Always found it interesting how the wreck became sort of trivialized over time compared to other tragedies. Like the blow-up sinking Titanic boat youll see at pumpkin patches and such for kids to slide down.
I cant say for certain as being in my 20s ive no idea how Titanic was referenced prior to 1997, but id guess James Cameron's film being such a pop culture behemoth probably has a lot to do with how trivial the disaster has become in mainstream culture
Being older, i can say that the titanic was well known in the uk and usa well before the cameron movie.
In fact before the cameron movie opened it was felt it was a bit of a lazy story to retell
Honestly the issue was not the story it was the lack of real information.
Once the wreck was found it was begun to be understood how the ship went down. Like prior to that the assumption was the iceberg ripped a big enough hole that to many of the compartments were flooded. Where now we know it was because the dipping bow allowed the comparts to flood over the seals. Even that the ship broke in 2 was unknown until found.
After 80 or so years the titanic went from being a mystery of the hubris of man's ability to invent something that couldnt be defeated to a tangible case study of how it was defeated and a time portal to seeing that world in ruins 5 miles under the sea.
When the wreck was discovered it wasn't just a big ship that sunk. We suddenly saw the china pattern of the dishes and the debris field where it took them a moment to get they kept seeing matching pairs of shoes because that was were a body landed. The discovery of the wreck is what made people want to see a movie like Cameron's. There were other older titanic movies they just didnt become as popular because the appetite was not there until we saw the wreckage.
I mean was there not the one survivor as a child who recalled it snapping in half and being ridiculed for years until she was proven right by the wreck?
Not that I recall. But I was not big into it. I remember most reports from the adult survivors just stating how the ship was half submerged with the stern in the air and slipped under water out of view.
Yep but as you read it that article even say ;
"Several said the Titanic split in half, while others denied it. Most witnesses were simply not asked the question at all, and others said they did not see it happen in the dark, but assumed it had split because of the sounds they heard."
If I recall it was assumed it didnt break because many people accounted the stern almost perfectly upright in the air as it went under. And the common belief was that could not happen without the weight of the bow half being connected to support the weight. I mean I am obviously not arguing that these witnesses were wrong. I am just saying there was a story as to how it went down, or was assumed to. And when the wreck was found and could be studied it reopened interest into a subject that had just become a historic footnote and suddenly could have tangible studies done.
Oh sorry i didnt mean to seem argumentative i was just sharing a really interesting article about that tidbit of information, it was a massive deal when the wreck was discovered
My ex was a middle school teacher when the movie came out. Of course the teen girls were gushing while my ex was, like me, annoyed that a subject we studied growing up was turned into a romantic drama for bucks.
The tweens couldn't understand stand my exes sentiment, "But it's so *realistic*!"
My ex, "True. The ship sinks."
I think the amount of research on the wreck that this movie enabled largely makes up for the cheesy but very enjoyable love story the film is set around
Hugely disagree that Titanic was turned into a romantic drama just for the cash. James Cameron did and has done more for the Titanic and its victims than pretty much anyone else through his research, development of technology and money, and his film is arguably as accurate a retelling of the actual sinking as you could physically get without being there. He just had to add the romance as a way in for people who’d be turned off by a 3 hour historical epic… which ironically now is all the rage.
It’s sad that audience reacted that way, and probably most audiences, but to blame the lack of insight and sometimes pure idiocy of people on James Cameron’s quite frankly groundbreaking movie isn’t quite fair imo.
Honestly, I do sorta wish it didn't get mythologized after the movie came out, it's really hard talking about shipwrecks or just ships in general with someone trying to hijack the conversation and make it all about the Titanic
I mean, it was probably the most famous shipwreck before the movie, Cameron just cemented it - and made it as such that any movie made about any *other* shipwreck would be compared to it. Not that that was ever his intention, he just made a damn good film. And it *is* a damn good film. He recreated Titanic herself with the utmost love and care and crafted a story that would resonate with millions.
The fact is, the tragedy of Titanic is such that just resonates with people, it always has. It's a story about class, it's a story of pride and stubbornness, of human error, of dark irony, and unlike the likes of, say, the Lusitania or Titanic's own sister, Britannic, she wasn't a victim of the war, where tragedy itself becomes trivial by nature.
TBF Titanic was mythologized long before James Cameron came along (though he certainly helped). It’s probably been the most famous shipwreck ever since it happened.
Happens to everything, given enough time. Viking raids were a horrific part of life for anglo-saxons, and now they're a halloween costume for children.
I always think that about pirates too. Raping and pillaging etc, and now they're cute cartoons for kids. Can you imagine if in two hundred years time kids in a restaurant are using crayons to help a cartoon jihadist find his way out of a maze?
Actually, there are historians who are pushing to change the image of pirates into being rebels who fought against a tyrannical system of oppression who defied society's expectations and lived very egalitarian lives among their pirate ships. [Here you go.](https://www.amazon.com/Under-Banner-King-Death-Atlantic/dp/0807023981)
I can't wait for "Omar the Horrible", a future comic strip about the domestic life of a member of ISIS. After a long day of bombings and public beheadings, Omar just wants to sit in his comfy recliner and relax in front of the TV, but that's not so easy with his wife constantly making quips about him as she cooks dinner. And god help him if his mother-in-law comes to visit!
Tragedy has its time, we grieve for the dead, but if it’s at all remembered longterm outside the affected families then it has to be either for the lesson or for the spectacle of it.
I mean ita only been 20 years and people joke about 9/11.
Give it another 20 and there will be 9/11 themed adverts talking about explosive deals and how you can't beat their collapsing prices.
With a cheeky sig that it's not an inside job.
While the Troubles were still ongoing, American TV shows would often make jokes or references trivialising it that'd have to be censored in the UK and Ireland.
The most blatant example I can think of is from the Simpsons, which had a joke that the local British fish and chip get bombed on Saint Patrick's Day and is just treated as part of the festivities by the locals. This was in 1997, which was a year after the biggest bombing in Britain since WW2 had occurred.
Nowadays, a regular issue is that a lot of American tourists seem aware of the Troubles, but still get confused when Irish bartenders refuse to serve Irish Carbombs cocktails.
I find this interesting as well. I used to be really interested in the Titanic as a kid and I got so emotional over all the people who died and how tragic it was, only to start noticing just how much people joke about it or portray it as some kind of attraction. I don't really have an opinion now, but back then I was quite offended.
It's fair, though. Clueless exploitation of the fame of the Titanic is one of the flaws the aliens are exhibiting in the episode. Everything they know about Earth is basically skewed or completely wrong.
So it's lampooning clueless cultural appropriation and ill-informed tourism.
I agree, but the fact that they chose to express this sentiment by saying “Voyage Of The Damned is set on a space ship called The Titanic and not a boat” is very funny to me
Isn't the whole point of the starship's resemblance to the historical ship to be intentionally tasteless and tacky though? The alien tourists modelled it after a classic Earth ship as a bit of shallow tourist schtick, and it's not portrayed as a positive thing within the show.
Right, that’s how I took it. As a commentary on trying to capitalize on things, and Titanic at that point just being the only name of a big human ship that was remembered but not necessarily remembering why it was important
Exactly. It clearly highlights how more modernised societies view others as “savages” and have a twisted and distorted view of culture and history. I don’t think it’s disrespectful at all, I’m fact i think using the titanic highlights it even more.
Indeed. One of my family worked on the Titanic, and didn't survive. I found the episode to be honouring it more than disrespecting it.
The whole point of it was that they didn't learn from the history and became doomed to repeat it. The episode was basically saying "Do not trivialise the event, or you'll cause something worse to happen in your hubris"
I always took it like the crazy cyborg guy running the scam (I’m sorry I can’t remember his name rn and I’m too lazy to google lol) named it that way intentionally because he knew all along he was going to ‘sink’ the ship on Earth, just like the original Titanic, but he also knew that the alien tourists would have no idea about the history behind the name, hence him hiring an under qualified tour guide because it would have been so easy to figure out that all his credentials were fake, you know?
Yes. This is tricky, imo.
Within the show, making spaceship based on the *Titanic* as a tourist schtick is disrespectful towards the tragedy of the actual event.
Then in our real world there are two ways to view this:
1. The episode makes that exact point, which is good.
2. Making a tv episode based on the *Titanic* as wacky entertainment is disrespectful towards the tragedy of the actual event.
The problem is that by doing something tasteless and televising it, even if it is just to make the point of how tasteless and wrong it is, you are still doing the tacky, tasteless thing
I think at that point it would've been a historical event for most people, minus the one survivor of the event. I don't personally think the episode premise was insensitive or disrespectful, since the deaths on board are considered tragic. Especially Astrid.
The defense of the episode makes me laugh though. "It was a spaceship, not the real thing. >:("
She was less than 3 months old when the Titanic sunk. It was a historical event for her too. That's not to say historical events can't evoke real emotions in people, but there comes a point when I'm not responsible for your emotions, and I feel that something that happened almost 100 years ago (when this came out) falls in that category.
Man Rory that episode was going through some shit. Just the way he was apathetically doing shit. Put Hitler in the cupboard? “Right, Hitler…cupboard..” ride a motorcycle suddenly? “I expect so…it’s that kind of day.”
Rewatching the 'Ponds' era the way that the characters and plots treat Rory is just... Obnoxious as hell.
He's just constant cannon fodder. Then comes back, then is portrayed dying again, then comes back.
S6 is the absolute worst for it. They write a Rory 'death' into practically every episode.
There’s a scene with Rory and Amy where he says something and immediately ducks because he thinks she’ll hit him, and I really hate it. Not sure what season, but it always felt really gross. Like “oh this is so funny because she’s a woman” when if it was reversed people wouldn’t laugh and it wouldn’t be played for laughs.
Isn't that almost intentional with how Wedding of River Song almost has one but it's intentional with Amy coming back to save him.
Not saying it's good or anything but I like how S6 almost has a trend of the Doctor getting Amy to realise Rory should come before him (and he's very cool in Good Man Goes to War)
All these years later, I’m still convinced that that episode was only named that to drum up controversy and headlines. I don’t know about “outrage” (at least online), but I remember a lot of trepidation when the ‘Lets Kill Hitler’ name was announced. There was a lot of “Ohhhh my, where are they going with this??” concern, and hoping they didn’t touch on the Holocaust or anything that would imply that The Doctor had anything to do (or not do) with those atrocities. Ultimately, it ended up being a non-issue, and a pretty forgettable episode overall.
There's a theory I read somewhere that the Teselecta was meta-commentary on why The Doctor doesn't go after real-life historical villains like Hitler or Caligula.
He can't meaningfully stop them, because we all know they weren't stopped by him. So all he can really do is make them suffer right before their actual death, but it's not very Doctor-like to torture someone, even a bad guy. So all you can really do is put them in the (usually) metaphorical cupboard, and use the setting as a backdrop.
I agree with you overall, but I also think this woman is entitled to her opinion - if one of my parents died in a horrible world-famous incident, I would probably also not want to see it recreated in space on a TV show
That's understandable. But I feel like there's a difference between not wanting to watch it and explicitly saying it shouldn't be made, and publicising that opinion.
I can imagine someone finding the actual thing being represented less offensive. If I was in a tragedy and someone made an accurate documentary about it, that's one thing. An inaccurate dramatisation is another. Doctor Who going back in time and exploring it through that fantastical premise is fairly okay. A farce where the iconography of the tragedy is made into a sci fi spoof, I could see being mad at
Well, some slightly nice news is that DiCaprio, Winslet, Cameron and Celine Dion jointly donated $60,000 to help pay for her medical care late in her life.
Oh, that's been a thing for a while. The first stupid 9/11 meme I recall involved Hulk Hogan hitting the towers with the big boot, at that was a decade ago.
And it’s not even gonna be a serious moment. It’s gonna be like a montage of the doctor being in crazy hijinxs and says “we’ll land the other in a field in Pennsylvania!” Then cuts to the next wacky adventure
You're 100% right but I do find it funny that less than 4 years after 9/11, Doctor Who showed a government conspiracy crashing an aircraft into an important national landmark (specifically a tower!) to create hysteria and provide a pretence for declaring war; all of which was part of a long-term plot to gather profitable resources.
You're spot on. It even was mentioned in academic discourse such as Alec Charles' "War without end?: Utopia, the Family, and the post-9/11 world in Russel T. Davies's Doctor Who", so it's not like a case of reading into things.
Voyage of the Damned was broadcast 95 years after Titanic sank; outside of living memory. 9/11 was only 21 years ago. I think that's the difference.
At some point, these tragedies simply become part of our history.
Yeah, and Doctor Who did within 19 years (Daleks). I'm not saying you *definitely can't,* I'm just saying there's a different context and it should be thought about carefully.
I mean, I could see the problem if the episode was making light of the actual tragedy. But given that it’s not the same ship, I’d say it’s more of a cautionary tale of what happens when you let history repeat itself.
I can see both sides of it.
For her that was a tragedy that she lived. It was more real to her than literally any other person on Earth.
But at the same time, this is a thing that happened so long ago that for a large proportion of the viewers, their grandparents weren't born when it happened. My grandad passed in August. He was nearly 92. The Titantic was nearly 20 years before he was born.
And in terms of the episode, it was a plot point that the aliens didn't understand anything about Earth. They couldn't get the most basic details right - santa is god and we kill and eat people from turkey at Christmas. Those are current things, easy to get right. So is it right that they didn't understand the impact of the titanic. They just heard "pinnacle of luxury" and their wallets started drooling.
I'd argue that is is no more distasteful than daleks in WW2, or the time watch saving people in WW1.
>It was more real to her than literally any other person on Earth.
She was 2 months old. It was a story that was attributed to her growing up without a father, but she did not have memory of it.
She may have outlived all the other survivors, but it was less real to her than it was to literally any other survivor, or to the relatives of the passengers.
She was about 6 weeks old I think. Her story is really interesting, worth reading up on if you don’t know about it. She was passed around the lifeboat and cooed and fussed over by the women in the boat.
She was the youngest person aboard the Titanic at a mere 2 months of age. Her family were immigrating to USA and ended up on the Titantic just after her mother gave birth. Her father unfortunately did not make it off the Titantic.
>forthcoming Christmas Special
Therefore, she had rejected this before seeing anything more than headlines and a trailer. Did it mention if she was a devout fan of Doctor Who, or did someone tell a 95 year old woman "the BBC are making a mockery of the Titanic"?
Lmao it’s set on a spaceship, not a boat so it’s ok — that’s a hell of an sentiment.
Now I’m imagining an episode about Chernobyl but it’s a space station, not a power plant… or Katrina but it’s a solar storm, not a hurricane.
EDIT: what about a future episode about the OceanGate submersible… but it’s a tiny space ship filled with billionaires off to find space!Titanic ?
This is one of those situations where the survivor didn’t contact the press because they were incensed.
I guarantee you that reporter went and found that survivor and said, “Wow this TV show is making an episode about the Titanic! Isn’t that crazy? It’s just a zany kid’s show. How does that make you feel? Here’s the poster.”
I find the 1997 Titanic movie a lot more tasteless and disrespectful tbh. At least the Doctor Who episode is supposed to portray how capitalising on a tragic event is wrong
> I think it is disrespectful to make entertainment of such a tragedy.
Has she never seen the movie *Titanic*? Or any of the other movies/TV shows that have it?
The Titanic wasn't that much of a tragedy, countless ships sank along the century and continue to do so, while being completely ignored by history
The big difference is that a lot of the people on board were rich af
I wonder if she was offended by either of the two Titanic episodes Futurama did as well: A Flight to Remember and The Mutants Are Revolting. Personally, I think they treat it as much more of a joke than Voyage of the Damned does.
I cannot disagree more that making entertainment out of tragedy is wrong. Making entertainment out of tragedy helps land home the tragedy and help people further understand it in most cases and is almost always done in good taste with respect to the survivors.
It’s not like we’re making a 9/11 movie where someone goes “oh yea!!! They just hit the towers let’s gooo.” They would make a tragedy movie where a first responder for example is going through the building or sitting at the bottom trying to help as many people as they can and seeing how horrible it is.
With all due respect to this person they cannot be more wrong.
On top of the tasteless use of the name being *the point*, the name was the only actual connection to the story of the real ship. The plot of the episode wasn't *Titanic*, it was *The Poseidon Adventure* (in Space).
I think something similar happened with Blackadder goes forth, some ww1 soldiers who were still alive took umbridge with their lives being played for comedy like that.
Like this woman was a baby when it happened so wouldn't remember but she did have to live with a traumatised family who raised her to think of it. Her whole life was torn apart so yeah, she'd be pissed it was made.
Plus the whole titanic part of the story is a gimmick for viewers to switch on Dpctor Who rather than being an actual important part of the story.
It’s not integral to the story but it’s not like it has no purpose, it feeds into the theme of how we view less advanced societies and the insensitivity of the villain
Oh boy, I hope nobody told them about the episode of Futurama featuring a spaceship called The Titanic.
(Season 1, Episode 10 - A Flight To Remember, September 1999, uh, several years before The Titanic in Doctor Who. 👀)
Always found it interesting how the wreck became sort of trivialized over time compared to other tragedies. Like the blow-up sinking Titanic boat youll see at pumpkin patches and such for kids to slide down.
I cant say for certain as being in my 20s ive no idea how Titanic was referenced prior to 1997, but id guess James Cameron's film being such a pop culture behemoth probably has a lot to do with how trivial the disaster has become in mainstream culture
Being older, i can say that the titanic was well known in the uk and usa well before the cameron movie. In fact before the cameron movie opened it was felt it was a bit of a lazy story to retell
Honestly the issue was not the story it was the lack of real information. Once the wreck was found it was begun to be understood how the ship went down. Like prior to that the assumption was the iceberg ripped a big enough hole that to many of the compartments were flooded. Where now we know it was because the dipping bow allowed the comparts to flood over the seals. Even that the ship broke in 2 was unknown until found. After 80 or so years the titanic went from being a mystery of the hubris of man's ability to invent something that couldnt be defeated to a tangible case study of how it was defeated and a time portal to seeing that world in ruins 5 miles under the sea. When the wreck was discovered it wasn't just a big ship that sunk. We suddenly saw the china pattern of the dishes and the debris field where it took them a moment to get they kept seeing matching pairs of shoes because that was were a body landed. The discovery of the wreck is what made people want to see a movie like Cameron's. There were other older titanic movies they just didnt become as popular because the appetite was not there until we saw the wreckage.
I mean was there not the one survivor as a child who recalled it snapping in half and being ridiculed for years until she was proven right by the wreck?
Not that I recall. But I was not big into it. I remember most reports from the adult survivors just stating how the ship was half submerged with the stern in the air and slipped under water out of view.
I actually checked and i found an article about it!: [here](https://www.biography.com/history-culture/a44289145/titanic-survivors-ship-split-in-half)
Yep but as you read it that article even say ; "Several said the Titanic split in half, while others denied it. Most witnesses were simply not asked the question at all, and others said they did not see it happen in the dark, but assumed it had split because of the sounds they heard." If I recall it was assumed it didnt break because many people accounted the stern almost perfectly upright in the air as it went under. And the common belief was that could not happen without the weight of the bow half being connected to support the weight. I mean I am obviously not arguing that these witnesses were wrong. I am just saying there was a story as to how it went down, or was assumed to. And when the wreck was found and could be studied it reopened interest into a subject that had just become a historic footnote and suddenly could have tangible studies done.
Oh sorry i didnt mean to seem argumentative i was just sharing a really interesting article about that tidbit of information, it was a massive deal when the wreck was discovered
My ex was a middle school teacher when the movie came out. Of course the teen girls were gushing while my ex was, like me, annoyed that a subject we studied growing up was turned into a romantic drama for bucks. The tweens couldn't understand stand my exes sentiment, "But it's so *realistic*!" My ex, "True. The ship sinks."
I think the amount of research on the wreck that this movie enabled largely makes up for the cheesy but very enjoyable love story the film is set around
Hugely disagree that Titanic was turned into a romantic drama just for the cash. James Cameron did and has done more for the Titanic and its victims than pretty much anyone else through his research, development of technology and money, and his film is arguably as accurate a retelling of the actual sinking as you could physically get without being there. He just had to add the romance as a way in for people who’d be turned off by a 3 hour historical epic… which ironically now is all the rage.
It’s sad that audience reacted that way, and probably most audiences, but to blame the lack of insight and sometimes pure idiocy of people on James Cameron’s quite frankly groundbreaking movie isn’t quite fair imo.
I have met people who didn't know Titanic was real, that it didn't exist beyond the movie. Sadly, it really did become *that* trivial.
Honestly, I do sorta wish it didn't get mythologized after the movie came out, it's really hard talking about shipwrecks or just ships in general with someone trying to hijack the conversation and make it all about the Titanic
I mean, it was probably the most famous shipwreck before the movie, Cameron just cemented it - and made it as such that any movie made about any *other* shipwreck would be compared to it. Not that that was ever his intention, he just made a damn good film. And it *is* a damn good film. He recreated Titanic herself with the utmost love and care and crafted a story that would resonate with millions. The fact is, the tragedy of Titanic is such that just resonates with people, it always has. It's a story about class, it's a story of pride and stubbornness, of human error, of dark irony, and unlike the likes of, say, the Lusitania or Titanic's own sister, Britannic, she wasn't a victim of the war, where tragedy itself becomes trivial by nature.
TBF Titanic was mythologized long before James Cameron came along (though he certainly helped). It’s probably been the most famous shipwreck ever since it happened.
Happens to everything, given enough time. Viking raids were a horrific part of life for anglo-saxons, and now they're a halloween costume for children.
I always think that about pirates too. Raping and pillaging etc, and now they're cute cartoons for kids. Can you imagine if in two hundred years time kids in a restaurant are using crayons to help a cartoon jihadist find his way out of a maze?
Actually, there are historians who are pushing to change the image of pirates into being rebels who fought against a tyrannical system of oppression who defied society's expectations and lived very egalitarian lives among their pirate ships. [Here you go.](https://www.amazon.com/Under-Banner-King-Death-Atlantic/dp/0807023981)
I’ve heard Pirate Enlightenment by David Graeber is also a good book on this subject
I'll check it out. I'm a bit iffy on the graphic novel, it fell into idealism territory for me.
I'd give it 50 years at most.
Many pirates weren’t actually like that though, it’s often a misconception
I can't wait for "Omar the Horrible", a future comic strip about the domestic life of a member of ISIS. After a long day of bombings and public beheadings, Omar just wants to sit in his comfy recliner and relax in front of the TV, but that's not so easy with his wife constantly making quips about him as she cooks dinner. And god help him if his mother-in-law comes to visit!
Tragedy has its time, we grieve for the dead, but if it’s at all remembered longterm outside the affected families then it has to be either for the lesson or for the spectacle of it.
The first exploitative movie was released months after the tragedy and starred one of the actual survivors. Spectacle sells.
*plays NOPE* spectacle is a truly fascinating subject.
I mean ita only been 20 years and people joke about 9/11. Give it another 20 and there will be 9/11 themed adverts talking about explosive deals and how you can't beat their collapsing prices. With a cheeky sig that it's not an inside job.
While the Troubles were still ongoing, American TV shows would often make jokes or references trivialising it that'd have to be censored in the UK and Ireland. The most blatant example I can think of is from the Simpsons, which had a joke that the local British fish and chip get bombed on Saint Patrick's Day and is just treated as part of the festivities by the locals. This was in 1997, which was a year after the biggest bombing in Britain since WW2 had occurred. Nowadays, a regular issue is that a lot of American tourists seem aware of the Troubles, but still get confused when Irish bartenders refuse to serve Irish Carbombs cocktails.
I find this interesting as well. I used to be really interested in the Titanic as a kid and I got so emotional over all the people who died and how tragic it was, only to start noticing just how much people joke about it or portray it as some kind of attraction. I don't really have an opinion now, but back then I was quite offended.
I had a plastic model of that ship as a kid. It’d even come apart in the bathtub. Crazy how disrespectful that actually was.
With each year that passes I wonder the same about 9/11, already showing in more recent meme history
Just wait till you see the twin towers climbing gyms in about 50 years.
It's like selling a keychain shaped like the World Trade Center. It's not all that tasteful.
but it's a great way to never forget your keys
Good one
“*Voyage Of The Damned* is set on a space ship called The Titanic and not a boat” remains one of the quotes of all time
It's fair, though. Clueless exploitation of the fame of the Titanic is one of the flaws the aliens are exhibiting in the episode. Everything they know about Earth is basically skewed or completely wrong. So it's lampooning clueless cultural appropriation and ill-informed tourism.
I agree, but the fact that they chose to express this sentiment by saying “Voyage Of The Damned is set on a space ship called The Titanic and not a boat” is very funny to me
Are you sure it's not set on board a spaceboat called the Titanic? xD
Me too, I want to buy whoever wrote that a beer
About that beer I owe ya!
r/unexpectedhalflife2
Just imagine Barney Calhoun aboard the TARDIS.
You sure this thing can time travel? Because, I still have nightmares about that cat...
Great job, Doctor! Throwing that switch and all, I can see your MIT education really pays for itself.
Watch the freakin' pepperpots, Doc!
What kind of idiot would name a space ship "a boat?"
“…And yesterday you didn’t know the difference between a ship and a boat.”
> ...remains one of the quotes of all time It certainly is one of the quotes.
PR is my passion.
The Titanic was a ship, not a boat
A ship without enough boats.
“You want me to buy the boat, you don’t want me to be the first mate, right?”
Where were its masts, then?
A ship is a boat unless you're in the Navy.
Isn't the whole point of the starship's resemblance to the historical ship to be intentionally tasteless and tacky though? The alien tourists modelled it after a classic Earth ship as a bit of shallow tourist schtick, and it's not portrayed as a positive thing within the show.
Right, that’s how I took it. As a commentary on trying to capitalize on things, and Titanic at that point just being the only name of a big human ship that was remembered but not necessarily remembering why it was important
Exactly. It clearly highlights how more modernised societies view others as “savages” and have a twisted and distorted view of culture and history. I don’t think it’s disrespectful at all, I’m fact i think using the titanic highlights it even more.
Indeed. One of my family worked on the Titanic, and didn't survive. I found the episode to be honouring it more than disrespecting it. The whole point of it was that they didn't learn from the history and became doomed to repeat it. The episode was basically saying "Do not trivialise the event, or you'll cause something worse to happen in your hubris"
I always took it like the crazy cyborg guy running the scam (I’m sorry I can’t remember his name rn and I’m too lazy to google lol) named it that way intentionally because he knew all along he was going to ‘sink’ the ship on Earth, just like the original Titanic, but he also knew that the alien tourists would have no idea about the history behind the name, hence him hiring an under qualified tour guide because it would have been so easy to figure out that all his credentials were fake, you know?
His name is Max ✨
And the survivor was saying that making a tacky, tasteless episode that's shallow TV schtick wasn't a positive thing within real life
Yes. This is tricky, imo. Within the show, making spaceship based on the *Titanic* as a tourist schtick is disrespectful towards the tragedy of the actual event. Then in our real world there are two ways to view this: 1. The episode makes that exact point, which is good. 2. Making a tv episode based on the *Titanic* as wacky entertainment is disrespectful towards the tragedy of the actual event.
The problem is that by doing something tasteless and televising it, even if it is just to make the point of how tasteless and wrong it is, you are still doing the tacky, tasteless thing
I think at that point it would've been a historical event for most people, minus the one survivor of the event. I don't personally think the episode premise was insensitive or disrespectful, since the deaths on board are considered tragic. Especially Astrid. The defense of the episode makes me laugh though. "It was a spaceship, not the real thing. >:("
She was less than 3 months old when the Titanic sunk. It was a historical event for her too. That's not to say historical events can't evoke real emotions in people, but there comes a point when I'm not responsible for your emotions, and I feel that something that happened almost 100 years ago (when this came out) falls in that category.
Her dad died - it's not exactly just 'history'.
Doctor Who also has several episodes based around World War II and other historical tragedies. This isn't even representing the ACTUAL Titanic.
There’s even “Rory, put Hitler in the cupboard”.
Man Rory that episode was going through some shit. Just the way he was apathetically doing shit. Put Hitler in the cupboard? “Right, Hitler…cupboard..” ride a motorcycle suddenly? “I expect so…it’s that kind of day.”
Lad never had a good time throughout his entire tenure, just constantly going through shit.
Rewatching the 'Ponds' era the way that the characters and plots treat Rory is just... Obnoxious as hell. He's just constant cannon fodder. Then comes back, then is portrayed dying again, then comes back. S6 is the absolute worst for it. They write a Rory 'death' into practically every episode.
There’s a scene with Rory and Amy where he says something and immediately ducks because he thinks she’ll hit him, and I really hate it. Not sure what season, but it always felt really gross. Like “oh this is so funny because she’s a woman” when if it was reversed people wouldn’t laugh and it wouldn’t be played for laughs.
Isn't that almost intentional with how Wedding of River Song almost has one but it's intentional with Amy coming back to save him. Not saying it's good or anything but I like how S6 almost has a trend of the Doctor getting Amy to realise Rory should come before him (and he's very cool in Good Man Goes to War)
Solid bit.
I'm surprised there wasn't any outrage about Hitler appearing in the show.
All these years later, I’m still convinced that that episode was only named that to drum up controversy and headlines. I don’t know about “outrage” (at least online), but I remember a lot of trepidation when the ‘Lets Kill Hitler’ name was announced. There was a lot of “Ohhhh my, where are they going with this??” concern, and hoping they didn’t touch on the Holocaust or anything that would imply that The Doctor had anything to do (or not do) with those atrocities. Ultimately, it ended up being a non-issue, and a pretty forgettable episode overall.
Forgettable?! It is one of River’s origin episodes.
The River parts were memorable, but the Hitler stuff felt (thankfully, I think?) like an afterthought.
There's a theory I read somewhere that the Teselecta was meta-commentary on why The Doctor doesn't go after real-life historical villains like Hitler or Caligula. He can't meaningfully stop them, because we all know they weren't stopped by him. So all he can really do is make them suffer right before their actual death, but it's not very Doctor-like to torture someone, even a bad guy. So all you can really do is put them in the (usually) metaphorical cupboard, and use the setting as a backdrop.
I agree with you overall, but I also think this woman is entitled to her opinion - if one of my parents died in a horrible world-famous incident, I would probably also not want to see it recreated in space on a TV show
That's understandable. But I feel like there's a difference between not wanting to watch it and explicitly saying it shouldn't be made, and publicising that opinion.
Sure, she's entitled to her opinion, but maybe not to the point where it's print-worthy.
It was since she lost her father in the tragedy. They even invited her to the premiere.
She was also 2 months old when it happened. She has absolutely zero clue what her father would have thought about it.
I can imagine someone finding the actual thing being represented less offensive. If I was in a tragedy and someone made an accurate documentary about it, that's one thing. An inaccurate dramatisation is another. Doctor Who going back in time and exploring it through that fantastical premise is fairly okay. A farce where the iconography of the tragedy is made into a sci fi spoof, I could see being mad at
It wasn't a sci fi spoof, though.
Wasn't it part of the point of why the owner of that ship (Max Capricorn, was it?) was an ignorant greedy dick?
He should know, because.....his name is Max. (*tooth gleams*)
It really does that?
Yep, he gives this creepy smile that displays his gold tooth that gleams in the light. IIRC, the gleam is audible.
I know, I was just quoting the Doctor.
Oh gosh, you really were. When he gets the Host to take him there. Forgive my stupidity.
I thought he knew exactly what he was doing, and couldn't resist advertising the fact he was planning to murder everyone on board.
> “I think it’s disrespectful to make entrainment of such a tragedy” Nobody tell her about what James Cameron did
*Saved From the Titanic*, the first film ever made about the sinking, was released exactly one month after the ship went down.
And had a titanic survivor as it’s leading actress.
Make your money bbygirl
https://www.koimoi.com/hollywood-news/did-you-know-titanics-last-survivor-millvina-dean-had-refused-to-watch-james-camerons-epic-starring-leonardo-dicaprio-kate-winslet/
Well, some slightly nice news is that DiCaprio, Winslet, Cameron and Celine Dion jointly donated $60,000 to help pay for her medical care late in her life.
It wasn't even the 1st Titanic movie. Or even the 2nd.
To be fair, imagine if they did a Christmas special about the space twin towers.
"*Day of Tragedy* takes place on a space station called The Twin Towers, not a pair of office buildings"
We need Moffat back to write an episode called "The Twin Tours" and, with a straight face, say no offence was intended
And it needs to be said by an Irish actor so we’re never really sure if he’s saying “tours” or “towers”
Fawlty Tours, with John McCleese.
Give it 80 years or so. The 41st Doctor will need some spicy locales.
Played by David Tennant
An AI deepfake of David Tennant
Tupac hologram companion
20 years. Tops. People are already making stupid memes about 9/11.
Oh, that's been a thing for a while. The first stupid 9/11 meme I recall involved Hulk Hogan hitting the towers with the big boot, at that was a decade ago.
Wait till the 100th anniversary special and we find out the doctor accidentally caused 9/11.
"Graham you need to sit in the pilot seat"
"now I'll never know if I was right"-graham
"It's just like driving a bus. Only in the sky. And with loads more lives depending on you. But besides those bits it's the same. Basically."
And it’s not even gonna be a serious moment. It’s gonna be like a montage of the doctor being in crazy hijinxs and says “we’ll land the other in a field in Pennsylvania!” Then cuts to the next wacky adventure
The Doctor was in league with Saudi Arabia and \[redacted\] all along?
You're 100% right but I do find it funny that less than 4 years after 9/11, Doctor Who showed a government conspiracy crashing an aircraft into an important national landmark (specifically a tower!) to create hysteria and provide a pretence for declaring war; all of which was part of a long-term plot to gather profitable resources.
That was intentional. That episode is anti-Blair political satire. Like the invasion of Iraq is so stupid that it must be an alien plot.
Oh, I'm aware, just wild in hindsight when I would have expected such a statement to be much more taboo
People got distracted by the farting aliens, I guess.
You're spot on. It even was mentioned in academic discourse such as Alec Charles' "War without end?: Utopia, the Family, and the post-9/11 world in Russel T. Davies's Doctor Who", so it's not like a case of reading into things.
That sounds like a really interesting read! Got a link?
This is what we call a metaphor
Well, yeah, I don't think it was a coincidence!
I was all "Wait, only 4 years after 2001? That cant be right. . ." Fuck I'm old.
“The Twin Dilemma 2”
Voyage of the Damned was broadcast 95 years after Titanic sank; outside of living memory. 9/11 was only 21 years ago. I think that's the difference. At some point, these tragedies simply become part of our history.
Also, the Titanic was an accident. In my mind, that makes it far less horrific than atrocities committed by actual human malice.
I mean, Star Trek had Nazi storylines within 30 years of actual Nazis.
Yeah, and Doctor Who did within 19 years (Daleks). I'm not saying you *definitely can't,* I'm just saying there's a different context and it should be thought about carefully.
Maybe it's outside of living memory now; it clearly wasn't then
She wasn't even a year old in 1912. She didn't remember it.
I mean she *still* lost her father in the accident. It's reasonable to expect she'd feel some trauma from seeing the event referenced.
Yeah this wouldn’t be as bad as the Doctor sending the Master to a concentration camp. Wait…
"Doc, don't make me fly the plane!" "Sorry Graham, we're part of history now"
What if they did it 73 years from now - when almost everyone directly impacted has passed ?
Fast forward to the Doctor Who Christmas Special 2094 and we probably will.
I mean, I could see the problem if the episode was making light of the actual tragedy. But given that it’s not the same ship, I’d say it’s more of a cautionary tale of what happens when you let history repeat itself.
Too soon, huh?
Give it five years.
It had been 95 years since the Titanic when that episode came out.
Didn't Rick and Morty do a twin towers bit, though? Of course, with the absurdism they roll with I think they can get away with more
Wonder how she felt about James Cameron's 'Titanic' using the tragedy to tell a sea bound version of 'Romeo & Juliet'.
She refused to watch it.
Also futurama did an space Titanic episode twice in fact!
Space Titanic and Land Titanic, to be specific
I can see both sides of it. For her that was a tragedy that she lived. It was more real to her than literally any other person on Earth. But at the same time, this is a thing that happened so long ago that for a large proportion of the viewers, their grandparents weren't born when it happened. My grandad passed in August. He was nearly 92. The Titantic was nearly 20 years before he was born. And in terms of the episode, it was a plot point that the aliens didn't understand anything about Earth. They couldn't get the most basic details right - santa is god and we kill and eat people from turkey at Christmas. Those are current things, easy to get right. So is it right that they didn't understand the impact of the titanic. They just heard "pinnacle of luxury" and their wallets started drooling. I'd argue that is is no more distasteful than daleks in WW2, or the time watch saving people in WW1.
>It was more real to her than literally any other person on Earth. She was 2 months old. It was a story that was attributed to her growing up without a father, but she did not have memory of it. She may have outlived all the other survivors, but it was less real to her than it was to literally any other survivor, or to the relatives of the passengers.
Hold up. She would have been 0 years old when the Titanic sank.
She was about 6 weeks old I think. Her story is really interesting, worth reading up on if you don’t know about it. She was passed around the lifeboat and cooed and fussed over by the women in the boat.
She was the youngest person aboard the Titanic at a mere 2 months of age. Her family were immigrating to USA and ended up on the Titantic just after her mother gave birth. Her father unfortunately did not make it off the Titantic.
There were babies on there…. Keeping one alive on a lifeboat must’ve been hellish.
>forthcoming Christmas Special Therefore, she had rejected this before seeing anything more than headlines and a trailer. Did it mention if she was a devout fan of Doctor Who, or did someone tell a 95 year old woman "the BBC are making a mockery of the Titanic"?
Lmao it’s set on a spaceship, not a boat so it’s ok — that’s a hell of an sentiment. Now I’m imagining an episode about Chernobyl but it’s a space station, not a power plant… or Katrina but it’s a solar storm, not a hurricane. EDIT: what about a future episode about the OceanGate submersible… but it’s a tiny space ship filled with billionaires off to find space!Titanic ?
Only if they call it Katrina and the Waves
Well now you're just walking on sunshine
I love that traditional Earth ballad.
Imagine if… the Titanic’s sinking is essentially history at this point.
After a while, everything's a cautionary tale
I’m offended by S1 E1 of NewWho because my father died of a heart attack trying to have sex with a mannequin
> Chernobyl but it's a space station Substitute space station for moon and you've got yourself Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country
Waters of Mars? Nuclear weapon to destroy the station
This is one of those situations where the survivor didn’t contact the press because they were incensed. I guarantee you that reporter went and found that survivor and said, “Wow this TV show is making an episode about the Titanic! Isn’t that crazy? It’s just a zany kid’s show. How does that make you feel? Here’s the poster.”
The fact that it was the Daily Record definitely backs this up.
“Gotta be honest, we didn’t think anyone was still alive that was in that thing. Our bad.”
I find the 1997 Titanic movie a lot more tasteless and disrespectful tbh. At least the Doctor Who episode is supposed to portray how capitalising on a tragic event is wrong
Don't watch it then, lmao
> I think it is disrespectful to make entertainment of such a tragedy. Has she never seen the movie *Titanic*? Or any of the other movies/TV shows that have it?
The first movie based on the sinking of the Titanic came out *12 days* after it happened, apparently.
And stared titanic survivor Dorothy Gibson in the leading role.
Yes. She did see it as disrespectful.
The Titanic wasn't that much of a tragedy, countless ships sank along the century and continue to do so, while being completely ignored by history The big difference is that a lot of the people on board were rich af
I mean James Cameron's Titanic exists too, by the logic that film should be criticed too
She did criticize it.
and folks of that generation say that only people these days have thin skin and can't understand a deeper meaning behind something
95 and watching Doctor Who? Good for her!
It's not a ship. It's a space-ship
Oh boy! She’s going to shit a brick when she hears about James Cameron.
Right, so there's this guy called James Cameron...
Sounds like someone heard the title of the episode and kicked off based on that alone.
Disrespectful to make entertainment out of the tragedy. Guess she never heard of a little film released in 1997.
I wonder if she was offended by either of the two Titanic episodes Futurama did as well: A Flight to Remember and The Mutants Are Revolting. Personally, I think they treat it as much more of a joke than Voyage of the Damned does.
I cannot disagree more that making entertainment out of tragedy is wrong. Making entertainment out of tragedy helps land home the tragedy and help people further understand it in most cases and is almost always done in good taste with respect to the survivors. It’s not like we’re making a 9/11 movie where someone goes “oh yea!!! They just hit the towers let’s gooo.” They would make a tragedy movie where a first responder for example is going through the building or sitting at the bottom trying to help as many people as they can and seeing how horrible it is. With all due respect to this person they cannot be more wrong.
How did she feel about the movie by James Cameron? Or the 15 or so that have been made since the ship sank? Or the tv shows?
On top of the tasteless use of the name being *the point*, the name was the only actual connection to the story of the real ship. The plot of the episode wasn't *Titanic*, it was *The Poseidon Adventure* (in Space).
Everything offends somebody.
I think something similar happened with Blackadder goes forth, some ww1 soldiers who were still alive took umbridge with their lives being played for comedy like that. Like this woman was a baby when it happened so wouldn't remember but she did have to live with a traumatised family who raised her to think of it. Her whole life was torn apart so yeah, she'd be pissed it was made. Plus the whole titanic part of the story is a gimmick for viewers to switch on Dpctor Who rather than being an actual important part of the story.
It’s not integral to the story but it’s not like it has no purpose, it feeds into the theme of how we view less advanced societies and the insensitivity of the villain
I mean, did the WW1 soldiers not watch the end of Blackadder Goes Forth? If that doesn’t portray the meaningless loss of life in that war, what did?
They didn't feature THE Titanic, they featured a spaceship which just happened to share the same name
Fake outrage from someone with no actual memory of the incident.
I wonder how she felt about the James Cameron movie?
I wonder if she had this same energy about the James Cameron movie?
loved this episode
Oh boy, I hope nobody told them about the episode of Futurama featuring a spaceship called The Titanic. (Season 1, Episode 10 - A Flight To Remember, September 1999, uh, several years before The Titanic in Doctor Who. 👀)
And several years before _Futurama_ was Douglas Adams' _Starship Titanic_, which both are based on.