly in the spirit of the GFA) seems to me to reflect that peculiar British notion that the UK is an island country entire unto itself: sea-girt, separate and special.
In 2015 or so, I watched a BBC quiz programme in which three contestants were asked the same question in turn: "The UK has a land border with which other EU country?" The first said "Pass." The second, confidently, "Scotland." The third, less confidently, "Wales?" Three nice English people, all smart enough to pass the auditions for a quiz show. Not a clue between them about their country's borders.
"That's not just a ship, that's an idea. A whole country, living, laughing and shopping" says the Doctor.
(People from Derry go shopping in Donegal, and vice versa. Both counties are in Ulster.)
This is fair, I think. It's a vision of Britishness that excludes NI. I'm not sure whether this is because there's no way of doing it sensitively (call it Starship Britain and you open up a whole load of different issues), or because they didn't think about it.
I'm aware of where the border runs, I'm halfway through writing a book about borders. I am... leaving this one til last.
But please can we edit out the wink wink jokes about the Virgin Queen.
Amy Pond really over-egged the explanation. We get it, Moffat, move on. My daughter would have had no problem killing every human on board in favour of saving the star whale and I tend to agree. Once again, I was confused about how they were vomited up but didn’t float off into space. I woke up in the middle of the night deciding that final shot must have been after all the scaffolding and cage were removed so the whale could go free. I really enjoyed the rewatch of this episode. My daughter didn’t speak until the reveal with the whale torture, which is a sign it’s a good one.
At about the 4 minute mark, the Doctor says: "This is the United Kingdom of Britain and Northern Ireland. All of it, bolted together and floating in the sky." What the inhabitants of, say, Derry and Donegal felt about such a permanent separation from their neighbours is not explored.
I think this is slightly looking for the sort of literalism that a story about an entire nation on the back of a spacewhale is perhaps not going to provide, but...
...worth remembering that 2010 was quite a different time. Presumably, pre-brexit, the assumption was that - under the terms of the GFA, the population of Ulster could choose to travel on Starship UK *OR* Starship Ireland, as they preferred. It's only now the union looks on its last legs that this seems silly.
As a Doctor Who fan, I have a high tolerance for silliness. But this hardest of hard borders (hardly in the spirit of the GFA) seems to me to reflect that peculiar British notion that the UK is an island country entire unto itself: sea-girt, separate and special.
In 2015 or so, I watched a BBC quiz programme in which three contestants were asked the same question in turn: "The UK has a land border with which other EU country?" The first said "Pass." The second, confidently, "Scotland." The third, less confidently, "Wales?" Three nice English people, all smart enough to pass the auditions for a quiz show. Not a clue between them about their country's borders.
"That's not just a ship, that's an idea. A whole country, living, laughing and shopping" says the Doctor.
(People from Derry go shopping in Donegal, and vice versa. Both counties are in Ulster.)
This is fair, I think. It's a vision of Britishness that excludes NI. I'm not sure whether this is because there's no way of doing it sensitively (call it Starship Britain and you open up a whole load of different issues), or because they didn't think about it.
I'm aware of where the border runs, I'm halfway through writing a book about borders. I am... leaving this one til last.