(From Miladysa I learned that today is Bloggers Unite for Human Rights Day. This is my little effort to keep with the cause. I hope it's worthwhile.)I was not initially enthusiastic to see that the Ood were returning to this year's Doctor Who. The ancillary figures in Season 2's The Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit move to center stage in The Planet of the Ood.
Whoopie, I thought. Then I settled in to watch the episode on Sci Fi where the show is airing only a little behind the BBC debut. I discovered in watching what a brilliant and timely metaphor writer Keith Temple had penned.
Subtext has long been a part of the Who universe. Much digital and actual ink was used to discuss the Prime Minister's decision to destroy an already retreating space craft in The Christmas Invasion.
Now the Ood, as we learned in The Impossible Planet, are a servant race, born and sworn to act as sort of universal butlers. In Planet of the Ood they are also standing in metaphorically for slave labor and mistreament everywhere while also indicting consumer apathy--not just in Britian, within other borders as well.
I don't think the production of a major television series could have intentionally been coordinated with the news of slavery conditions in the Asian shrimp industry revealed in an AFL-CIO study, but it certainly resonated when the Doctor and his new companion Donna (Katherine Tate) looked on a group of trapped Ood and had this exchange:
Donna: A great big empire built on slavery.
The Doctor: It's not so different from your time.
Donna: I haven't got slaves!
The Doctor: Who do you think made your clothes?
I don't mean to trivialize in any way the plight of so many around the globe. The strength of a metaphorical message can often have echoes in many ways. If it makes us all more aware consumers I believe that's a good thing. Another exchange in the episode raised relevant points:
Donna: If people back on Earth knew what was going on here…
Solana: Don't be so stupid. Of course they know.
Donna: They know how you treat the Ood?
Solana: They don't ask. Same thing.
I special order fair trade coffee, but I couldn't tell you who made the current shoes or shirts I wear. Christine has begun making an effort to study the origins of products we purchase and use, but that's a bit of a challenge.
With the current tumult in the U.S. economy, consumer awareness is the kind of thing that can quickly slide. "I can't afford to worry about such things," we might say.
Christine passed on a quote to me a long while back that sticks with me. "A purchase is a vote."
We can't afford any longer not to ask who we're voting for.
