I don’t necessarily ignore the racism, but I easily overlook it. Yes, it’s there, it’s bad, and it probably shouldn’t be there. But, it is there and we can’t change it, and this was made nearly 50 years ago. Everyone needs to make the decision on an individual level as to how much they can tolerate it.
Racism aside, I find this story just okay. There are some interesting ideas, Leela is really good in this and Tom does a good job. I never really got the hype over Jago and Litefoot[1] and coming into it somewhere about ten years ago, when it was still being toted as one of the best Doctor Who stories ever, I didn’t get the hype.
So while it’s fine and does have some really good stuff mixed in with some really bad stuff, I think the old “percieved fan wisdom” about how great this is comes primarily from the era of fans who grew up with the Fourth Doctor and who consider the Hinchcliffe era the best this show has ever been and that’s all been downhill since.
It’s a problem cause of how prevalent it is as a whole. Other stories like Marco Polo or Tomb of the Cybermen have racist elements too but they don’t “take over” the story like in Talons.
Marco Polo has yellowface and some of those characters have awful yikes-worthy accents, but not ALL the asian characters are treated as villainous and the main characters don’t go around using problematic language towards them.
Tomb has Toberman, who they do seem to try to give a “face turn”, but even then he’s still a brute who has to be guided by the white man (the Doctor) and he dies at the end. There’s also some casual 60s sexism but these aren’t so prevalent that it ruins my enjoyment.
These two stories are some of my favourites but they do feature problematic elements which I acknowledge as wrong and wish were done differently, but with Talons it feels so much more encompassing. While the dark noir vibe is cool, there’s also that whole vibe of “mystical asians” that’s really uncomfortable.
That’s something which unfortunately stuck around for quite a while, another example being the Kuei-Jin from World of Darkness.
Also this is partially based on my feelings, it’s 100% okay if anyone sees these parts as complete deal-breakers for the respective stories.
I haven’t seen it in such a long time, but we are working our way through The Complete Tom at the moment, and we’re at Seeds Of Doom, so we’ll get there sooner than later! I’m curious what my girlfriend who has never seen it will think!
I do love Jago & Litefoot, I do love lots of the dialogue, and the production design (don’t mind a rubber rat either), love 4 and Leela’s outfits, and I especially like the way Tom says “Greel.” Robert Holmes is riffing on some even more outdated and colonial works like the Fu Manchu stories etc, which is in keeping with their vibe during this era of Doctor Who-izing material that would be familiar to viewers. So, within that, there’s some Victoriana culture and the theatre and such that I really do like in my fiction, and as a kid that’s the stuff I responded to (and just the pure phrase “the Peking homunculus” which is just fun to say).
The last time I did see it was over a decade ago, around the 50th actually, and I was so unsettled by not just the yellowface, but the story itself, because let’s not pretend that casting a Chinese actor as Li H’sen would’ve fixed this, it’s kind of a problem all the way down to the story concept. But, there are still those two great secondary characters, some good business for Leela, and a nice texture in the juxtaposition between Victorian culture and a war criminal from the future. Problematic for sure, but enough good stuff in it that it’s hard to fully ignore (but apparently very easy to blank for 13 years haha).
It’s a fascinating barometer of how fandom’s tastes can shift with evolving social mores.
Back in the day Talons was near universally praised, with barely a mention of the overt racism that permeates the story. People were too focussed on celebrating it as the perfect culmination of all that was great about the Hinchcliffe/Holmes era, and era that most late 80’s fans still lauded as the show’s high water mark.
At the same time, The Happiness Patrol was often viewed with a certain disdain and was commonly held up as an example of just far the show had slipped into pantomime territory. Conversely, contemporary audiences seem to view it in a far more favourable light. I’ve always loved it.
The passing of time really does lend a new, much needed perspective on things.
I liked the novelisation. I think it tones down the episode, and was the primary storage medium other than tape for many… But I haven’t reread it or seen the episode serial. Jago & Litefoot were decent in it, although I do wish they all treated Leela better. So far, I have an issue with Part 1 of Time Flight more. And I like Time Flight.
Taken from my Letterboxd reaction to my first time viewing Weng-Chiang:
“this is basically the Jazz Singer of classic Doctor Who: It has a lot of genuine entertainment value, but saying “it’s good if you ignore the racism” doesn’t help anyone because of how ingrained it is within the story itself. It’s admittedly kind of funny how it creates plot holes just so it can be even more racist (how does Leela know to call Chang “the yellow one”?), but… yeah, can’t really hand-wave what’s happening right the hell in front of me while watching this.”
And yet, it has since become one of my favourite Classic Who stories. As others have pointed out, just chalking this up to “it’s the product of a different time” doesn’t really cut it, as even at the time, there was backlash to it. But I would personally consider the extent of its Orientialist nonsense to be more shocking than anything else; once I could stomach watching it again, it was a bit easier to focus on the stuff I actually liked, such as the atmosphere, Leela going full My Fair Lady, Jago & Litefoot, and how it condenses large swathes of British fiction and folklore together to create its story (same mindset behind why Third is my favourite Classic Doctor).
Given the nature of my day job (film criticism), I regularly run into issues with judging older media with these kinds of problematic elements. I still cannot fathom Birth Of A Nation being in any way praised in the modern day, and works like The Black Stork are just downright evil, both then and now. But honestly, I actually take far less issue with this story than something like Tomb Of The Cybermen. The yellowface on Li H’Sen Chang will never not be rough to look at, but with how the character is written (“The bird has flown. One of us is yellow.” goes hard), an appropriate recast could’ve solved some of the optics issues and helped with his finale, which I will argue still allowed him his humanity by the end. Tobermen cannot be salvaged in the same way, and the whole story sours because of it for me.
But ultimately, I can’t judge the story on what it could have been, only what it is. And what I see it as is a story with a lot of entertainment value going for it… with an incredibly glaring elephant parked in the corner of every single scene. I don’t blame anyone for not being able to look past it (hell, it might even be advisable not to), and I get that it’s not a great look to try recommending this as one of the best parts of Classic Who as some have taken to doing. But man, when taken all together, deep-set flaws and all… I like The Talons Of Weng-Chiang.
This is what I always say about this story, and about people who say ‘it woukd be good if it wasn’t racist’ - there is no Talons without the racism. It’s absolutely baked into the bones of the story, and to say ‘it would be good without the racism’ is, to me, showing a profound lack of understanding for what is actually racist about it. Admittedly, it has been a long time since I watched Talons because the story doesn’t at all work for me, but then I find the Victorian setting rather dreary as a concept so I don’t think I was ever going to get much out of this.
I really enjoyed reading your thoughts, I agree with them entirely except that I don’t care for the ep; you really managed to express what the core issue is to me
If anyone’s interested, I watched this really good video a few months ago, which I think summarises the issues of the story very well, whilst offering a nuanced view of it. Can highly recommend!
I love Leela and Tom, and they are wonderful in this. I think Jago and Litefoot - contrary to some other opinions in this thread - are wonderful too, and their Big Finish line is one of my favorite things that company has done.
But the strongest defense I can mount for liking it, I think, is this: It was among the first Who I saw, which is to say I saw it when I was (probably) 11 years old. I wasn’t raised to be racist or with any real awareness of racism. None of that in the story would have made any impression on me when I first saw it and formed opinions. It was Leela’s table manners and Jago’s alliteration and what not. It wasn’t some white guy doing Asian stereotypes or stuff like that.
Yeah, later, I came to understand there are problematic aspects which now make it harder for me to entirely enjoy the story, but that’s never erased how entranced I was when I first experienced it.
A modern equivalent would be that learning about JK Rowling’s hateful attitudes or Joss Whedon’s horrible behaviors can’t erase the enjoyment I took from their artistic output, even though it retroactively puts a stain on everything they did.
I feel personally offended by the serial and gave it 1.5/5 on first watch. And I would never watch it again or read the target novel. I only watched it for my Welcome to China! badge and it was pure torture.
Can this story get an honorary disqualification from that badge? /hj
Edit, not because I personally hate the episode, but it seems weird to include a story infamous
for its anti Asian racism in a badge celebrating china.
While I agree as I’ve said above that it’s still possible to appreciate other aspects of the story, I don’t think this is a fair comparison. Rowling’s and Whedon’s views don’t come across in their most famous works, or at least not in a way that is integral to the art as a whole. You make a good point about separating the art from the artist, but Talons runs deeper than that because it’s the story itself which is offensive, not just the separate views of its creator.
If we start doing that I think we’d open a whole can of worms Maybe thay badge should be granted when you finish 80% of the story set in China or something, to make it easier to get and people could avoid certain racist stories on their own account
Edit: @shauny I’m seriously considering this… Is it too much of a trouble to change the badge criteria on your end?
I find Talons to really only be a a bit above average serial, racism aside. I assume people’s love of Jago and Lightfoot comes from the audios, because they’re really just ok in the TV story to me.
As far as the racism goes, this is an odd one for me. I’m biracial — white and Asian (east Asian, although not Chinese in particular). I don’t know how appropriate it would be for me to follow that train of though much further here in this thread on this forum, but suffice to say this: as someone that may “get to” feel personally offended by Talons, I do find it perfectly possible to judge the story despite the racism. That’s not to say anyone ought to give it a pass either. I happen to find it just “pretty good” in any case, but can, therefore, understand how people can like the serial which is what the OP asked.
TL;DR it’s ok to judge something like Talons despite the racism, but also perfectly understandable if you don’t feel like you can.
I, too, get why people would like the serial. It’s just I don’t feel I can adopt this point of view as my own. Besides the yellow face and stuff, too many details are simply off when you can understand Chinese lol — it’s quite common in American and European productions I’ve consumed over the years. Often they just create a vague sense of Chinese or Japanese or Eastern Asia in general and only works when you’re not from that background It happens in productions I adore and the ones hate
For example… The “Chinese characters” looks pretty cool [1] but they’re only artistic designs that looks Chinese.
I think this is reasonable and hopefully workable. A small tag could be placed on the story somewhere to explain “this story isn’t necessary in order to get the XYZ badge” or some such. Or I wonder if hitting “skip” in this one instance could automatically count towards that particular badge?
Yeah, this is a rough one, and it isn’t really one I can defend. I enjoyed the whole Phantom of the Opera thing it had going on, I really liked the performances, it was very well shot and J+L were fun. I agree with the sentiment someone said earlier in this thread about it being another recontextualisation of something the viewers of the time were familiar with (ie, Pyramids, Morbius, Seeds, etc) - it just so happens that the thing Bob Holmes chose to do was something very problematic (Fu Manchu).
Classic Who can be a bit of a minefield for these kinds of things, but this is probably one of the most egregious examples. I enjoyed a lot about it but there is very much a big asterisk next to it.
I was thinking more of a percentage approach. The China badge requires 27 stories now, so maybe you get it after finishing 21 and you get to choose which, so as to avoid TG claiming certain stories “don’t count”
/hj
Maybe thay badge should be granted when you finish 80% of the story set in China or something, to make it easier to get and people could avoid certain racist stories on their own account
It happens in productions I adore and the ones hate