![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Rewatching the Patrick Troughton-era Dr Who serial "The Dominators." Actually enjoying more than I did on previous viewings. The portrayal of the pacifist-to-a-fault Dulceans remains a bit ham-fisted, but is balanced by the indications that the Dominators are equally hampered by a slavish devotion to their fascist vision of efficiency -- multiple times in the story, characters stay alive because the senior Dominator won't let his junior "waste time and explosives on these primitives" by confirming that they're really dead/searching for them when they escape/stopping the doctor from hanging around them while they discuss their plans (the Doctor has convinced them he's stupid.) The senior Dominator is genuinely chilling, though, when he gives orders regarding the enslavement of a small group of prisoners: "Work them to exhaustion. When they collapse, record the time."
The Doctor's portrayal of a "primitive" is actually rather spooky: "The Clever Ones made them long ago," he bleats while trying to convince the Dominators that neither he nor Jamie know how to use a laser blaster before the unstable weapon goes off in his companion's hands. "But there's not many of them left." His face grows childishly sly, like a less-wizened version of Gollum: "We don't like them very much; they tell us what to do, y'see." He's never appeared more of a trickster god.
The Doctor's portrayal of a "primitive" is actually rather spooky: "The Clever Ones made them long ago," he bleats while trying to convince the Dominators that neither he nor Jamie know how to use a laser blaster before the unstable weapon goes off in his companion's hands. "But there's not many of them left." His face grows childishly sly, like a less-wizened version of Gollum: "We don't like them very much; they tell us what to do, y'see." He's never appeared more of a trickster god.
